CHAPTER I

GRADUATION DAY

In the year 1920, the student and the statesman saw many indications
that the social, financial and industrial troubles that had vexed the
United States of America for so long a time were about to culminate in
civil war.

Wealth had grown so strong, that the few were about to strangle the
many, and among the great masses of the people, there was sullen and
rebellious discontent.

The laborer in the cities, the producer on the farm, the merchant, the
professional man and all save organized capital and its satellites, saw
a gloomy and hopeless future.

With these conditions prevailing, the graduation exercises of the class
of 1920 of the National Military Academy at West Point, held for many a
foreboding promise of momentous changes, but the 12th of June found the
usual gay scene at the great institution overlooking the Hudson. The
President of the Republic, his Secretary of War and many other
distinguished guests were there to do honor to the occasion, together
with friends, relatives and admirers of the young men who were being
sent out to the ultimate leadership of the Nation's Army. The scene had
all the usual charm of West Point graduations, and the usual
intoxicating atmosphere of military display.

There was among the young graduating soldiers one who seemed depressed
and out of touch with the triumphant blare of militarism, for he alone
of his fellow classmen had there no kith nor kin to bid him God-speed in
his new career.

Standing apart under the broad shadow of an oak, he looked out over long
stretches of forest and river, but what he saw was his home in distant
Kentucky--the old farmhouse that the sun and the rain and the lichens
had softened into a mottled gray. He saw the gleaming brook that wound
its way through the tangle of orchard and garden, and parted the distant
blue-grass meadow.

He saw his aged mother sitting under the honeysuckle trellis, book in
hand, but thinking, he knew, of him. And then there was the perfume of
the flowers, the droning of the bees in the warm sweet air and the
drowsy hound at his father's feet.

But this was not all the young man saw, for Philip Dru, in spite of his
military training, was a close student of the affairs of his country,
and he saw that which raised grave doubts in his mind as to the outcome
of his career. He saw many of the civil institutions of his country
debased by the power of wealth under the thin guise of the
constitutional protection of property. He saw the Army which he had
sworn to serve faithfully becoming prostituted by this same power, and
used at times for purposes of intimidation and petty conquests where the
interests of wealth were at stake. He saw the great city where luxury,
dominant and defiant, existed largely by grace of exploitation--
exploitation of men, women and children.

The young man's eyes had become bright and hard, when his day-dream was
interrupted, and he was looking into the gray-blue eyes of Gloria
Strawn--the one whose lot he had been comparing to that of her sisters
in the city, in the mills, the sweatshops, the big stores, and the
streets. He had met her for the first time a few hours before, when his
friend and classmate, Jack Strawn, had presented him to his sister. No
comrade knew Dru better than Strawn, and no one admired him so much.
Therefore, Gloria, ever seeking a closer contact with life, had come to
West Point eager to meet the lithe young Kentuckian, and to measure him
by the other men of her acquaintance.

She was disappointed in his appearance, for she had fancied him almost
god-like in both size and beauty, and she saw a man of medium height,
slender but toughly knit, and with a strong, but homely face. When he
smiled and spoke she forgot her disappointment, and her interest
revived, for her sharp city sense caught the trail of a new experience.

To Philip Dru, whose thought of and experience with women was almost
nothing, so engrossed had he been in his studies, military and economic,
Gloria seemed little more than a child. And yet her frank glance of
appraisal when he had been introduced to her, and her easy though
somewhat languid conversation on the affairs of the commencement,
perplexed and slightly annoyed him. He even felt some embarrassment in
her presence.

Child though he knew her to be, he hesitated whether he should call her
by her given name, and was taken aback when she smilingly thanked him
for doing so, with the assurance that she was often bored with the
eternal conventionality of people in her social circle.

Suddenly turning from the commonplaces of the day, Gloria looked
directly at Philip, and with easy self-possession turned the
conversation to himself.

"I am wondering, Mr. Dru, why you came to West Point and why it is you
like the thought of being a soldier?" she asked. "An American soldier
has to fight so seldom that I have heard that the insurance companies
regard them as the best of risks, so what attraction, Mr. Dru, can a
military career have for you?"

Never before had Philip been asked such a question, and it surprised
him that it should come from this slip of a girl, but he answered her in
the serious strain of his thoughts.

"As far back as I can remember," he said, "I have wanted to be a
soldier. I have no desire to destroy and kill, and yet there is within
me the lust for action and battle. It is the primitive man in me, I
suppose, but sobered and enlightened by civilization. I would do
everything in my power to avert war and the suffering it entails. Fate,
inclination, or what not has brought me here, and I hope my life may not
be wasted, but that in God's own way, I may be a humble instrument for
good. Oftentimes our inclinations lead us in certain directions, and it
is only afterwards that it seems as if fate may from the first have so
determined it."

The mischievous twinkle left the girl's eyes, and the languid tone of
her voice changed to one a little more like sincerity.

"But suppose there is no war," she demanded, "suppose you go on living
at barracks here and there, and with no broader outlook than such a life
entails, will you be satisfied? Is that all you have in mind to do in
the world?"

He looked at her more perplexed than ever. Such an observation of life,
his life, seemed beyond her years, for he knew but little of the women
of his own generation. He wondered, too, if she would understand if he
told her all that was in his mind.

"Gloria, we are entering a new era. The past is no longer to be a guide
to the future. A century and a half ago there arose in France a giant
that had slumbered for untold centuries. He knew he had suffered
grievous wrongs, but he did not know how to right them. He therefore
struck out blindly and cruelly, and the innocent went down with the
guilty. He was almost wholly ignorant for in the scheme of society as
then constructed, the ruling few felt that he must be kept ignorant,
otherwise they could not continue to hold him in bondage. For him the
door of opportunity was closed, and he struggled from the cradle to the
grave for the minimum of food and clothing necessary to keep breath
within the body. His labor and his very life itself was subject to the
greed, the passion and the caprice of his over-lord.

"So when he awoke he could only destroy. Unfortunately for him, there
was not one of the governing class who was big enough and humane enough
to lend a guiding and a friendly hand, so he was led by weak, and
selfish men who could only incite him to further wanton murder and
demolition.

"But out of that revelry of blood there dawned upon mankind the hope of
a more splendid day. The divinity of kings, the God-given right to rule,
was shattered for all time. The giant at last knew his strength, and
with head erect, and the light of freedom in his eyes, he dared to
assert the liberty, equality and fraternity of man. Then throughout the
Western world one stratum of society after another demanded and
obtained the right to acquire wealth and to share in the government.
Here and there one bolder and more forceful than the rest acquired great
wealth and with it great power. Not satisfied with reasonable gain, they
sought to multiply it beyond all bounds of need. They who had sprung
from the people a short life span ago were now throttling individual
effort and shackling the great movement for equal rights and equal
opportunity."

Dru's voice became tense and vibrant, and he talked in quick sharp
jerks.

"Nowhere in the world is wealth more defiant, and monopoly more
insistent than in this mighty republic," he said, "and it is here that
the next great battle for human emancipation will be fought and won. And
from the blood and travail of an enlightened people, there will be born
a spirit of love and brotherhood which will transform the world; and
the Star of Bethlehem, seen but darkly for two thousand years, will
shine again with a steady and effulgent glow."

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