Peace in Friendship Village

We gathered round her, and we understood. None of us could pronounce her easy, especially when scared. She was Reciprocity.

"Make a sign," says somebody, "make a sign with her name on it, and hold it over her head."

But that was no better, because nobody could spell her, either, including her herself. So we give it up, and she went down in the audience and looked on.

"It's all right," says Mis' Sykes. "Nobody knows what it means, anyway."

"No," says I, "but think of the work her mother's put on her dress."

And we all knew what that meant, anyway; and we all felt bad, and thought mebbe the word would be more in use by the next show we give, if any.

About in the middle of the program, just after Commerce and Raw Materials and Disputed Territory tried to raise a row, and had got held in place by Humanity, Mis' Sykes came to me behind the scenes. She was Columbia, of course, and she was dressed in the United States flag, and she carried an armful of all the other flags. We had had all we could do to keep her from wearing a crown – she'd been bound and determined to wear a crown, though we explained to her that crowns was going out of fashion and getting to be very little worn.

"But they're so regal!" she kept saying, grieving.

"Crowns are all right," we had agreed with her. "It's the regal part that we object to. Not on Columbia you don't put no crown!"

And we made her wear a wreath of stars. But the wreath was near over one eye when she came to me there, between the acts.

"Killy Poulaki," she says, "he stole that whole basket of stuff we sent down to old Mis' Herman by him. Mis' Herman found it out."

"For his ma, though," I says pitiful.

"Ma or no ma, stole is stole," says Mis' Sykes. "We're going to make an example of him."

And I thought: "First we starve Achilles on two dollars a week, and then when he steals for his ma, we make an example of him. Ain't there anything else for him…"

There wasn't time to figure it out, because the flag curtain was parting for the children – the children that came capering up to do their drill, all proud and pleased and important. They didn't represent anything only themselves – the children of all the world. And Ruth Holcomb stood up to drill them, and she was the Spirit of To-morrow.

The curtains had parted on the empty stage, and To-morrow had stepped out alone and given a short, sharp word. And all over the house, where they were sitting with their families, they hopped up, boys and girls, and flashed into the aisles. And the orchestra started them, and they began to sing and march to the stage, and went through what Ruth had taught them.

Nothing military. Nothing with swords or anything of that. But instead, a little singing dance as they came up to meet To-morrow. And she gave them a star, a bird, a little pretend animal, a flower, a lyre, a green branch, a seed, and she told them to go out and make the world more beautiful and glad. They were willing! That was something they knew about already. They lined up at the footlights and held out their gifts to the audience. And it made it by far the more wonderful that we knew the children had really come from so many different nations, every one with its good gift to give to the world.

You know how they looked – how all children look when you give them something like that to do. Dear and small and themselves, so that you swallow your whole throat while you watch. Because they are To-morrow, and they want life to be nice, and they think it's going to be – but we haven't got it fixed up quite right for them yet. We're late.

As they stood there, young and fine and ready, Ruth, that was To-morrow, said:

"Now!"

They began speaking together, clear and strong and sweet. My heart did more things to my throat while I looked at them.

"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Somebody punched at me, violent.

"Ain't it magnificent to hear 'em say it?" says Mis' Sykes. "Ain't it truly magnificent?"

But I was looking at Achilles and thinking of her being willing to make an example of him instead of helping him, and thinking, too, of his two dollars a week.

"It is if it is," says I, cryptic.

To-morrow was speaking again.

"Those of you whose fathers come from Europe, hold up your hands."

Up shot maybe twenty hands – scraggy and plump, and Achilles' little thin arm in the first row among them.

And at the same minute, out came us ladies, marching from the wings – all those of us that represented the different countries of the world; and we formed back of the children, and the stage was full of the nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas, the islands and all.

And To-morrow asked:

"What is it that your fathers have sworn to, so that you now all belong to one nation?"

Then we all said it with the children – waveringly at first, swelling, mounting to full chorus, the little bodies of the children waving from side to side as we all recited it:

"I absolutely and entirely renounce and adjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, and particularly to – "

Here was a blur of sound as all the children named the ruler of the state from which their fathers had come.

" – of whom I have heretofore been subject … that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same, so help me God…"

Before they had finished, I began to notice something. I stood on the end, and Achilles was just near me. He had looked up and smiled at me, and at his Greek flag that I was carrying. But now, while the children recited together, Achilles stood there with them saying not one word. And then, when the names of the rulers all blurred together, Achilles scared me, for he put up the back of his hand as if to rub tears from his eyes. And when they all stopped speaking, only his sobbing broke the stillness of the hall.

I don't know how it came to me, save that things do come in shafts of light and splendor that no one can name; but in that second I knew what ailed him. Maybe I knew because I remembered the picture of his grandfather on the wall over the lamp shelf. Anyway, the big pang came to me to speak out, like it does sometimes, when you have to say what's in you or die.

"To-morrow!" I cried out to Ruth, and I was glad she had her back to the audience so they couldn't see how scared she looked at me speaking what wasn't in my part. "To-morrow! I am Greece! I ask that this little Greek boy here say the words that his Greek grandfather taught him!"

Ruth looked at Achilles and nodded, and I saw his face brighten all of a sudden through his tears; and I knew he was going to speak it, right out of his heart.

Achilles began to speak, indistinct at first, then getting clearer, and at last his voice went over the hall loud and strong and like he meant it:

"'We will never bring disgrace to this our city by any act of dishonor or cowardice, nor ever desert our suffering comrades in the ranks. We will revere and obey the city's laws, and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence in those above us who are prone to annul them or set them at naught. We will strive unceasingly to quicken the public sense of civic duty. Thus in all these ways, we will transmit this city not less but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.'"

It was the Athenian boy's creed of citizenship, that Achilles' father had learned in Greece, and that Achilles' grandfather, that officer in the Greek government, had taught to them both.

The whole hall cheered him – how could they help that? And right out of the fullness of the lump in my throat, I spoke out again. And I says:

"To-morrow! To-morrow! You're going to give us a world, please God, where we can be true to our own nation and true to all others, for we shall all belong to the League of the World."

Oh, and they cheered that! They knew – they knew. Just like every hamlet and cross-roads in this country and in this world is getting to know – that a great new idea is waiting, for us to catch the throb of its new life. To-morrow, the League of the World is going to teach us how to be alive. If only we can make it the League of the World indeed.

Right then came beating out the first chords of the piece we were to close with. And as it was playing they brought out the great world flag that us ladies had made from the design that we had thought up and made ourselves: A white world and white stars on a blue field.

It floated over the heads of all of us that were dressed as the nations of the earth, and not one of us ladies was trying to tell which was the best one, like we had that afternoon; and that flag floated over the children, and over To-morrow and Democracy and Liberty and Humanity and Peace and like that. And then we sang, and the hall sang with us:

"The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's common goal is brotherhood."