ns of A-number-one fourth-proof, hard-boiled, hide-bound
grammar from another mouth could not have done. And finally we have that
gentler phrase, that one which shows you another true side of the man,
shows you that in his soldier heart there was room for other than gory
war mottoes and in his tongue the gift to fitly phrase them: "Let us
have peace."

APPENDIX R

PARTY ALLEGIANCE.

BEING A PORTION OF A PAPER ON "CONSISTENCY," READ BEFORE THE MONDAY
EVENING CLUB IN 1887.

(See Chapter clxiii)

... I have referred to the fact that when a man retires from his
political party he is a traitor--that he is so pronounced in plain
language. That is bold; so bold as to deceive many into the fancy that
it is true. Desertion, treason--these are the terms applied. Their
military form reveals the thought in the man's mind who uses them:
to him a political party is an army. Well, is it? Are the two things
identical? Do they even resemble each other? Necessarily a political
party is not an army of conscripts, for they are in the ranks by
compulsion. Then it must be a regular army or an army of volunteers.
Is it a regular army? No, for these enlist for a specified and
well-understood term, and can retire without reproach when the term is
up. Is it an army of volunteers who have enlisted for the war, and may
righteously be shot if they leave before the war is finished? No, it
is not even an army in that sense. Those fine military terms are
high-sounding, empty lies, and are no more rationally applicable to
a political party than they would be to an oyster-bed. The volunteer
soldier comes to the recruiting office and strips himself and proves
that he is so many feet high, and has sufficiently good teeth, and
no fingers gone, and is sufficiently sound in body generally; he is
accepted; but not until he has sworn a deep oath or made other solemn
form of promise to march under, that flag until that war is done or his
term of enlistment completed. What is the process when a voter joins a
party? Must he prove that he is sound in any way, mind or body? Must he
prove that he knows anything--is capable of anything--whatever? Does he
take an oath or make a promise of any sort?--or doesn't he leave himself
entirely free? If he were informed by the political boss that if he
join, it must be forever; that he must be that party's chattel and wear
its brass collar the rest of his days--would not that insult him? It
goes without saying. He