Propaganda and Revolutionary Defense
The time is coming when many forms of propaganda are losing their purpose. People have chosen which side they are on, and they will not be persuaded by pretty posters or stirring speeches. Instead, the various campaigns of pamphlets, leaflets, music, and even a few hastily-made short films are focused internally, on making sure the workers who have already committed themselves to the cause do not hesitate or balk.
So the sins of capitalists are once more drawn into the light, with the privations endured by sailors and the horrible suffering of the Boston Commune both being used to incite and direct anger. Once more, a call for peace goes out, and for the workers of the revolution to see to it that it will be a just peace through the shedding of their blood and sweat. Once more, every bit of artistry the propagandists possess is put to use ensuring that no one despairs, no one surrenders. And once more, song and story is used to emphasize the importance of unity to our revolution, and to shame those who discriminate against and abuse others.
And the workers of the nation respond. Vengeful fury, determined steadfastness, cheerful hope, and brotherly camaraderie are all inspired, and meeting halls and letter-writing campaigns are both used to show this. Despite the grim circumstances, people are refusing to surrender, still laboring for the benefit of the working class and joining the Revolutionary Army in such numbers that some are turned away. Despite internal contradictions, there is a sharp decrease in reported incidents of pogroms as a combination of self-defense groups and public pressure help restore order.
All of society is mobilizing for the revolutionary conflict. Hesitation and half-measures are no longer being considered. As the Revolutionary Army, its allies, and the vast machinery of industry and agriculture prepare for a war as total and terrible as the Weltkrieg, the last calls for peace fall silent.
Everyone knows that the only peace that will be accepted is the peace of the victor and the vanquished.
With the minds and hearts of the workers ready for what is to come, many are optimistic despite the grimness of the situation. The victory of the revolution is inevitable to countless millions, and they do not fear the cost it will require. For some, this is ignorance of the realities of war. For some, this is acceptance of the bloody havoc capitalists shall wreak in a vain attempt to keep a grasp on what they have. For some, this is eagerness for an opportunity to inflict terror and make no excuses for it.
Regardless of the reasons for the widespread steadiness, the end result is a boon for everyone. Public order is maintained, laws are being enforced, The justice might be rough and inconsistent, but it exists, which is a massive improvement over what many places experienced in the immediate aftermath of the November Crisis. Some sort of proper system with rights for the defendants will need to be worked out in the future but for now, the public tribunals that most Red Guards units are using work well enough.
Despite the efforts of the Red Guards and various other militias, there is still reactionary resistance. It's proving to be little more than a nuisance: bandit groups in the dust-ravaged Prarie, skirmishes in the Rockies, graffiti and vandalism in a few cities, but there are some more serious attempts, including several partisan bombings on railways, attacks on union towns in West Virginia, and an attempted assassination of a unit commander in Sault Ste. Marie.
Schenck and the Commission for Revolutionary Defense are cracking down on these groups wherever they appear, attempting to track their weapons suppliers and identify their meeting locations, but they are strained by a relative lack of resources. Many plots have been foiled, many reactionaries captured or killed, and many groups have been broken up, but there always seems to be more. Schenck is of the opinion that many of these groups are being supplied or supported in Canada, and the MacArthur government is almost certainly supporting many groups further south as well.
Given the potential severity of the threat, Schenck intends to take extraordinary measures to crush it. To that end, he requests your permission to begin an emergency operation to seize and imprison many suspected counterrevolutionaries without trial until he is satisfied the plots they are involved with are have been handled.
Many in the CAS, hearing of this concern, are outraged, particularly the more moderate members, who are on occasion tarred as counterrevolutionaries in rhetoric by Schenck's allies and so fear his intentions. Some of them have gone so far to accuse Schenck of attempting Bonapartism. The response by Foster that perhaps Schenck should take "direct command" and cease what he has termed "half-measures" only further alarmed people.
You have chosen to intervene to stabilize the situation before delegates change from verbal sallies to physical ones.
[] Shut Schenck and Foster down. This sort of disrespect to comrades and fellow travelers cannot be tolerated, and the proposed plan is an unacceptable violation of civil rights. This will seriously aggravate the Fosterites and Schenck, possibly to the point of some of them leaving, but will win you great approval with everyone else.
[] Censure Foster for his misconduct, and propose a compromise measure involving politically reliable secret juries to determine the validity of Schenck's imprisonments before they can be gone ahead with. This may upset the Fosterites, but the sharp limitations will please and satisfy everyone else
[] Censure Foster for his misconduct, but acknowledge the regrettable necessity of Schenck's plan. This will leave the Fosterites satisfied, but seriously aggravate many of your current supporters and the moderates.
[] Fully back Foster and Schenck. This will leave the Fosterites and Schenck fully behind you, but it will seriously alienate everyone else, to the point your coalition will certainly splinter and some of the more moderate figures will begin considering alternate backers.
While the debate rages on about what to do, Schenck busies himself presenting reports on various externally-focused operations, the kinds people are comfortable giving him a long leash on. First is the report on Canada. It seems your revolution inspired a sister uprising in Iceland. The Canadian fleet sortied out with the intent of seizing the island as a base for later retaking England. The British fleet sortied out to support the revolutionaries.
They met and the more modern ships of the British fleet proved superior, with aircraft carriers striking from further away than the Canadian dreadnought could reach. While none of the reactionary capital ships were sunk, several were damaged and some escorts were lost. What casualties the British suffered are currently unclear.
Meanwhile, in Canada itself, much of the military and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been concentrated at the southern border, leaving many local police forces and militias with the responsibility of patrolling hostile streets. The King, backed by many exiled politicians, has overridden the Parliament and passed a law permitting conscription for labor and military service.
Needless to say, this has not gone well. All attempts at enforcing the draft have completely failed. Cities have outright had their local governments throw out all representatives of federal authority, and the province of Quebec only failed to legally secede because a paramilitary stormed the Parliament Building. While many of these revolutions are non-ideological in nature, agents from the SyndIntern are working to correct that.
Ethan did not want to die. He had stayed out of the uprising ten years ago, he had stayed out of its suppression as well. He had hidden in his basement, sneaking out to find food under the cover of the night, and spent days on end curled up in a corner.
It was a miserable experience, but it was one he would gladly repeat, since it would mean he was back in his cramped little house, and not in the middle of a military camp preparing to invade another country, one that was almost certainly stronger than them even in the middle of its own civil war.
He still wasn't quite sure how he had ended up in the army, but he did suppose people did silly things when they were drunk. And now that he was, he just tried to keep his head down. He took the abuse from the senior men, he accepted the long hours of pointless marching and the scant rations, he didn't breathe a word about the insane rumors filtering in from everywhere.
The last was the easiest. He was used to people talking nonsense, and this round of it wasn't any more believable than the things he had heard before. He had practically burst out laughing when he heard assassins had crucified King George in his own bedroom without anyone hearing, and again when someone claimed that it was Prince Edward who had done it.
Unfortunately, not everyone was as skeptical as him. He had been going about his duties when some of the Special Reserve had grabbed him and forced him and other soldiers into their formation, and then they came into the middle of the camp.
His heart went up into his throat at what he saw there.
There must have been hundreds of them, armed and angry, and more were streaming in all the time. Other soldiers in ragged uniforms, people in civilian clothes, he even spotted a few women. There were shouting and chanting, their fury so intense he couldn't actually understand what they were saying, only catching fragments of words and demands.
Ethan felt his pants get warm and wet and squirmed uncomfortably, hoping he wasn't here for what he expected.
The officer at the head of the ragtag formation he had been dragooned into said something, and people began to raise their rifles, some timidly and some with calm confidence. Ethan threw his down and began to run.
The King could find someone else to his fighting.
Operation Paul Revere has begun. Firearms and small numbers of radios were transferred north and east from New York City and Syracuse respectively. With them filtered in several hundred of the most fanatical Red Guards, some freshly recruited for this sole purpose, who volunteered for a duty that would almost certainly see them all dead.
Through the ice and the snow, they marched, scattering to find resistance, and failing that to make it. They will destroy infrastructure, draw away troops, and do everything they can to ensure Boston survives for just a little longer.
As they bleed and freeze and die, hundreds rose up, and available forces charged forward to make a "road of hope" stretching out to Boston, skirmishing with thinly-spread enemies. They have gone far, further than many dared hope, but it still might not be far enough.
Margaret had almost nothing left in her life. Her father had jumped off a roof after the first stock market crash, her mother had worked herself into an early grave trying to support them. She hadn't even been able to afford a funeral, when once her family had had a lovingly tended granite mausoleum for their dead.
After the body had been taken away, she stayed in the apartment for a week, grimly contemplating her thin savings and thinner prospects. But she had avoided the worst by the grace of Christ and the local Girl's Socialist Club. They had given her enough food to get by, they had forced her landlord to give her a grace period before evicting her, they had sustained her soul and spirits when all seemed lost.
She had thrown herself into helping the club, both for something to do and to settle the debt, and so was on an errand delivering a briefcase containing something important to a very intimidating young man when the country had fallen apart.
Once more, Margaret had fallen back into despair, but once again the Girl's Socialist Club pulled her out of it. Specifically, hearing the news that Boston was surrounded and that the army was planning to execute every red in the city. She heard about what happened to Petrograd after it fell to Kolchak, she heard about what was being done to the south and the west, and she decided she had a debt that was still unsettled.
And so she had looked into how she could help, met that intimidating young man once more...and it seemed she might be in over her head now.
But she shouldered on grimly nonetheless, hiking on. Her back ached under the weight of the supplies she had been given, she couldn't stop shivering, and she had bruises and cuts all along one arm from where she had slipped on ice. The directions she had been given ran through her head like a drumbeat.
Walk north seven miles from where we drop you off. Find the tracks. Walk along the tracks, placing the charges on them. They'll do the rest.
She wasn't quite sure how far seven miles would be on foot, but she thought she would be able to see the rail, and that would tell her if she had gone far enough.
But now it was starting to get dark, and that thought might not be true anymore. She stumbled along the trail, grabbing at trees to help her keep balance on the slippery and frigid mud, glancing up at the sky as she prayed for a solution to her dilemma.
Night fell in earnest, and she kept walking, shivering from fear as well as the cold, praying out loud in a soft voice that seemed lost amongst the creaking pines and howling winds, head snapping left and right as she sought out the sources of sounds that came from all around. She dug into her waist pocket, gnawing on the hard biscuits she had been given and kept walking.
Her feet were numb, her legs burned, her throat ached. She kept walking.
The trees vanished so suddenly she didn't realize until she tried to put her hand against one and stumbled when it wasn't there.
She skidded down a slope, bouncing painfully, mud soaking into her jacket and splashing against her face, then she smacked against something metal hard enough that her head rang.
The railway! I found it!
She exulted in her success, the warm thrill of victory driving away every other sensation, and she fumbled in her backpack, pulling out one of the charges.
The man who had given them to her explained how they worked: two acids separated by copper, an explosive that would react to the acids mixing, a thin metal casing to maximize the damage it would cause. She dumped them behind her as she briefly sprinted, then slowed, still tossing out explosives like she was throwing out candy in a parade.
The pain was even worse now, but she had at least stopped shivering.
She kept walking until she stopped, without even realizing it, and fell asleep on the ground, a smile on her face.
She didn't quite understand everything that had happened to her, but she knew she had settled her debt.
The army of MacArthur is restless. While the reports on the West Coast report that the soldiers there are determined to fight to the end, the situation is far uneasier in the heart of government power in the Southeast. Schenck's agents have capitalized on this with reports on the sheer volume of atrocities being committed by various aligned militias, leaving many soldiers uncertain about who they should obey. However, security policies have grown increasingly more effective. Desertions have slowed because of it, and many of Schenck's agents have fallen silent, either to avoid being caught or because they have been.
Although morale is lower in the army, it has cratered in the navy. Sailors began using the trips ashore to purchase supplies in New York City and Seattle to desert, leading to the trips being banned. This in turn led to serious disciplinary issues aboard the ships, issues which escalated as the many privations and humiliations the sailors endured led to anger boiling over and mutinies beginning.
Some ships have effectively declared neutrality, some have been lost to the mutineers either through defeat or destruction, and some ships will need repairs and replacements for the crew.
The Revolution now has a navy, even if it is small, battered, and lacking in officers.
You think Butler said it best, personally. "Try and blockade us now, fuckers."
Personal
You don't travel as much this week. Things are starting to steady themselves, a ramshackle governmental structure is growing, and MacArthur lost his chance to crush the Red Guards when they were still disorganized militias, even if some are still pessimistic about the prospects of the Revolutionary Army.
But things are going well enough that you can relax, stealing entire hours to lean back in a seat and close your eyes. You awaken with aches and pains, but each nap leaves you feeling refreshed nonetheless.
And you start taking more.
Louise is finally moved out of her hospital room, although she is still weak and weary. And Hannah still remains practically glued to her side. You mostly leave the two of them alone, for no matter how much you wish otherwise, your duties come first.
But you make sure to come home at 9:30 sharp, to lie down with the two most important people in your life, wrap your arms around them, and rest all curled up together, protected by trusted men and thick walls.
