“You don’t put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!” he shouted in his hot, nasal voice.  “This here’s a free country, and you call yourself a debating society, do you?  Lemme tell you I belong to a debating society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up there, they’d think they’d oughta be shot fer a fake like what you people are tryin’ to put over, here, to-night.  I come down here to git some more education, and pay fer it, too, in good hard money I’ve made sweatin’ in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if this is the kind of education I’m a-gunna git, I better go on back there.  You call this a square debate, do you?”

He advanced toward the chairman’s platform, shaking a frantic fist.  “Well, if you do, you got another think comin’, my capitalis’ frien’! you went and give out the question whether it’s right fer Choimuny to go through Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side?  You pick out this here big stiff”—­he waved his passionate hand at the paralyzed Ramsey—­“you pick out a boob like that for the Choimun side, a poor fish that gits stagefright so bad he don’t know whether he’s talkin’ or dead; or else he fakes it; because he’s a speaker so bum it looks more to me like he was faking.  You get this big stiff to fake the Choimun side, and then you go and stick up a goil agains’ him that’s got brains and makes a pacifis’ argument that wins the case agains’ the Choimuns like cuttin’ through hog lard!  But you ain’t a-gunna git away with it, mister!  Lemme tell you right here and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some Choimun in me with the rest what I got, and before you vote on this here question you gotta hear a few woids from somebody that can talk! This whole war is a capitalis’ war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the United States is sellin’ its soul to the capitalis’ right now, I tell you, takin’ sides agains’ Choimuny.  Orders fer explosives and ammanition and guns and Red Cross supplies is comin’ into this country by the millions, and the capitalis’ United States is fat already on the blood of the workers of Europe!  Yes, it is, and I’ll have my say, you boorjaw faker, and you can hammer your ole gavel to pieces at me!”

He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth; the scandalized society was on its feet, nervously into groups.  Evidently the meeting was about to disintegrate.  “I’ll have my say!” the frenzied Linski screamed.  “You try to put up this capitalis’ trick and work a fake to carry over this debate agains’ Choimuny, but you can’t work it on me, lemme tell you!  I’ll have my say!”

The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the “unprecedented situation”—­so he defined it, quite truthfully; and he continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival Linski’s; shouts of “Put him out!” “Order!” “Shut up, Freshman!” “Turn him over to the sophomores!”