Unto All Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

men. The money would go to his parents.
    Then of his parents! His parents who had been saved by Czechoslovakia! How they loved their country! He could see his mother’s face again, wrinkled and at peace, forgetting her cruelly aching back. He saw the scar on his father’s face. Suddenly he wept aloud, clenching his fists. And now his country was threatened by the ferocity of Poland. If nothing was done his section of Czechoslovakia would be turned back to Poland. His parents would be enslaved again. There were always the whips---.
    A man had to make a beginning. If he died today, killing some of the destroyers of his country, it would be only a small thing. But everything started with small things. Fortunes were begun with a pfennig. Perhaps the saving of Czechoslovakia would start with his death. He wiped away the tears that lay on his pouting cheeks. He looked about him, and his face was full of radiance.
    He looked at the aristocrats, Slivak and Spitalny, who had been unbelievably good fellows to him, in spite of his humble position. They, too, were willing to die for Czechoslovakia. He looked at the little white Jew, who face was full of the exaltation of a man who has been freed. He seemed to brood in a sort of supernatural ecstasy. The Pole frowned. He could not understand this.
    Boehn, the Sudeten German democrat, could think of nothing but his plump young wife with her hard red cheeks, and two fat babies. What would become of them? To be sure, his wife had two wealthy brothers in Prague, and these brothers,who loved Czechoslovakia, would help her. One of them was childless, and he had already sent the twins two gilt christening cups. It was said that he carried small photographs of them in his bulging wallet. He would not let Mari and the babies starve; in fact, they would prosper with him. Perhaps Mari might marry again, in time.
    But his babies would grow up without every knowing him. They might even have a stepfather whom they would love. Boehn sighed. That was very bad, not even living in the memory of his children.
    His children would have a happy life. Unless — ! Unless the world were drowned in barbarism. Unless the Germans came, the Nazi Germans, and killed Mari and the babies. There were such horrible tales out of Austria these days. He had a distant cousin there. But one day a letter had been returned to him, unclaimed. Only silence.
    These things awaited Mari and the children, unless some men, perhaps only a handful of men, perhaps this handful of men, set themselves like pegs of wood in the walls of the dyke. Eight pegs. Perhaps they might hold the walls until help came, until the world awakened to the torrents that threatened it.
    Perhaps it would be his body that would plug the hole that led to Mari and the babies!
    The brothers Gowarski sat side by side, frowning anxiously. He was thinking the thoughts of the other. The harvests! How they had worked on them! Spring had come late that year, reluctantly, as though hating the world. But she had given in, eventually. What else could she do, when she was wooed by such as these brothers? They had turned the frosty brown earth, had seen the small wet stones in it glitter in the spring sun. They had felt the earth’s proud and stubborn resistance, had know exhilaration when she submitted. They had put in the seeds.
    The summer came and the fields, so empty and barren, were suddenly full of the golden rustle of grain. It was wonderful, knowing that four hard hands had brought this about. It would be a good harvest. There would be meat twice or perhaps even three times a week on the table this winter. The children would grow fat.
    The earth was so good. It was precious, like one’s heart, living, like one’s flesh. It was like a woman, to be loved It was one’s soul. The brothers could not imagine a man without land of his own, even a hand’s breadth of land. The lives men lived in cities was horrible, not to be thought of without wonderment and pity.