Part 19

“By the way,”--the priest rose--“this discourse may strike you as rather dry. But national prohibition will not go into effect until January and I don’t suppose I should be offending even the keen love of law and order of a Tribesman by offering him a little wine and cake. If you excuse me for a minute?”

Robert settled back comfortably in his chair, his nervousness entirely gone.

“Well, what do you think of him?” asked McCall with a smile.

“Well, I’ll bet he makes religion attractive.”

“Certainly! Why shouldn’t it be? It ought to be the most sublime thing in the world.” They laughed at the accidental use of the word “sublime.” “I look at religion as the most beautiful symbolism in life. I couldn’t worship in an ugly church or under the guidance of a cold and narrow minister or priest.”

Father Callahan appeared in the doorway, his ruddy face smiling and his merry blue eyes sparkling. A servant followed, bearing a small tray on which were three small glasses of red wine and a plate of cake. The latter placed the tray on the table and the priest offered the glasses, invoked a blessing on the food and drink, and took a swallow.

“Ah! Now,” he said, “the really very silly notion that allegiance to the Pope interferes with the loyalty any citizen owes his country, has been exploded a long time ago and is used by no one save a few bigots who do not themselves credit the nonsense they utter. It is really remarkable how such ideas linger, yet I notice that this forms the real basis of the Tribe’s opposition to the Catholic as such. Of course, the church is Catholic and its missionaries go forth to all lands seeking converts. Every human being, we believe, has a soul, and before God all souls are equal. The Church of Christ is not ashamed that many of its members are of the eastern and southern European countries, whose immigrants at present may be regarded as undesirable by American statesmen. We rather take pride that the church has considered the soul of no man unworthy of saving. Our statesmen can probably best determine which elements are most needed in making up the population of the United States. But the church maintains that the desirability of no man as a citizen is ever diminished by his belonging to the Catholic church.

“A man can be a good subject either of a republic or a monarchy and, at the same time, be a devoted adherent of the Holy See. Even non-believers in Catholic doctrine have come to recognize that the better Catholic an individual is, the better citizen he therefore becomes of the country in which he lives.”

Father Callahan took a bite of cake and another swallow of wine.

“The old absurdity,” he went on, “of owing allegiance to a foreign potentate, which was the charge made against American Catholics in Know Nothing times, has been rarely heard and would have been relegated to that obscurity which it deserves except for the sudden rise of the Trick Track Tribe. Spiritual allegiance to the Pope will never interfere with the duties an honest state exacts from its citizens, but, on the contrary, will inspire each citizen to perform his duties better and more conscientiously. But you must have some more cake. That’s right.”

The priest rose, walked to a bookcase and, after studying it a minute, pulled out a volume.

“Can you prove what you have just told him, father?” asked McCall.

“That is exactly what I am about to do. Although I have some authority in the church, you, Mr. Hamilton, will want some greater authority than mine. Have you ever heard of the Baltimore Council? Shortly after Pope Leo the Thirteenth had conferred with the American prelates in Rome, a plenary council of the Catholic Church of the United States was ordered, late in 1884. The acts of this council were approved by the Pope and are enforced throughout the United States. Now, very fortunately, this very subject of church and state was discussed by the fathers of the Baltimore Council and this, by the approval of the Holy See, is the official position of the Catholic Church.”

The priest turned the leaves, found the proper page and handed the book to Robert.

“We repudiate with equal earnestness,” he read, “the assertion that we need to lay aside any of our devotedness to our church to be true Americans; the insinuation that we need to lay aside any of our love for our country’s principles and institutions to be faithful Catholics. To argue that the Catholic Church is hostile to our great republic, because she teaches that ‘there is no power but from God’; because, therefore, back of the events which led to the formation of the republic, she sees the providence of God leading to that issue and, back of our country’s laws, the authority of God as their sanction--this is evidently so illogical and contradictory an accusation that we are astonished to hear it advanced by persons of ordinary intelligence.... To both the Almighty and to His instruments we look with grateful reverence, and to maintain the inheritance of freedom which they have left us, our Catholic citizens will be found to stand forward as one man, ready to pledge anew their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. No less illogical should be the notion that there is aught in the free spirit of our American institutions incompatible with perfect docility to the Church of Christ.”

The next sentence Robert read several times. It seemed to strike at the union of church and state, although--and this seemed natural--such union was blamed upon the selfishness of secular monarchs, seeking greater power. It was natural that the Catholic Church, if it now condemned this union, should see in it, not a usurpation of secular authority by the church, but of ecclesiastical power by the state.

“Narrow, insular, national views and jealousies concerning ecclesiastical authority and church organization may have sprung naturally enough from the selfish policy of certain rulers and nations in bygone times, but they find no sympathy in the spirit of the true American Catholic.”

“I see,” said Robert gravely, handing the book back. It seemed queer that both the Catholics and the Tribesmen should issue proclamations against what was probably the same thing. It was like the two knights fighting each other all day because one declared the shield was red and the other that it was black and then discovering, as they lay exhausted on the ground, that the shield was black on one side and red on the other. Tribesmen and Know Nothingers feared that the church wished to control the state; the Catholic fathers that the state should try to control the church.

“Have you the real fourth degree oath of the Knights of Columbus?” asked McCall.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” said Robert.

“Yes, it is. You must be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Knights of Columbus, Father, are supposed to be trying to seize control of the state by, well, it amounts to murder. Read this.”

He handed over the circular. The priest looked at it and frowned.

“This is a more serious charge,” he said. “I can forgive a person for being honestly mistaken in his view of the relation of the Catholic Church to the state, but this oath must have been written by one or more persons actuated by a hatred of Catholicism and who knew that it must be false. It is not a case of honest ignorance.”

He continued reading, his eyebrows drawn together in a scowl and nodding his head from time to time. Finally he looked up.

“Mr. Hamilton, that charge is not new. It is surprising that it should bob up again, inasmuch as the real oath of the Knights of Columbus was made public several years ago in the course of an investigation into the matter by the Masonic bodies. It was also made public in the course of a contested election case. The false oath, this oath I have here, had been circulated to defeat a candidate who was a fourth degree knight. Inasmuch as the real oath has already been published by our own courts and by the Masons, who are hardly pro-Catholic, I should be violating no confidence in repeating it. It runs: I swear to support the constitution of the United States. I pledge myself as a Catholic citizen and Knight of Columbus to enlighten myself fully upon my duties as a citizen and to conscientiously perform such duties entirely in the interest of my country and regardless of all personal consequences. I pledge myself to do all in my power to preserve the integrity and purity of the ballot, and to promote reverence and respect for law and order. I promise to practise my religion openly and without ostentation and to so conduct myself in public affairs and in the exercise of public virtue as to reflect nothing but credit upon our Holy Church, to the end that she may flourish and our country prosper to the greater honor and glory of God.’”

Robert’s brain whirled. He felt himself growing angry. His fists involuntarily clenched and he bit his lips. Lies, lies, lies. It had been nothing but lies ever since he had joined the Tribe. Lies against the Negro, lies against the Catholic, lies against the Jew. When anything untruthful or mistaken or illogical had been pointed out, the leaders had always disclaimed responsibility. They had always disclaimed responsibility for violence, yet wherever the Tribe flourished the strongest violence and these damnable lies were most numerous.

“Show him the official Knights of Columbus ritual,” McCall was saying, and, although Robert protested that it was not necessary, Father Callahan procured the volume, opened it at the proper page and showed it to him.

“There’s some nonsense about the prediction of Abraham Lincoln that some day there would be a clash between Rome and this country, something about seeing a cloud coming from Rome which forebode war.”

“Please don’t----” began Robert.

“You must. Let him look through your complete works of Lincoln.”

In spite of his protests the ponderous volumes were pulled out of their shelves and laid on the table.

“This is supposed to contain everything Lincoln ever wrote or said,” McCall turned to the index volume. “Now look for Catholic. Now try Rome. Now try Pope. Now try Papacy.”

Robert looked. There was nothing. There were two short letters in which Lincoln repudiated rumors that he belonged to the Know Nothing party. Nothing about Rome or the Pope or Catholicism.

“If you can find any such statement by Lincoln in any authenticated work in the Chicago Public Library, in any library, or in any original document, I’ll believe you,” said McCall.

“No, that’s unnecessary,” said Robert. “It’s a standard work. It would be of such tremendous importance, any statement like that, that it would undoubtedly appear in any standard collection of letters and addresses. It would be of such importance that it would appear in our histories. No, you’re right, Bill.” There was a lump in his throat. “Can you forgive me? I am----”

“No, you won’t resign yet,” said McCall, “there are certain lies about the Jews. Father Callahan could probably answer most of them, I could answer some, but I am going to take you to Levin’s. Levin’s father is a rabbi.”

“No,” said Robert, “it’s not necessary.”

“Yes, you’re going.”

“Of course, there is one thing,” broke in the priest with a smile, “there is no one body that represents the Jews as the Holy See represents Catholicism. There are Zionist Jews and anti-Zionist Jews, orthodox and reformed, German and Russian and Polish and Hungarian and English. There is no one conference that all the rabbis attend. In other words, the Jews are not a unit as the Catholics are. I could point out what the Baltimore council said, and that meant the official attitude of the Catholic church. There is no such official office of the Jews. There is no Jewish pope, in other words, who could state the position of all Jews about anything. Take the ridiculous charge that they plan the overthrow of all governments. Every Jew would deny it, but there is no central Jewish authority that you could consult.”

“That’s all right, father,” said McCall. “Levin’s father is one of the orthodox rabbis. He still wears a skull cap. He still keeps the old dietary rules. He is a Zionist. He belongs to a lodge that represents the most Jewish of the Jews of Chicago. If he can’t tell you what Jews are thinking about and what their ideas and ideals are, nobody else can.”

The priest shook hands with them, made a passing allusion to the joy that attends the recovery of one sheep that has strayed from the fold, and invited them to come again.

XXXV

Robert wondered what sort of home Levin would live in. Outside of Levin himself, in fact, his dealings with Jews had been extremely limited. He had met a few in his classes at Harvard, where they appeared perhaps a little more studious, more eager to acquire education, than the average students, but he had developed no friendships among them.

They took a west-side elevated and passed a district thick with stores and traffic. The rabbi’s home, however, was on the second floor of a three-story apartment building, facing a park, a rather peaceful retreat from the shopping district a few blocks away.

The home was like any of a dozen apartments Robert had seen in New York and Chicago--harmonious mahogany furniture, oriental rugs, good pictures, a baby grand piano, floor lamps. Except for a polished brass candelabra, with seven candle sticks, that stood on the table near the window, a hammered brass Russian samovar and a prominence of other hammered brass objects, there was nothing to set it off as distinctly Jewish. Oh yes, in the tall book shelves that rose from either side of the fireplace there were many old books with Hebrew letters stamped on them.

A rather plump schoolgirl, the doctor’s sister, had opened the door and ushered them through the reception hall into the living room.

“Oh, Mr. McCall, Jack’s expecting you,” she said. “Won’t you come in? Papa is just advising someone.”

She excused herself to summon her brother. Dr. Levin’s first name was Jacob, but his sister, Estelle, had given him the more American name of Jack.

Robert saw an elderly gentleman, with a black skull cap and long white beard, evidently the rabbi himself, talking animatedly with a little black-bearded fellow, who kept nodding his head. The taller man looked something like Jack, like Jack in a patriarchal beard and with little foreign mannerisms. They were talking in some foreign jargon.

“_Nu_, you send him to me and I will advise him as though he was my own son.”

The other man stopped nodding his head and began to shake it slowly from side to side.

“It will be for you a great blessing.” A few more words and he left.

Jack came in--it was surprising how dressing carefully and going clean-shaven modernized one’s appearance. Their features were very similar, yet the elder Levin had a patriarchal, almost oriental, appearance. Jack introduced Robert.

“Ah, yes, that is the Hamilton my son has been telling me about.” He spoke with a foreign, sing-song, balanced intonation and a slight lisp. He divided each word into its syllables, as though he were reading slowly out loud.

“_Nu_, sit down, Mr. Hamilton. You are just in time for supper. It’s too bad you couldn’t come Friday.”

Hamilton murmured something about not knowing it was so late.

“It is a great blessing,” remarked the rabbi, “to have a guest, so you must stay on my account.”

Mrs. Levin, short, plump and brown-eyed, with a brown wig, entered the room.

“Ah, we hear from you by Jackie a whole lot,” she said.

The doctor grinned good-naturedly, evident amused at the quaint old-world accent and manners of his parents.

“Now, you want I should tell you about the Jew,” said the rabbi, stroking his beard. “But take a seat first. The trouble is you come here for an hour or two hours and expect to learn everything about the Jews, like you learn a recipe for a sponge cake. You must study and read.”

Robert glanced at McCall. The latter had evidently prepared Rabbi Levin and Father Callahan, had probably phoned them before coming to his room. It was a conspiracy, he could see, for his own good.

“_Nu_, what do you want to know? There is no mysticism in Judaism. It is an open book. There it is, everything.” He pointed to a Bible.

“But he wants to know something about the Jews that will offset this Trick Track Tribe propaganda.”

“What, Trick Track Tribe?” The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Craziness. Foolishness. It can’t last. Mr. Hamilton, can a bad thing, an untrue thing, last? No? Well, then, how can the Tribe live? What do they say? Ask me any questions and I will try to answer them for you as best I can.”

“Mr. Levin,” said McCall, “the Tribe accuses the Jews of planning to overthrow all the Gentile governments of the world through the Third Internationale. Isn’t that the argument, Hamilton?” Robert nodded.

“_Nu_, they do us credit. They flatter us,” said the rabbi. “How can it be that the Jews, who are only about three per cent of the population, should control the whole world? Is it sense?” He shrugged his shoulders and cocked his head to one side. “Jews? What Jews? You talk as if Jews was a little society, like a lodge. There are American Jews and Russian Jews, German Jews and French Jews, Republican Jews and Democratic Jews, radical Jews and conservative Jews. It’s not like they have a pope to tell them what they shall do.”

“But how do the orthodox Jews feel about internationalism?”

“Ah, the orthodox Jews. They are the Zionists. They are always dreaming that they shall get back to Palestine. So how can they be internationalists? They are nationalists, they want that even the Jews should have their own nation, so how can they be both nationalists and internationalists at the same time?”

“But isn’t Trotsky a Jew and most of the Bolshevik leaders?”

“Trotsky is no longer a Jew. He has been, what you call it in the Catholic Church, excommunicated from the Jewish Synagogue. His parents are Jews, good Jews, and they mourn him like he was a dead one. There can be no religious Jews among the Bolsheviks, but there are some Jews, by birth we admit it--who are leaders. _Nu_, Lenine is a Gentile. So what does that show? But most of the leaders are not Jews. It is true that there are more leaders among them in proportion to their population. But that is because most of the Jews in Russia live in the big cities where the Bolshevik movement started. And the Jews are better educated than the average Russian. So they are naturally more highly represented in the offices. Trotsky is the only great Jewish leader--the head of the army. But Lenine comes from the nobility and many of the Russian radicals are from the old nobility. But you can’t say that the Russian nobility is radical, can you? But there are no Jews in the _tchaika_, which is responsible for the reign of terror. They are all Letts. The Jews are mostly translaters, because they are educated to speak several tongues, teachers, minor officials. But they are simply officials, appointed by the government, and they would hold the same jobs should it be a Kerensky again at the head. It’s just like the communists have placed the old Czarist generals at the head of the different army corps. What should they do? They have to fight for the government or they get killed. But the generals under Czar Nicholas who are now leading the Red armies, are they also Bolsheviks? No, a religious Jew or a Zionist, whether he observes all the religion or not, he cannot be an internationalist.”

“How about the protocols of the Elders of Zion?” asked McCall.

“What’s that?” asked Robert.

“That’s the book that’s supposed to be the basis of the accusation that the Jews have a world-wide plot against all governments.”

“Have you read it?” asked Rabbi Levin.

“No.”

“Then it is hard to speak about it. If you read it you would see right away that it was a forgery. In the first place, Elders of Zion. You see, the people who wrote it, forgot that there is no such a thing as a Jewish central organization, like, say, the Holy See for the Catholics. There is no such thing as the Elders of Zion. It couldn’t be, because there is no such thing as Zion, that is a united Jewish people politically. The Elders of Zion are supposed to be some official body meeting in connection with the first Zionist convention. But the Zionist convention was open, so that all reporters could come there, so how is it no one should know of such a plot? Of course, if the Zionists would have wanted no governments they would not spend their time and money and risk their lives now in settling Palestine for a government of the Jews. But why should I tell you it is a forgery? You know what it is, historical method?”

Robert had not studied it, but he knew what it was from college. Students majoring in history and graduate students took it.

“Well, you know, you can tell by examining documents whether they are true or fakes. It’s wrong here. It’s wrong there. A contradiction. You know how it is. Well, a much better man than I, and a Gentile, has called it a forgery. Who is that? You should know, the head from the greatest detective force in the world, Scotland Yard, Sir Basil Thompson.”

Robert laughed. “Well, that’s proof enough for me.”

At the table there were queer dishes. There was herring for an appetiser, a cold soup, which they called _borsht_, which was red, tasted of beets and was eaten with cream. Appetizing envelopes of dough filled with cheese and eaten with sour cream, called _blinches_. _Strudel_, a sort of crisp tart filled with prunes.

“It’s the most delicious food I’ve eaten since I left Paris,” laughed Robert. Mrs. Levin beamed her pleasure.

Every one was talking at once. Explaining this and that. The significance of the candelabra. Why the rabbi wore a skull cap. Why little _mazzuzas_, painted wooden things, hung at the doors. Explaining the food. The rabbi, like his son, had a habit of skipping from one subject to another--literature, art, music, sociology, anthropology. Robert had always had an idea that Jewish learning was confined to the Talmud, mysterious books of ancient and medieval lore. But he found the rabbi’s knowledge was quite as modern as the most enlightened cosmopolite might wish.

“Most of these customs are simply customs,” said the Rabbi. “Why do you take off your cap to a lady? Custom. For the same reason I wear a hat. The simpler people make up explanations. See that _mazzuza_ hanging at the door? It contains a little bit of holy scrip. Superstitious people think it drives away the devils. Other people hang it up because they think it makes a pretty curio. Like you might have a Buddhist idol, without believing in it, or a horseshoe. Some customs are nice customs. There is sentiment in back of them. So I stick to ’em. My children, _nu_, they are Americans. They grow away from it.”

McCall tried to turn the conversation back to the Tribe, while Robert protested that he had been convinced. To appease McCall, the rabbi had showed them the constitution of the Sons of Israel and assured them that the oaths were as innocent as that of the real fourth degree of the Knights of Columbus. The Tribe had accused the Sons of Israel of attempting to carry out the “international revolution.”

“Even if everything the Tribe says about everybody--Jews, Catholics, Negroes, foreigners--was absolutely true, still it would be wrong,” said the rabbi. “Why? Because either your Tribe is an invisible government, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, you are getting money under false pretenses, because you claim it is. And if it is an invisible government, they are transferring the government from its proper offices and should be arrested for the same reason that the communists were arrested when they also tried to set up an invisible government. Invisible government, no matter for what purposes, has no place here.”