George Sumner Weaver - "Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women"

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I"

Alexandre Dumas [Pere] - "The Three Musketeers"

Edward T. Curnick - "The Kentucky Ranger"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Defenders of Democracy

U >> Unknown >> The Defenders of Democracy




The Germans stared.

"What has come over this one?" growled one of them. "Last night
he was breaking."

"There is still a way to break him," said another, grinning. "Hell
will be a relief to him after this hour."

"Canailes!" snarled Louis, and Francois laughed aloud in sheer joy!

"My good,--my strong brother!" he cried out.

"This Papa Joffre of yours," said the burliest German,--"he is
worse than a dog. He is a toad." He shoved the captives through
the opening in the wall. "Get on!"

"The smallest sergeant in Germany is greater than your Papa Joffre,"
said another. "What is it you have said, baby Frenchman? One
frog-eater is worth five Germans? Ho-ho! You shall see."

"I--I myself," cried Francois hotly,--"I am nobler, braver, greater
than this beast you call master."

"Hold your tongue," said a third German, in a kindlier tone than
the others had employed. "It can do you no good to talk like this.
Give in, my brave lads. Tell everything. I know what is before
you if you refuse to-day,--and I tremble. He will surely break
you to-day."

They were crossing the narrow road.

"He is your master,--not ours," said Francois calmly.

Louis walked ahead, erect, his jaw set. The blood leaped in
Francois' veins. Ah, what a brave, strong fellow his brother was!

"He is the greatest commander in all the German armies," boasted
the burly sergeant. "And, young frog-eater, he commands the finest
troops in the world. Do you know that there are ten thousand iron
crosses in this God-appointed corps! Have a care how you speak
of our general. He is the Emperor's right hand. He is the chosen
man of the Emperor."

"And of God," added another.

"Bah!" cried Francois, snapping his fingers scornfully. "His is
worth no more than that to me!"

Francois was going to his death. His chest swelled.

"You fool. He is to the Emperor worth more than an entire army
corps,--yes, two of them. The Emperor would sooner lose a hundred
thousand men than this single general."

"A hundred thousand men?" cried Francois, incredulously. "That is
a great many men,--even Germans."

"Pigs," said Louis, between his teeth.

They now entered the little garden. The Prussian commander was
eating his breakfast in the shelter of a tent. The day was young,
yet the sun was hot. Papers and maps were strewn over the top of
the long table at which he sat, gorging himself. The guard and
the two prisoners halted a few paces away. The general's breakfast
was not to be interrupted by anything so trivial as the affairs of
Louis and Francois.

"And that ugly glutton is worth more than a hundred thousand men,"
mused Francois, eyeing him in wonder. "God, how cheap these boches
must be."

Staff officers stood outside the tent, awaiting and receiving
gruff orders from their superior. Between gulps he gave out almost
unintelligible sounds, and one by one these officers, interpreting
them as commands, saluted and withdrew.

Francois gazed as one fascinated. He WAS a great general, after
all. Only a very great and powerful general could enjoy such
respect, such servile obedience as he was receiving from these
hulking brutes of men.

Directions were punctuated,--or rather indicated,--by the huge
carving-knife with which the general slashed his meat. He pointed
suddenly with the knife, and, as he did so, the officer at whom
it was leveled, sprang into action, to do as he was bidden, as if
the shining blade had touched his quivering flesh.

Suddenly the great general pushed his bench back from the table,
slammed the knife and fork down among the platters, and barked:

"Well!"

His eyes were fastened upon the prisoners. The guards shoved them
forward.

"Have you decided? What is it to be,--life or death?"

He was in an evil humor. That battery in the hills had found its
mark again when the sun was on the rise.

"Vive la France!" shouted Louis, raising his eye to heaven.

"vive la France!" almost screamed Francois.

"So be it!" roared the commander. His gaze was fixed on Louis.
There was the one who would weaken. Not that little devil of a
boy beside him. He uttered a short, sharp command to an aide.

The torturing of Louis began....

"End it!" commanded the Prussian general after a while. "The fool
will not speak!"

And the little of life that was left to the shuddering, sightless
Louis went out with a sigh--slipped out with the bayonet as it was
withdrawn from his loyal breast.

Turning to Francois, who had been forced to witness the mutilation
of his brother,--whose arms had been held and whose eyelids were
drawn up by the cruel fingers of a soldier who stood behind him,--he
said:

"Now YOU! You have seen what happened to him! It is your turn
now. I was mistaken. I thought that he was the coward. Are you
prepared to go through even more than--Ah! Good! I thought so!
The little fire-eater weakens!"

Francois, shaken and near to dying of the horror he had witnessed,
sagged to his knees. They dragged him forward,--and one of them
kicked him.

"I will tell! I will tell!" he screamed. "Let me alone! Keep
your hands off of me! I will tell, God help me, general!"

He staggered, white-faced and pitiful, to the edge of the table,
which he grasped with trembling, straining hands.

"Be quick about it," snarled the general, leaning forward eagerly.

Like a cat, Francois sprang. He had gauged the distance well. He
had figured it all out as he stood by and watched his brother die.

His fingers clutched the knife.

"I will!" he cried out in an ecstasy of joy.

To the hasp sank the long blade into the heart of the Prussian
commander.

Whirling, the French boy threw his arms on high and screamed into
the faces of the stupefied soldiers:

"Vive la France! One hundred thousand men! There they lie! Ha-ha!
I--I, Francois Dupre,--I have sent them all to hell! Wait for me,
Louis! I am coming!"

The first words of the "Marseillaise" were bursting from his lips
when his uplifted face was blasted--

He crumpled up and fell.

[signed] George Barr McCutcheon





Sonnet




Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no,
Nor honeysuckle,--thou art not more fair
Than small white single poppies,--I can bear
Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
From left to right, not knowing where to go,
I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
So has it been with mist,--with moonlight so.

Like him who day by day unto his draught
Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,
Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed
Each hour more deeply than the hour before,
I drink,--and live--what has destroyed some men.

[signed] Edna St. Vincent Millay





The Idiot




I


The change was not affected without whispering. The spirit both
of the troops who were going back of the lines to rest and of those
who had zigzagged up through two miles of communication trenches
to take their places was excellent.

"What is the name of this country?" asked one of the new comers.

"If it had a name, that is all that remains. We are somewhere in
Picardy. The English are off there not very far. Their cannon
have different voices from ours. Good Luck!"

His gray, faded uniform seemed to melt into the night. The New
Comer stepped on to the firing platform and poked his head over
the parapet. A comrade pulled at his trousers leg.

"Come down, Idiot," he said, "Fritz is only twelve yards away."

The Idiot came down, sniffing the night air luxuriously.

"We are somewhere in Picardy," he said. "I know without being
told. It is like going home."

A sergeant approached, his body twisted sideways because the trench
was too narrow for his shoulders.

"Have you a watch?"

The Idiot had.

Under his coat, so that the enemy should not perceive the glow,
the sergeant flashed his electric torch and compared the watches.

"Yours leads by a minute," he said. "The advance will be at four
o'clock. there will be hot coffee at three. Good luck."

He passed on, and the comrades drew a little closer together. The
sergeant's words had made the Idiot very happy.

"In less than two hours!" he said.

"I thought there was something in the wind," said Paul Guitry.

"If we advanced only three kilometers," said the Idiot, "the village
in which I was born would be French again. But there will be great
changes."

"You were born at Champ-de-Fer?"

"It is directly opposite us."

"You cannot know that."

"I feel it," said the Idiot. "Wherever I have been stationed I have
felt it. Sometimes I have asked an officer to look for Champ-de-Fer
on his field map, and when he has done so, I have pointed, and said
'Is it in that direction?' and always I have been right."

"Did your family remain in the village?"

"I don't know. But I think so, for from the hour of the mobilization
until now, I have not heard from them."

"Since the hour of the mobilization," said Paul Guitry, "much water
has flowed under the bridges. I had just been married. My wife
is in Paris. I have a little son now. I saw them when I had my
eight days' leave. And it seems that again I am to be a father.
It is very wonderful."

"I was going to be married," said the Idiot simply.

There was a short silence.

"If I had known," said Paul Guitry, "I would not have boasted of
my own happiness."

"I am not the only French soldier who has not heard from his
sweetheart since the mobilization," said the Idiot. "It has been
hard," he said, "but by thinking of all the others, I have been
able to endure."

"She remained there at Champ-de-Fer?"

"She must have, or else she would have written to me."

Paul Guitry could not find anything to say.

"Soon," said the Idiot, "we shall be in Champ-de-Fer, and they will
tell me what has become of her."

"She will tell you herself," said Paul Guitry with a heartiness
which he did not feel. The Idiot shrugged his shoulders.

"We have loved each other," he said, "even since we were little
children. Do you know why I am called the Idiot? It is because
I do not go with women, when I have the chance. But I don't mind.
They cannot say that I am not a real man, for I have the military
medal and I have been mentioned twice in the orders of the day."

To Paul Guitry, a confirmed sinner as opportunity offered, the
Idiot's statement contained much psychic meat.

"It must be," he said, "that purity tempts some men, just as impurity
tempts others."

"It is even simpler," said the Idiot; but he did not explain. And
there was a long silence.

Now and then Paul Guitry glanced at his companion's profile, for
the night was no longer inky black. It was a simple direct young
face, not handsome, but full of dignity and kindness; the line of
the jaw had a certain sternness, and the wide and delicately molded
nostril indicated courage and daring.

Paul Guitry thought of his wife and of his little son, of his eight
days' leave, and of its consequences. He tried to imagine how he
would feel, if for two years his wife had been in the hands of the
Germans. Without meaning to, he spoke his thought aloud:

"Long since," he said, "I should have gone mad."

The Idiot nodded.

"They say," he said, "that in fifty years all this will be forgotten;
and that we French will feel friendly toward the Germans."

He laughed softly, a laugh so cold, that Paul Guitry felt as if
ice water had suddenly been spilled on his spine.

"Hell," he went on, "has no tortures which French men, and women,
and little children have not suffered. You say that if you had
been in my boots you must long since have gone mad? well, it is
because I have been able to think of all the others who are in my
boots that I have kept my sanity. It has not been easy. It is
not as if my imagination alone had been tortured. Just as I have
the sense that my village is there--" he pointed with his sensitive
hand, "so I have the sense of what has happened there. I KNOW that
she is alive," he concluded, "and that she would rather be dead."

There was another silence. The Idiot's nostrils dilated and he
sniffed once or twice.

"The coffee is coming," he said. "Listen. If I am killed in the
advance, find her, will you--Jeanne Bergere? And say what you can
to comfort her. It doesn't matter what has happened, her love for
me is like the North Star--fixed. When she knows that I am dead
she will wish to kill herself. You must prevent that. You must
show her how she can help France. Aha!--The cannon!"

From several miles in the rear there rose suddenly a thudding percussive
cataract of sound. The earth trembled like some frightened animal
that has been driven into a corner.

The Idiot leaped to his feet, his eyes joyously alight.

"It is the voice of God," he cried.

If indeed it was the voice of God, that other great voice which is
of Hell, made no answer. The German guns were unaccountably silent.

On the stroke of four, the earth still trembling with the incessant
concussions of the guns, the French scrambled out of their trenches
and went forward. But no sudden blast of lead and iron challenged
their temerity. A few shells, but all from field pieces, fired
perfunctorily as it were, fell near them and occasionally among
them. It looked as if Fritz wasn't going to fight.

The wire guarding the first line of German trenches had been so
torn and disrupted by the French cannon, that only here and there
an ugly strand remained to be cut. The trench was empty.

"The Boche," said Paul Guitry, "has left nothing but his smell."

Rumor spread swiftly through the lines. "We are not to be opposed.
Fritz has been withdrawn in the night. His lines are too long.
He is straightening out his salients. It is the beginning of the
end."

There was good humor and elation. There was also a feeling of
admiration for the way in which Fritz had managed to retreat without
being detected.

The country over which the troops advanced was a rolling desert,
blasted, twisted, swept clear of all vegetation. What the Germans
could not destroy they had carried away with them. There remained
only frazzled stumps of trees, dead bodies and ruined engines of
war.

Paul Guitry and the Idiot came at last to the summit of a little
hill. Beyond and below at the end of a long sweep of tortured and
ruined fields could be seen picturesquely grouped a few walls of
houses and one bold arch of an ancient bridge.

The Idiot blinked stupidly. Then he laughed a short, ugly laugh.

"I had counted on seeing the church steeple. But of course they
would have destroyed that."

"Is it Champ-de-Fer?" asked Guitry.

At that moment a dark and sudden smoke, as from ignited chemicals
began to pour upward from the ruined village.

"It was," said the Idiot, and once more the word was passed to go
forward.


II


They did not know what was going on in the world. They had been
ordered into the cellars of the village, and told to remain there
for twenty-four hours. They had no thought but to obey.

Into the same cellar with Jeanne Bergere had been herded four old
women, two old men, and a little boy whom a German surgeon (the day
the champagne had been discovered buried in the Notary's garden)
had strapped to a board and--vivisected.

Twenty-three of the twenty-four hours had passed (one of the old
men had a Waterbury watch) but only the little boy complained of
hunger and thirst. He wanted to drink from the well in the corner
of the cellar; but they would not let him. The well had supplied
good drinking water since the days of Julius Caesar, but shortly
after entering the cellar one of the old women had drunk from it,
and shortly afterward had died in great torment. The little boy
kept saying:

"But maybe it wasn't the water which killed Madame Pigeon. Only
let me try it and then we shall know for sure."

But they would not let him drink.

"It is not agreeable to live," said one of the old men, "but it
is necessary. We are of those who will be called upon to testify.
The terms of peace will be written by soft-hearted statesmen; we
who have suffered must be on hand. We must be on hand to see that
the Boche gets his deserts."

Jeanne Bergere spoke in a low unimpassioned voice:

"What would you do to them, father," she asked, "if you were God?"

"I do not know," said the old man. "For I have experience only
of those things which give them pleasure. Those who delight in
peculiar pleasures are perhaps immune to ordinary pains...."

"Surely," interrupted the little boy, "it was not the water that
killed Madame Pigeon."

"How peaceful she looks," said the old man. "You would say the
stone face of a saint from the facade of a cathedral."

"It may be," said Jeanne Bergere, "that already God has opened His
mind to her, and that she knows of that vengeance, which we with
our small minds are not able to invent."

"I can only think of what they have done to us," said the old man.
"It does not seem as if there was anything left for us to do to
them. Vengeance which does not give the Avenger pleasure is a poor
sort of vengeance. Madame Simon..."

The old woman in question turned a pair of sheeny eyes towards the
speaker.

"Would it give you any particular pleasure to cut the breasts off
an old German woman?"

With a trembling hand Madame Simon flattened the bosom of her dress
to show that there was nothing beneath.

"It would give me no pleasure," she said, "but I shall show my
scars to the President."

"An eye for an eye--a tooth for a tooth," said the old man. "That
is the ancient law. But it does not work. There is no justice in
exchanging a German eye and a French. French eyes see beauty in
everything. To the German eye the sense of beauty has been denied.
You cannot compare a beast and a man. In the old days, when there
were wolves, it was the custom of the naive people of those days
to torture a wolf if they caught one. They put him to death with
the same refinements which were requisitioned for human criminals.
This meant nothing to the wolf. The mere fact that he had been
caught was what tortured him. And so I think it will be with the
Germans when they find that they have failed. They have built
up their power on the absurd hypothesis that they are men. Their
punishment will be in discovering that they never were anything
but low animals and never could be."

"That is too deep for me," said the other man. "They tied my
daughter to her bed, and afterward they set fire to her mattress."

"I wish," said Jeanne Bergere, "that they had set fire to my
mattress."

A violent concussion shook the cellar to its foundations. Even
the face of the thirsty little boy brightened.

"It is one of ours," he said.

"To eradicate the lice which feed upon the Germans and the foul
smells which emanate from their bodies there is nothing so effective
as high explosives," said the old man. He looked at his watch and
said:

"We have half an hour more."

At the end of that time, he climbed the cellar stair, pushed open
the door, and looked out. Partly in the bright sunlight and partly
in the deep shadows, he resembled a painting by Rembrandt.

"I see no one," he said. "There is a lot of smoke."

His eyes became suddenly wide open, fixed, round with a kind of
celestial astonishment. This his old French heart stopped beating,
and he fell to the foot of the stair. His companions thought that
he must have been shot. They dared not move.

But it was no bullet or fragment of far-blown shell that had laid
the old man low. He had seen in the smoke that whirled down the
village street, a little soldier in the uniform of France. Pure
unadulterated joy had struck him dead.

Five minutes passed, and no one had moved except the little boy.
With furtive glances and trembling hands he had crept to the old
well in the corner and drunk a cup of the poisoned water. Then he
crept back to his place.

The second old man now rose, drew a deep breath and climbed
the cellar stair. For a time he stood blinking, and mouthing his
scattered teeth. He was trying to speak and could not.

"What is it?" they called up to him. "What has happened?"

He did not answer. He made inarticulate sounds, and suddenly with
incredible speed, darted forward into the smoke and the sunlight.

A little hand cold and wet crept into Jeanne Bergere's. She was
vexed. She wished to go out of the cellar with the others; but the
little hand clung to her so tightly that she could not free herself.

Except for the old woman who had drunk from the well, and the old
man, all in a heap at the foot of the cellar stair, they were alone.
She and the little boy.

"It is true," said the little boy, "at least I think it is true
about the water...when...nobody was looking.... Please, please
stay with me, Jeanne Bergere."

"You drank when it was forbidden? That was very naughty, Charlie....
Good God, what am I saying--you poor baby--you poor baby." She
snatched him into her arms, and held him with a kind of tigerish
ferocity.

"It hurts," said Charlie. "It hurts. It hurts me all over. It
hurts worse all the time."

"I will go for help," she said. "Wait."

"Please do not go away."

"You want to die?"

The child nodded.

"If I grow up, I should not be a man," he said. "You know what
the doctor did to me?"

"I know," she said briefly, "but you shan't die if I can help it."

She could not help it. A few minutes after she had gone, his back
strongly arched became rigid. His jaws locked and he died in the
attitude of a wrestler making a bridge.

The village street was full of smoke and Frenchmen. These were
methodically fighting the fires and hunting the ruins for Germans.
Jeanne Bergere seized one of the little soldiers by the elbow.

"Come quickly," she said, "there is a child poisoned!"

The Idiot turned, and she would have fallen if he had not caught
her. She tore herself loose from his arms with a kind of ferocity.

"Come! Come!" she cried, and she ran like a frightened animal back
to the cellar door, the Idiot close behind her.

The Idiot knelt by the dead child, and after feeling in vain for
any pulsation, straightened up and said:

"He is dead."

"He drank from the well," said Jeanne. "We told him that it was
poisoned. But he was so thirsty."

They tried to straighten the little boy, but could not. The Idiot
rose to his feet, and looked at her for the first time. He must
have made some motion with his hands, for she cried suddenly:

"Don't! You mustn't touch me!"

"We have always loved each other," he said simply.

"You don't understand."

"What have you been through? I understand. Kiss me."

She held him at arm's length.

"Listen," she said. "The old people would not leave the village,--your
father and mother...so I stayed. At that time it was still supposed
that the Germans were human beings..."

"And my father and mother?" asked the Idiot.

"Some of the people went into the street to see the Germans enter
the village. But we watched from a window in your father's house....
They were Uhlans, who came first. They were so drunk that they
could hardly sit on their horses. Their lieutenant took a sudden
fancy to Marie Lebrun, but when he tried to kiss her, she slapped
his face.... That seemed to sober him.... Old man Lebrun had
leapt forward to protect his daughter.

"'Are you her father?'" asked the Lieutenant.

"'Yes,'" said the old man.

"'Bind him,'" said the lieutenant, and then he gave an order and
some men went into the house and came out dragging a mattress....
They dragged it into the middle of the street.... They held old
man Lebrun so that he had to see everything...for some hours, as
many as wanted to.... Then the lieutenant stepped forward and shot
her through the head, and then he shot her father.... Your father
and mother hid me in the cellar of their house, as well as they
could.... But from the Germans nothing remains long hidden....
Your father and mother tried to defend me...tied them to their
bed...and...set fire to the house."

The Idiot's granite-gray face showed no new emotion.

"And you?"

She shook her head violently.

"What you cannot imagine," she said. "I have forgotten.... There
have been so many.... No street-walker has ever been through what
I have been through.... There's nothing more to say...I wanted to
live...to bear witness against them.... For you and me everything
is finished..."

"Almost," said the Idiot. "You talk as if you no longer loved me."

The granite-gray of his face had softened into the ruddy, sun-burned
coloring of a healthy young soldier, long in the field, and she
could not resist the strong arms that he opened to her.

"They have not touched your soul," said the Idiot.

[signed] Gouverneur Morris





Memories of Whitman and Lincoln




"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd" --W. W.


Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.
Spring hangs in the dew of the dooryards
These memories--these memories--
They hang in the dew for the bard who fetched
A sprig of them once for his brother
When he lay cold and dead....
And forever now when America leans in the dooryard
And over the hills Spring dances,
Smell of lilacs and sight of lilacs shall bring to her heart these brothers....
Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman
And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

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