killed and wounded is over five hundred thousand a year--for
rebelling against this murder they have called me murderer--and have
placed me here on trial for my life.

"And what I want to ask you now is that you take no halfway course.
Either send me out of this dock a free man or up the river to the chair.
For this is no year for compromise. Am I a murderer? Yes or no. Decide
with your eyes wide open. If you set me free I shall still rebel. I
shall join my comrades over the sea who already are going about in the
camps and saying to the rank and file--'You can stop this slaughter! You
can save this world gone mad! You can end this murder--both in time of
war and peace!'"

* * * * *

And the jury set Joe free.

Early in the following week I went down to his room by the docks for a
last evening with him there. Joe was sailing that same night. Under a
name not his own he had taken passage in the steerage of the big fast
liner which was to sail at one o'clock. Into his room all evening poured
his revolutionist friends, and the chance of revolution abroad was
talked of in cool practical terms. Nothing could be done, they said, in
the first few months to stop this war. Years ago the man in France, who
had led the anti-war movement, had predicted that if war broke out every
government rushing in would force on its people the belief that this was
no war of aggression but one of defense of the fatherland from a fierce
onrushing foe. And so in truth it had come about, and against that
appeal to fight for their homes no voice of reason could stem the tide.

The socialists had been swept on with the rest. By tens and hundreds of
thousands they had already gone to the front. But it was upon this very
fact that Joe and his friends now rested their hopes. For just so soon
as in the camps the first burst of enthusiasm had begun to die away, as
the millions in the armies began to grow sick of the sight of blood, the
groans and the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the stench of the
dead--and themselves weary of fighting, worn by privation and disease,
began to think of their distant homes, their wives and children starving
there--then these socialists in their midst, one at every bivouack fire,
would begin to ask them:

"Why is it that we are at war? What good is all this blood to us? Is it
to make our toil any lighter, life any brighter in our homes--or were we
sent out by our rulers to die only in