“Torturin’ me for days—­a week, maybe, I dunno, in that there dungeon!”

Major Gaddis turned to Sergeant Perkins, who stood behind Jimmie’s chair, barely able to withhold his hands from the prisoner.  “How about that, Sergeant?”

“It is utterly false, sir.”

“Look at these thumbs!” cried Jimmie.  “They strung me up by them!”

“The prisoner was violent,” said Perkins.  “He nearly killed Private Connor, one of the guards, so we had to use severe measures.”

“It’s a lie!” shrieked Jimmie.  But they shut him up, and the dignified military machine ground on.  Anybody could see that discipline would go to pieces if the word of a jailer did not prevail over that of a prisoner, the word of a loyal and tried subordinate over that of a traitor and conspirator, an avowed sympathizer with the enemy.

Presently the presiding officer inquired if the prisoner was aware that he had incurred the death-penalty.  Getting no reply, he went on to inform the prisoner that the court would be apt to inflict this extreme penalty, unless he would reconsider and name his accomplices among the Bolsheviki, so that the army could protect itself against the propaganda of these murderers.  So Jimmie flared up again—­but not so violently, rather with a touch of fierce irony.  “Murderers, you say?  Ain’t you gettin’ ready to murder me?”

“We are enforcing the law,” said the court.

“You make what you call law, an’ they make what they call law.  You kill people that disobey, an’ so do they.  What’s the difference?”

“They are killing all the educated and law-abiding people in Russia,” declared Major Gaddis, severely.

“All the rich people, you mean,” said Jimmie.  “They make the rich obey their laws; they give them a chance, the same as everybody else, then if they don’t obey they kill them—­just as many as they have to kill to make them obey.  An’ don’t you do the same with the poor people?  Ain’t I seen you do it, every time there was a strike?  Ask Colonel Nye there!  Didn’t he say:  ’To hell with habeas corpus—­we’ll give them post-mortems?’”

Colonel Nye flushed; he did not know that his fame had followed him all the way from Colorado to the Arctic Circle.  The court made haste to protect him:  “We are not conducting a Socialist debate here.  It is evident that the prisoner is impenitent and defiant, and that there is no reason for leniency.”  So the court proceeded to find Jimmie Higgins guilty as charged, and to sentence him to twenty years’ military confinement—­really quite a mild sentence, considering the circumstances.  In New York City at this very time they were trying five Russian Jews, all of them mere children, one a girl, for exactly the same offence as Jimmie had committed—­distributing a plea that American troops should cease to kill Russian Socialists; these children received twenty years, and one of them died soon after his arrest—­his fellows swore as a result of torture inflicted by Federal secret service agents.