Peace in Friendship Village. Gale Zona
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."
And when the curtains swept together—the curtains made of everybody's flags—I tell you, it left us all feeling like we ain't felt in I don't know when.
Within about a minute afterward Ruth and Ina and Irene were around me.
"Miss Calliope," they said, "the Red Cross isn't going to stop."
"No?" I said.
"We're going to start in with these foreign-born boys and girls—" Ina said.
"We're going to teach them all the things To-morrow was pretending to teach them," Ruth said.
"And we're going to learn a thing or two they can teach us," I says, "beginning with Achilles."
They knew what I meant, and they nodded.
And the flag of the white world and white stars on a blue field was all ready-made to lead us—a kind of picture of God's universe.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Copyright, Red Cross Magazine, April, 1919.
PEACE IN FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE[2]
Post-office Hall, where the Peace celebration was to be held, was filled with flags, both bought and borrowed, and some made up by us ladies, part guessed at but most of them real accurate out of the back of the dictionary.
Two days before the celebration us ladies were all down working in the hall, and all pretty tired, so that we were liable to take exception, and object, and I don't know but what you might say contradict.
"My feet," says Mis' Toplady, "ache like the headache, and my head aches as if I'd stood on it."
"Do they?" says Mis' Postmaster Sykes, with her little society pucker. "Why, I feel just as fresh. I've got a wonderful constitution."
"Oh, anybody's constitution feels fresh if they don't work it too hard," says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, having been down to the Hall all day long, as Mis' Sykes hadn't.
Then Mis' Toplady, that is always the one to pour oil and balm and myrrh and milk onto any troubled situation, she brought out her question more to reduce down the minute than anything else:
"Ladies," she says, holding up one foot to rest the aching sole of it, "Ladies, what under the sun are we going to do now that our war work's done?"
"What indeed?" says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss.
"What indeed?" says I.
"True for you," says Mis' Sykes, that always has to sound different, even though she means the same.
Of course we were all going to do what we could to help all Europe, but saving food is a kind of negative activity, and besides us ladies had always done it. Whereabouts was the novelty of that?
And we'd took over an orphan each and were going to skin it out of the egg-money and such—that is, not the orphan but its keep—and still these actions weren't quite what we meant, either.
"The mornings," says Mis' Toplady dreamy, "when I use' to wake up crazy to get through with my work and get with you ladies to sew—where's all that gone?"
"The meetings," says Mame Holcomb, "when Baptists and Catholics and young folks and Elks met promiscuous and sung and heard talking—where's them?"
And somebody brought out the thing we'd all thought most about.
"The days," she says, "when we worked next to our old enemies—both church and family enemies—and all bad feelings forgot—where's them times?"
"What we going to do about it?" I says. "And when?"
Mis' Sykes had a suggestion. She always does have a suggestion, being she loves to have folks disciple after her. "Why, ladies," she says, "there's some talking more military preparedness right off, I hear. That means for another war. Why not us start in and knit for it now?" And she beamed around triumphant.
"Well," says Mame Holcomb, reasonable, "if the men are going to prepare in any way, it does seem like women had ought to be getting ready too. Why not knit? And have a big box all setting ready, all knit up, to match the other preparednesses?"
It was on to this peaceful assemblage that Berta, Mis' Sykes's little Switzerland maid, came rushing. And her face was pale and white. "Oh, Mis' Sykes," she says, "oh, what jew s'pose? I found a little boy setting on the front stoop."
Mis' Sykes is always calm—not so much because calm is Christian as because calm is grand lady, I always think. "On whose stoop, Berta?" she ask' her kind.
"On your own stoop, ma'am," cried Berta excitable.
"And whose little boy is it, Berta?" she ask', still more calm and kind.
"That's what I donno, ma'am," says Berta. "Nor they don't no one seem to know."
We all ask' her then, so that I don't know, I'm sure, how she managed to say a word on her own hook. It seems that she'd come around the house and see him setting