PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND – Yesterday (June 3) over 50,000 Providentians took to the streets of the city in enthusiastic support of the call for preparedness.
The focal point of the Preparedness Parade was a magnificent “living flag” before the city hall. On a towering temporary review stand some 1,560 school children were smartly assembled into Old Glory, flanked by an honor guard of 200 Civil War veterans and band members. They performed patriotic songs with gusto for the 6 hour procession as it marched by.
The young men of Brown University’s Middle Campus formed into “Platoons” and marched from College Hill to the review stand, they paused and saluted the singers and veterans before moving on in impressive harmony.
It appears that President Wilson is not the only person to be shifting in their opinion of joining the war in Europe. Brown University President, William H.P. Faunce, once proclaimed himself as a “lover of peace and hater of all war”, is rumoured to be considering preparations for the University’s possible involvement in the training of fighting men.
Owner of Boase Tool & Screw Co. and the Providence Angels Baseball Club, Leopold Boase, took the occasion to state he would “dedicate total production to the war effort…”. The tool tycoon is a first-generation American, but still has strong ties to his parental homeland, Belgium, one of the first nations to fall victim to German aggression. The Boase Factory, one of the largest tool workshops in the country, has long been dedicating production to export for the Allied Powers…
***
That’s enough...
Clayton Bayman placed the newspaper beside him on the bench, he held his stubbled chin and gazed out across the field. As summer edged closer, the mornings brighter and warmer, he had taken to reading the morning papers in the modest, neglected grandstand of Cartwright Stadium, before heading down into his spartan office to work.
50,000…
The birds sang and whistled their morning calls from the trees beyond the outfield.
50,000…
He shivered at the thought of the enthusiasm, the cheers, the salutes. Ever since Europe had erupted into war, he had battled overwhelming guilt. He tried to hide from it, to shield himself from the news of death, and destruction, but it was becoming impossible. The Providence Chronicle was one of the most vocal pro-war newspapers in the country, there was no hiding from it’s crying headlines.
50,000… calling for war…
He thought of his old friends, people he’d long forgotten to keep up correspondence with, everyone he had known and loved, fighting and dying. Whilst he had avoided it all. What gave him the right to survive. Why should he avoid the fight.
50,000… demanding the chance to send their sons to war…
He thought of his brother, the sweetest boy he had ever known. He still saw him as a boy in his mind, pure and sweet. Now that boy was in France, alone in hellfire, alone in the bloodiest battlefields man had ever known.
50,000…
The distant hum of a motorcar distracted him from the task of trying to organize his thoughts. Whilst he had never fallen for any patriotic fever, never wanted to follow the bugle call to fight a war for Kings or Kaisers, neither had he ever vocalized his objections, he didn’t believe it would ever be necessary, not with the war so far away, across the vast ocean, on another continent…
The hum and rumble of another engine now approached the stadium on Angel Island, players arriving, only the players arrived in motorcars. Whilst some of “Cartwright’s Canons” had become less enthusiastically enforced since the passing of club founder Jacob Cartwright, nearly all players kept up with the tradition of attending Mass before and after each home game.
50,000… call for war on Saturday… go to church on Sunday…
Bayman glimpsed at his pocket watch, and gathered his Sunday papers, pipe and tobacco pouch. As he climbed down the grandstand he wondered to himself what answer would placate God, if the Almighty ever asked you why you enthusiastically supported war.
War on Saturday… Church on Sunday…