But for some reason incomprehensible to Jimmie Higgins, the capitalist President would not take this further step; and time moved on, and at the end of January fell a thunder-bolt, in the shape of a declaration from the German government that beginning next day it rescinded its agreement to visit and search steamers, and declared war to the death against all vessels sailing in barred zones.  Jimmie went to a meeting of the local a few days after that, and found the gathering seething with excitement.  The President had appeared before Congress that day and made a speech calling for war; and the Germans and Austrians in the local were wild with indignation, shaking their fists and clamouring against the unthinkable outrage of an attack upon the Fatherland.  There was a new edition of the Worker just out, filled with bitter protests, and the Germans and the pacifists wanted to pledge the local to a movement for a general strike of labour throughout the country.  Street-meetings had been resumed—­for, of course, since the strike in the Empire had been settled, the police had had no pretext to prevent them.  The extremists now wanted anti-war speakers on every corner, and anti-war leaflets shoved under every doorstep; they were willing to put up the money and to pledge their time for these activities.

Lawyer Norwood rose and revealed the split that was now full-grown in the party.  For the United States to lie down before that insolent declaration of the German government would be to imperil everything which a lover of liberty held dear.  It would mean that Britain would be starved out of the war, and British sea-power shattered—­that British sea-power upon which free government had based itself throughout the world.  Norwood was unable to get any further for the tempest of jeering and ridicule that overwhelmed him.  “Freedom in Ireland!” shrieked Comrade Mary Allen.  “And in India!  And in Egypt!” bellowed Comrade Koeln, the glass-blower, whose mighty lungs had been twenty years preparing for this emergency.

It was hard to stop the laughter—­it seemed so funny that a man who called himself a Socialist should be defending British battleships!  But Comrade Gerrity, the chairman, pounded with his gavel, and insisted that the meeting should give fair play, that every speaker should be heard in his turn.  So Norwood went on.  He understood that no government in this world was perfect, but some were better than others, and it was a fact of history, whether or not they chose to admit it, that such freedom as had already been secured in the world—­in Britain and Canada and Australia and New Zealand and the United States—­had rested under the protection of British battleships.  If those battleships went down, it would mean that every one of those free communities would begin building up a military force many times as strong as they had now.  If the United States did not maintain the established customs of sea-commerce in the present crisis, it would mean one thing and one only—­that America would spend the next thirty years devoting her energies to preparing for a life-and-death struggle with German Imperialism.  If we were not to fight later, we must fight now—­