Oh, there were always military parades and speeches, the same as there were elsewhere in the country. But there were also always Socialist counter-demonstrations and hecklers in New York City; Flora had been caught up in the Remembrance Day riots of 1915. The Socialist Party was not about to let Remembrance Day steal its May Day thunder.
In Philadelphia, though, the Socialist Party maintained a much smaller presence. Philadelphia was a city of government, and therefore, overwhelmingly, a city of Democrats. It was also, far more than New York, a city of soldiers.
No one mocked here. No one heckled here. People crowded along the parade route to cheer the soldiers and the Soldiers’ Circle men of prewar conscription classes-not so many of them left, not with the guns so hungry these past nearly three years-and the graying veterans of the Second Mexican War and the aged veterans of the War of Secession and even, riding along in a motorcar, a pair of ancient veterans of the Mexican War, the last war against a foreign power the United States had won.
Church bells pealed. Flora knew the churches were packed, too, packed with people lamenting past U.S. defeats and praying for future victory. Someone in the crowd on the far side of Chestnut Street from the platform where Flora sat with the rest of Congress and other government dignitaries held up a placard that seemed to sum up the mood as well as anything: IT’S OUR TURN THIS TIME.
Aeroplanes buzzed overhead-U.S. fighting scouts, flying in swarms to make sure the CSA did not interrupt the day’s observances. Flora craned her neck to watch them. They put her in mind of dragonflies, and were far more interesting than the endless parade of soldiers and marching bands and veterans.
As he had a way of doing at functions, Hosea Blackford sat close to her. Seeing her looking up into the sky, he said, “It was even more interesting a couple of years ago, when the Confederates stood on the Susquehanna. Then there were dogfights above the parade, and the C.S. bombers dropped their toys not far from the parade route.”
“It was more interesting in New York City, too,” Flora said. “I was there for the riots that year.”
Blackford frowned. “I wish they had never happened. They did the Party a great deal of damage around the country, damage from which it has not entirely recovered even now.”
Flora said, “Nobody knows to this day who threw the bomb that started the riot, whether it was a Socialist or a Mormon who sympathized with the rebellion in Utah.”
“That’s true,” the congressman from Dakota said. “But it’s also true that Socialists did most of the rioting, no matter how the trouble started.”
“What if it is?” Flora said. “What if it is? We were trying to do something to stop this useless, senseless war. It’s more than anyone else in the country was doing. It’s more than anyone else in the Socialist Party was doing, too,” she added pointedly.
“How could anyone stop the war by then?” Hosea Blackford said. “We were fighting the Confederate States from the Gulf of California to the Atlantic, against Canada heavily from Winnipeg east and here and there farther west, too, and against England and France and Japan on the high seas. It was too big to stop. It still is.”
“It should never have started,” Flora said. “A Hapsburg prince wasn’t reason enough to throw the world on the fire.”
“Maybe you’re even right,” Blackford said. “But when Roosevelt called on us to vote for war credits, what would have happened if we had said no? I would not be in Congress now, you would not be in Congress now, none of us would be in Congress now.”
“My brother would not be in Virginia now,” Flora said. “My sister would not be a widow now. My nephew would not be growing up without ever having the chance to know his father now. If you think I would not go back to New York and make that bargain, Mr. Blackford, you are mistaken.”
“You shame me,” he said quietly.
“I think the Party needs shaming,” Flora answered. “I think the Party-especially outside of New York City-has become too bourgeois for its own good, and forgotten the oppressed workers and peasants of the world. If the Socialist Party in the USA goes to war against the Labour Party in England and the Socialist Party in France, where is the international solidarity of Socialism? I’ll tell you where-down in the trenches with a rifle, that’s where.”
Blackford did not reply. Instead, he made a small production out of lighting a cigar. Before he had to say anything more, a rumbling, clanking rattle and ecstatic shouts from the crowd farther up the parade route made Flora forget about the conversation, at least for a little while. Like everyone else, she was staring at the enormous mechanical contraptions lumbering along Chestnut Street.
President Theodore Roosevelt’s voice rose above the racket from the snorting monsters. “Bully!” Roosevelt shouted, as enthusiastic as a small boy over a tin motorcar. “By George, what a bully pack of machines they are!”
They were impressive, if size and noise were the criteria for impressiveness. Each had a cannon at the snout and bristled with machine guns. They were the deadliest-looking things Flora had ever seen. The fighting scouts in the sky were killing machines, too, but graceful and elegant killing machines. The barrels were as graceful and elegant as so many rhinoceri.
Each of them had in it a man standing up so that the top half of his body was outside the square cupola in the middle of the machine’s roof. Each of those soldiers saluted the platform, and Roosevelt in particular, as his barrel waddled past.
“Now go into the fight!” Roosevelt shouted to one barrel after another. “Now go into the fight, and teach all those who dare trifle with the might of the United States the error and folly of their ways!”
He was indeed like a boy playing with tin motorcars and lead soldiers and aeroplanes carved from balsa wood. But his toys really burned and bled and crashed-and made other, similar toys with different markings and colors burn and bleed and crash. He seemed not to understand that.
Flora wondered how such a blind spot was possible. She turned to Hosea Blackford with a question that had, on the surface, little to do with their previous argument: “Roosevelt fought in war. How can he take it so lightly?”
“Because he is what he seems, I suppose,” Blackford answered. “Because he really does believe everything he preaches. And, not least, I suppose, because he enjoyed himself and won glory when he went to war.”
“But he’s been in the trenches now,” Flora persisted. “He knows there is no glory in fighting against cannon and machine guns. My brother’s sergeant helped him take cover when the Confederates shelled the part of the line he was visiting-David has written me about it. How can he not see?”
“He sees the country going forward. He doesn’t see the suffering he’s creating to make it go in the direction he wants,” Blackford said slowly. “That’s the best answer I can give you, and I doubt he could give you a better one.”
Flora wondered about that. Roosevelt was a good deal more eloquent than she’d expected him to be. But he was hardly an introspective man, so perhaps Blackford had a point after all.
The clank and rattle and rumble of the barrels faded in the distance. So, more slowly, the noise of the crowd faded, too. A sort of muted thunder remained. Flora had heard it whenever things grew quiet along the parade route. She wondered what it was. It put her in mind of the roar of the sea by the oceanside, but more by its steadiness than by the sound itself.
Up at the front of the platform, President Roosevelt approached a microphone-which was, Flora thought irreverently, like a fat man approaching a chocolate cake, for the president had no more need of the one than the fat fellow did of the other.
“Listen!” Roosevelt called to the crowd. Pointing to the south, he went on, “Do you know what that is?” Flora realized the low reverberations were coming from that direction.
“Tell us!” somebody-probably a paid shill-called from the crowd.
“I will tell you,” Roosevelt said. “That is the sound of our heavy guns, shelling the forces of the Confederate States still on U.S. soil. We are also shelling them on their own territory, and the Canadians and British opposing us in the north. This is a Remembrance Day they shall remember forever, yes, remember with fear and trembling.”
How the people cheered! Listening to them sent a chill through Flora. The war was not popular in her home district, nor anything about it. The war itself was probably unpopular in Philadelphia, too. But victory, and what victory would bring-those were popular. Flora’s district was full of immigrants, newcomers to the United States, who didn’t bear the full weight of a half century’s resentment and hatred and humiliation on their shoulders.
