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ROBERT BENCHLEY: The Making of a Red
Source: Nation, March 15, 1919. 
You COULDN 'T HAVE ASKED for anyone more regular than Peters. He was an
eminently safe citizen. Although not rich himself, he never chafed under
the realization that there were others who possessed great wealth. In fact,
the thought gave him rather a comfortable feeling. Furthermore, he was one
of charter members of the war. Long before President Wilson saw the light,
Peters was advocating the abolition of German from the public-school
curriculum. There was, therefore, absolutely nothing in his record which
would in the slightest degree alter the true blue of a patriotic litmus.
And he considered himself a liberal when he admitted that there might be
something in this man Gompers, after all. That is how safe he was.
But one night he made a slip. It was ever tiny a slip, but in comparison
with it De Maupassant's famous piece of string was barren of consequences.
Shortly before the United States entered the war, Peters made a speech at a
meeting of the Civic League in his home town. His subject was "Interurban
Highways: Their Development in the Past and Their Possibilities for the
Future." So far, 100 percent American. But, in the course of his talk, he
happened to mention the fact that war, as an institution, has almost always
had an injurious effect on public improvements of all kinds. In fact (and
note this well-the government's sleuth in the audience did) he said that,
all other things being equal, if he were given his choice of war or peace
in the abstract, he would choose peace as a condition under which to live.
Then he went on to discuss the comparative values of macadam and wood
blocks for paving.
In the audience was a civilian representative of the Military Intelligence
Service. He had a premonition that some sort of attempt was going to be
made at this meeting of the Civic League to discredit the war and America's
imminent participation therein. And he was not disappointed (no Military
Intelligence sleuth ever is), for in the remark of Peters, derogatory to
war as an institution, his sharp ear detected the accent of the
Wilhelmstrasse.
Time went by. The United States entered the war, and Peters bought Liberty
Bonds. He didn't join the Army, it is true, but, then, neither did James M.
Beck, and it is an open secret that Mr. Beck was for the war. Peters did
what a few slangy persons called "his bit," and not without a certain
amount of pride. But he did not hear the slow, grinding noise from that
district in which are located the mills of the gods. He did not even know
that there was an investigation going on in Washington to determine the
uses to which German propaganda money had been put. That is, he didn't know
it until he opened his newspaper one morning and, with that uncanny
precipitation with which a man's eye lights on his own name, discovered
that he had been mentioned in the dispatches. At first he thought that it
might be an honor list of Liberty Bond holders, but a glance at the
headline chilled that young hope in his breast. It read as follows:
PRO-GERMAN LIST BARED BY ARMY SLEUTH
Prominent Obstructionists Named at Senate Probe
And then came the list. Peters' eye ran instinctively down to the place
where, in what seemed to him to be 24-point Gothic caps, was blazoned the
name "Horace W. Peters, Pacifist Lecturer, Matriculated at Germantown (Pa.)
Military School." Above his name was that of Emma Goldman, "Anarchist."
Below came that of Fritz von Papen, "agent of the Imperial German
Government in America," and Jeremiah O'Leary, "Irish and Pro-German
Agitator."
Peters was stunned. He telegraphed to his senator at Washington and
demanded that the outrageous libel be retracted. He telegraphed to the
Military Intelligence office and demanded to know who was the slanderer who
had traduced him, and who in h-- l this Captain Whatsisname was who had
submitted the report. He telegraphed to Secretary. Baker and he cabled to
the President. And he was informed, by return stagecoach, that his
telegrams had been received and would be brought to the attention of the
addressees at the earliest possible moment.
Then he went out to look up some of his friends, to explain that there had
been a terrible mistake somewhere. But he was coolly received. No one could
afford to be seen talking with him after what had happened. His partner
merely said "Bad business, Horace. Bad business!" The elevator starter
pointed him out to a subordinate, and Peters heard him explain "That's
Peters, Horace W. Peters. Did'je see his name in the papers this morning
with them other German spies?" At the club, little groups of his friends
dissolved awkwardly when they saw him approaching, and, after distant nods,
disappeared in an aimless manner. After all, you could hardly blame them.
The next morning the Tribune had a double-leaded editorial entitled
"Oatmeal," in which it was stated that the disclosures in Washington were
revealing the most insidious of all kinds of German propaganda- that
disseminated by supposedly respectable American citizens. "It is not a
tangible propaganda. It is an emotional propaganda. To the unwary it may
resemble real-estate news, or perhaps a patriotic song, but it is the pap
of Prussianism. As an example, we need go no further than Horace W. Peters.
Mr. Peters' hobby was interurban highways. A very pretty hobby, Mr. Peters,
but it won't do. It won't do." The Times ran an editorial saying, somewhere
in the midst of a solid slab of type, that no doubt it would soon be found
that Mr. Peters nourished Bolshevist sentiments, along with his teammate
Emma Goldman. Emma Goldman! How Peters hated that woman! He had once
written a letter to this very paper about her, advocating her electrocution.
He dashed out again in a search of someone to whom he could explain. But
the editorials had done their work. The doorman at the club presented him
with a letter from the House Committee saying that, at a special meeting,
it had been decided that he had placed himself in a position offensive to
the loyal members of the club and that it was with deep regret that they
informed him, etc. As he stumbled out into the street, he heard someone
whisper to an out-of-town friend, "There goes Emma Goldman's husband."
As the days went by, things grew unbelievably worse. He was referred to in
public meetings whenever an example of civic treachery was in order. A
signed advertisement in the newspapers protesting, on behalf of the lineal
descendants of the Grand Duke Sergius, against the spread of Bolshevism in
northern New Jersey, mentioned a few prominent snakes in the grass, such as
Trotzky, Victor Berger, Horace W. Peters, and Emma Goldman.
Then something snapped. Peters began to let his hair grow long and
neglected his linen. Each time he was snubbed on the street he uttered a
queer guttural sound and made a mark in a little book he carried about with
him. He bought a copy of "Colloquial Russian at a Glance," and began
picking out inflammatory sentences from the Novy Mir. His wife packed up
and went to stay with her sister when he advocated, one night at dinner,
the communization of women. The last prop of respectability having been
removed, the descent was easy. Emma Goldman, was it? Very well, then, Emma
Goldman it should be! Bolshevist, was he? They had said it! "After all, who
is to blame for this?" he mumbled to himself "Capitalism! Militarism! Those
Prussians in the Intelligence Department and the Department of Justice! The
damnable bourgeoisie who sit back and read their Times and their Tribune
and believe what they read there!" He had tried explanations. He had tried
argument. There was only one thing left. He found it on page 112 of a
little book of Emma Goldman's that he always carried around with him.
You may have read about Peters the other day. He was arrested, wearing a
red shirt over his business cutaway and carrying enough TNT to shift the
Palisades back into the Hackensack marshes. He was identified by an old
letter in his pocket from Henry Cabot Lodge thanking him for a telegram of
congratulation Peters had once sent him on the occasion of a certain speech
in the Senate.
The next morning the Times said, editorially, that it hoped the authorities
now saw that the only way to crush Bolshevism was by the unrelenting use of
force.
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