So Jimmie had his way for a bit—­he went into Leesville and helped distribute literature, and held the torch at street-meetings, where some people hooted at them and others defended them, and the police had to interfere to prevent a riot.  It was at this time that a militant majority was trying to drive through the Senate a declaration of war against Germany, and a handful of pacifists blocked the way in the closing hours of the session, thus causing a delay of several weeks.  How you regarded this action depended upon your point of view.  The President denounced them as “wilful men”, and the Wall Street newspapers apparently wanted them lynched; whereas Jimmie and his fellows in the local hailed them as heroes and friends of mankind.  The Socialists argued that the President had been re-elected, only four months before, by pacifist votes, and upon a pacifist platform; and now he was sweeping the country into war, and denouncing those who stood upon his former convictions!

On top of this came another event which set Jimmie almost beside himself with excitement.  For three days all news from Petrograd was cut off; and then came a report, electrifying the world—­the Tsar had been overthrown, the Russian people were free!  Jimmie could hardly believe his eyes; he went in to the meeting of the local three nights later, to find his comrades celebrating as if the world was theirs.  Here was the thing they had been preaching, day in and day out, all these weary years, amid ridicule, hatred and persecution; here was the Social Revolution, knocking at the gates of the world!  It would spread to Austria and Germany, to Italy, France, England—­and so to Leesville!  Everywhere the people would come into their own, and war and tyranny would vanish like a hateful nightmare!

Speaker after speaker got up to proclaim this glorious future; they sang the Marseillaise and the Internationale, and the Russians who were present clasped one another in their arms, with tears running down their cheeks.  It was voted that they must hold a mass-meeting immediately, to explain this epoch-making event to the people of the city; also they must stand more firmly than ever by their programme of opposition to war.  Now, with Social Revolution knocking at the gates of the world, what was the use of America’s going in for militarism?

So Jimmie set to work with redoubled fervour, giving all his time to agitation.  He had apparently no chance of getting a job, and for the moment he gave up trying.  The keeper of the cross-roads store, being down on him because of his ideas, refused him any more credit; and so poor Lizzie was driven to do what she had vowed never to do—­take off the stocking from her right leg, and unsew the bandage from her ankle, and extract one of the ten precious twenty-dollar bills.  Their bright yellow was considerably faded now, their beautiful crispness gone entirely; but the store-keeper made no kick on that account—­he returned the change, and incidentally took occasion to give her a friendly warning concerning her husband’s reckless talk.  There was trouble coming to him, and his wife had better shut him up before it was too late.  So poor Lizzie ceased being a pacifist, and went home to have more hysterics on her husband’s bosom.