By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 27, 1935.
“Listen,” cried Jimmie Frise. “I hear a band.”
We stopped the car. In the distance, the music of drums and horns beat on the night air. We were on Yonge St. near King.
“It’ll be one of the regiments,” said Jim, opening the car window. “What do you say we park here and stand on the curb to see them go by.”
“Maybe it might be the Highlanders,” I exclaimed.
“I haven’t seen a parade for years,” agreed Jim.
So we got out and walked up towards Adelaide St. and picked a nice open space for ourselves, where the bright shop lights glowed out on to the street. Here we would see the soldiers striding by.
The band grew nearer. Along King St. they came and then, with their brass and their buttons agleaming, their white shells, or tunics glowing, the Highlanders wheeled up Yonge St. to the magnificent echoing thunder of their great brass band.
Far out in front marched the giant and handsome master of ceremonies, or whatever you call him. Being only a war-time soldier, I don’t remember, and perhaps never did know, the technical terms of the military art. But this remarkable specimen of manhood who strode at the head of the Highlanders was enough to make skyscrapers and handsome department stores curl up with envy. Even men held their breath when he went by. And as for the ladies…!
Respectfully in rear of him came the band. With those little mincing steps of the High- landers, the white spats tapping like a vast ballet, a corps of a thousand dancers, the band and the regiment followed. Nobody on earth walks as proudly as a Scot. Or at any rate, an Irishman or Englishman or a Canadian by the name of Smith or Kelly in a Scottish kilt.
“Ah,” sighed Jimmie. “Did you ever see anything so inspiring?”
“Let’s walk alongside of them,” I suggested.
So Jimmie and I joined the pavement walkers who kept abreast of the straight-looking soldiers. We got level with the band. And the Kiltie with the big bass drum, with the leopard skin across his shoulders, thumped with all his might.
“In the next war,” I shouted to Jim. “I’m going to play the drum.”
“Majors don’t play drums,” retorted Jim. “You can’t have all the fun.”
“I would rather play the drum,” I said, “than capture Quebec.”
“They’d only give a kettle-drum to a little guy like you,” pointed out Jim.
“A bass drum would look all the basser,” I argued, “on a little man.”
With music crashing and clashing up amidst the tall buildings, with legs moving like the legs of a centipede, the Highland regiment crossed Queen St. while traffic stood still and a great throng stood enviously, the young men on the side lines trying to look superior to all this, the young girls clinging to the young men’s arms clinging a little less closely for the moment.
“One Drum and They’re Done”
“I’m puffed,” I said, “let’s stand now and watch them.”
And so we watched them until the last Scottie stamped truly past and the music was growing dim in the distance.
“But the drum you can hear, long after the horns are gone,” Jim noted.
We walked back to the car, “You can understand,” said Jimmie, “how men go to war when you see a regiment go by. It seems to steal your common sense away. I bet if war was declared, one drum up the streets and away they’d all go.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I mused. “A great many of the young men to-day have serious opinions about war. I’ve talked to the ones in their twenties down at the office. It is about the only serious thought they have.”
“One drum and they’re done,” argued Jim.
“Yet would you willingly send another generation to go through what we went through?” I demanded. “Filthy, futile and without a single gain to be credited to it. War is insane.”
“We had some fun,” pointed out Jim.
“If another war came,” I said, “I would lead a non-co-operation movement, like Gandhi. I would probably go to jail.”
“One drum,” said Jim, “and you’d be sitting on a horse roaring.”
“No,” I corrected. “I would lead a great youth movement, enlisting the young men of Canada in a pacifist league. And once it was well organized, I would hand it over to younger fellows and then I would sneak away and join some regiment overseas. That’s what I would do. I would then satisfy both of my principles.”
“So you have two principles?” asked Jim.
“Certainly,” I assured him. “I am against war. I think war is a crime. But at the same time, like much crime, war is lots of fun. I’d hate to miss it myself, although I would willingly die to spare other men having to go to war.”
“You certainly are confused,” said Jim.
“So is nearly everybody else,” I said. “Most men feel just the way I do.”
“Are you a member of any anti-war society?” inquired Jim. “The League of Nations association or anything?”
“No,” I admitted. “They don’t attract me. They aren’t militant enough to attract men, somehow. A peace organization should be full of war. It should have something to fight for.”
“That’s queer,” agreed Jim.
“If you try to get young men into a society for peace,” I went on, “it has a negative appeal. What you want is a positive appeal. Now, for instance, I might start a society for young men called the League of Youth for Making Munitions Only.”
“Ah,” said Jim.
“This society,” I expounded, “would attract hundreds of thousands of young men who would be sworn to make munitions at $15 a day1, but who are vowed never to go to war.”
War Without Its Evils
“Fifteen dollars a day,” said Jim.
“That would be the wages,” I said. “Same as the last war. The youth of Canada would be willing to do the same for this country as the old men, the politicians, the bankers and big business men. They would gladly sacrifice their time and energy at making money out of munitions. But they would not go to war. They would die first. How’s that?”
“Your idea has a lot of points,” admitted Jimmie.
“The League of Youth for Making Munitions Only,” I repeated, “is now formed. No wealthy old schemer can complain if the youth of the nation are filled with the same patriotism as his. All across Canada, we will have branch societies, organized and trained, so that at a moment’s notice, they can spring to the machines and get the munitions pouring out. The weekly meetings of the branches of the League could be devoted to training on lathes and machine shop technique. There will be lectures on the great munition makers of the past. Biographical lectures, telling how many millions they made and what they did with them. Mind you, Jimmie, munitions doesn’t merely mean shells and guns. It includes wool and blankets and uniforms; food, such as flour and bacon; leather for boots and equipment. There will be room for every kind of young man in our great league. Tradesmen, merchants, clerks, young executives. Room for everybody in the League of Youth for Making Munitions Only.”
“I have an idea,” contributed Jim. “I’ll give it to the world as a gift. It is the Sinkable Battleship. This invention satisfies everybody. We all admit that building battleships is one of the best ways in the world for the big industrialists to make a few million dollars. It also employs thousands of men. And at the same time there are a certain number of valiant young men whose greatest dream is to die violently, to be blown up. Now, this Sinkable Battleship of mine requires no war. In each ship, as it is launched, is hidden a secret bomb, a very powerful bomb, to which is attached mechanism that will set it off at a certain unknown time, within six months or six years.”
“Jimmie,” I cried. “How perfect!”
“Yes,” admitted Jim. “Therefore, as these battleships rush about the seven seas, at a certain time, unknown to any man living, the battleship will blow up with a terrific bang, all lives will be lost. And right away, the government that owned the ship can place a new order with the big industrialists. More millions can be made by these great shots. More thousands of men can be employed. And another ship’s company valiant young men who want to die can be enlisted. Everybody will be satisfied.”
“And all,” I rejoiced, “without war being declared at all!”
“Precisely,” said Jim. “Every government, even Switzerland, can then have the benefits of war without its evils. It is a remarkable invention, this Sinkable Battleship.”
“If we announce my new league in the ordinary way,” I said, as we drove slowly along the lovely lake shore, “it will only attract a few of those pimply-faced young men with untidy hair who join leagues. We ought to use our newspaper instincts, Jim. We ought to start it off some exciting way. It ought to be started with a bang.”
“With a drum,” suggested Jim.
“Exactly.” I cried. “Why not? Why let war have all the drums? That’s what’s the matter with these peace societies. They have no drums.”
“I could get you a drum,” said Jim. “I know an Orangeman.”
“A bass drum?” I asked.
“A big bass drum,” assured Jim.
And that is how the League of Youth for Making Munitions Only got started. Jim’s friend tuned the big drum for him, tightening the steel bands around it. He lent Jim a fife, too, as Jimmie wanted to have some share in this great movement.
We drove down to University Ave.
“You can always get a following down around Queen and University,” I told him. “If you can’t get soldiers, you can get Communists. There is always somebody wanting to follow a drum down there.”
But when we parked the car, it looked a little forbidding. There were men scattered all along the curbs in the early spring evening. There were men wandering in twos and threes, or stopped chatting.
“Let’s start on a side street,” I said, “and by the time we have a good following, we can debouch on to the main streets. When we have about a thousand following us, we can halt, I’ll jump up on the steps of a monument or something and address them.”
We parked in one of those side streets between Elizabeth and University, where Chinese children were playing and foreign ladies were walking along with live fish wriggling violently in loose parcels of newspaper.
I got the drum out. Jim blew through the fife to get the dust out.
“Ready?” said Jim nervously.
We stood side by side.
“Ready, one, two, three,” I replied.
Boom, boom, boom.
Up Elizabeth St. we started. Jim can’t play a fife. No noise came from it. But it looked good. He wiggled his fingers. He held his head back.
“Don’t go too far up or you’ll disturb the sick people in the hospital,” shouted Jim.
“Correct,” I said. “Left wheel!”
We wheeled down Elizabeth St, again. Little Chinese boys lined the curb, and old gentlemen with large beards stuck their heads out of the doors of little frame shops. “Hallelujah,” yelled a colored gentleman, rushing out of a house.
Boom, boom, boom.
“Don’t go too far down,” said Jim, “or the detectives in the city hall will hear you.”
“Left wheel!” I commanded.
The drum was heavy, but what is more important is the fact that a drum vibrates as you hit it. The louder you hit, the livelier it vibrates. And as you are supporting the drum with your abdomen, your abdomen takes the vibration, as it were.
“How many following?” I shouted to Jim, looking out from behind the drum.
“Nobody yet,” said Jim. “Hit it louder.”
Some foreign ladies with live fish wriggling in newspapers gathered on the curb with the children. Several of the bearded men came and sat on the steps to await what was to happen.
“Left wheel!” commanded Jim.
Up and down the block we marched, Jim pretending fiercely to blow the fife and the drum making a magnificent thunder.
Then a bearded man in a striped apron and wearing a derby hat ran out with his hand held high.
“Stop, stop,” he cried. We stopped.
“You wake all the babies,” he said.
“Sir.” I replied, “we are awaking the entire youth of the nation, perhaps of the world.”
“Would you please wake them on another street?” asked the bearded man, lifting his derby politely.
“That’s a reasonable request,” Jimmie said.
“All right,” I agreed. “This drum is heavier than I expected.”
So we went down and got in the car.
We put the drum in. Through the car windows, I looked back up the street. All quiet. Little Chinese children played on the darkening pavement. The bearded men had got up and gone back into their shops. The ladies with the parcels were pursuing their patient way. It was as if no drum had beaten.
Down Elizabeth St., a slow pacing policeman came to a halt at the distant corner and stood looking up street.
“Peaceful, isn’t it?” said Jim.
The doors of the armories, south of us, swung hugely open.
There was a sudden thunder of drums. A sudden scream of bugles. Out of the door marched the first ranks of a regiment. A very tall man leading. He was ceremoniously waving an immense gold-knobbed baton.
The policeman leaped to life. He took the centre of the street, stopping traffic with majestic arm.
“Let’s follow them,” said Jim, stepping on the starter.
So we followed the regiment around nine blocks.
Editor’s Notes: This story also appeared in Silver Linings (1978).
- $15 in 1935 would be $440 in 2025. ↩︎
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