Free It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis Page A

carried by the Confederate veteran had been lent by the museum
in Richmond and the Northern flag bya distinguished meat-packer of
Chicago who was the grandson of a Civil War general.
    Lee Sarason never told anyone save Buzz Windrip that both flags had
been manufactured on Hester Street, New York, in 1929, for the
patriotic drama, Morgan’s Riding, and that both came from a
theatrical warehouse.
----
    Before the cheering, as the Windrip parade neared the platform,
they were greeted by Mrs. AdelaideTarr Gimmitch, the celebrated
author, lecturer, and composer, who—suddenly conjured onto the
platform as if whisked out of the air—sang to the tune of “Yankee
Doodle” words which she herself had written:
Berzelius Windrip went to Wash.,
    A riding on a hobby—
    To throw Big Business out, by Gosh,
    And be the People’s Lobby!

    Chorus:

    Buzz and buzz and keep it up,
    Our cares and needs he’stoting,
    You are a most ungrateful pup,
    Unless for Buzz you’re voting!
    The League of the Forgotten Men
    Don’t like to be forgotten,
    They went to Washington and then
    They sang, “There’s something rotten!”
    That joyous battle song was sung on the radio by nineteen different
prima donnas before midnight, by some sixteen million less vocal
Americans within forty-eight hours, and by atleast ninety million
friends and scoffers in the struggle that was to come. All through
the campaign, Buzz Windrip was able to get lots of jolly humor out
of puns on going to Wash., and to wash. Walt Trowbridge, he
jeered, wasn’t going to either of them!
    Yet Lee Sarason knew that in addition to this comic masterpiece,
the cause of Windrip required an anthem more elevated in thought
and spirit,befitting the seriousness of crusading Americans.
    Long after the convention’s cheering for Windrip had ended and the
delegates were again at their proper business of saving the nation
and cutting one another’s throats, Sarason had Mrs. Gimmitch sing a
more inspirational hymn, with words by Sarason himself, in
collaboration with a quite remarkable surgeon, one Dr. Hector
Macgoblin.
    This Dr. Macgoblin,soon to become a national monument, was as
accomplished in syndicated medical journalism, in the reviewing of
books about education and psychoanalysis, in preparing glosses upon
the philosophies of Hegel, Professor Guenther, Houston Stewart
Chamberlain, and Lothrop Stoddard, in the rendition of Mozart on
the violin, in semi-professional boxing, and in the composition of
epic poetry, as he wasin the practice of medicine.
    Dr. Macgoblin! What a man!
    The Sarason-Macgoblin ode, entitled “Bring Out the Old-time
Musket,” became to Buzz Windrip’s band of liberators what
“Giovanezza” was to the Italians, “The Horst Wessel Song” to the
Nazis, “The International” to all Marxians. Along with the
convention, the radio millions heard Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch’s
contralto, rich as peat, chanting:
BRING OUT THE OLD-TIME MUSKET
    Dear Lord, we have sinned, we have slumbered,
    And our flag lies stained in the dust,
    And the souls of the Past are calling, calling,
    “Arise from your sloth—you must!”
    Lead us, O soul of Lincoln,
    Inspire us, spirit of Lee,
    To rule all the world for righteousness,
    To fight for the right,
    To awe with our might,
    As we did in ‘sixty-three.

    Chorus

    See, youth with desire hot glowing,
    See, maiden, with fearless eye,
    Leading our ranks
    Thunder the tanks,
    Aeroplanes cloud the sky.
    Bring out the old-time musket,
    Rouse up the old-time fire!
    See, all the world is crumbling,
    Dreadful and dark and dire.
    America! Rise and conquer
    The world to our heart’s desire!
    “Great showmanship. P. T. Barnum or Flo Ziegfeld never puton a
better,” mused Doremus, as he studied the A.P. flimsies, as he
listened to the radio he had had temporarily installed in his
office. And, much later: “When Buzz gets in, he won’t be having
any parade of wounded soldiers. That’ll be bad Fascist psychology.
All those poor devils