ting always of the sufferings of the poor, he did nothing to soothe
them or remove them. His only contribution to the improvement of wages
was to call a strike and get none at all. His contribution to the war
against oppressive capital was to denounce all successful men as
brutes and tyrants, lumping the benefactors with the malefactors.

Men of his type made up the blood-spillers of the French Revolution,
and the packs of the earlier Jacquerie, the thugs who burned chateaux
and shops, and butchered women as well as men, growling their ominous
refrain:

"Noo sum zum cum eel zaw" ("_Nous sommes hommes comme ils sont_").

The Jake Nuddles were hate personified. They formed secret armies of
enemies now inside the nation and threatened her success in the war.
The thing that prevented their triumph was that their blunders were
greater than their malice, their folly more certain than their
villainy. As soon as America entered the lists against Germany, the
Jake Nuddles would begin doing their stupid best to prevent
enlistment, to persuade desertion, to stop war-production, to wreck
factories and trains, to ruin sawmills and burn crops. In the name of
freedom they would betray its most earnest defenders, compel the
battle-line to face both ways. They were more subtle than the snaky
spies of Germany, and more venomous.

As he wolfed his food now, Jake studied the picture of Marie Louise.
The gentlest influence her beauty exerted upon him was a beastly
desire. He praised her grace because it tortured his wife. But even
fiercer than his animal impulse was his rage of hatred at the look of
cleanliness and comeliness, the environment of luxury only emphasized
by her peasant disguise.

When he had mopped his plate with his bread, he took up the paper
again and glared at it with hostile envy.

"Dammer and her arristocratic ways! Daughter of a Sir and a Lady, eh?
Just wait till we get through with them Sirs and Ladies. We'll mow 'em
down. You'll see. Robbin' us poor toilers that does all the work!
We'll put an end to their peerages and their deer-parks. What Germany
leaves of these birds we'll finish up. And then we'll take this rotten
United States, the rottenest tyranny of all. Gawdammit! You just
wait!"

His wife just waited till he had smashed the picture in the face,
knocked the pretty lady's portrait to the floor and walked on it as he
strode out to his revolution. Incidentally he trod on little Sister's
hand, and she s