His father had cut him to the heart “Yes,” he said. “He is the same God.”
He turned then and left his father’s house. This was how it was on that day, and when he came to his own house Ippun met him at the gate. Her round frostbitten face was bright.
“Master,” she said, “you have a girl in your house, your daughter.”
Yes, Induk had become pregnant again, though neither of them had rejoiced. The times were too hard for children, and it was enough to have Liang, their son. He grew big for his age, a large child, benign, composed and yet radiant. He walked at eight months and talked before he was a year old. Yul-han too often forgot how young he was and spoke to him and considered him as a person. The child loved his father and was happy in his presence, yet when he was away he amused himself easily with whatever he found.
Above all, however, the child loved his grandfather, and Il-han found such comfort in this as he had not expected to find again in his lifetime.
“Liang, my grandson,” he told Yul-han, “repays us for every loss I have suffered.” And again he said, his voice solemn, “Liang, my grandson, must never be punished. Whatever he does is with good purpose and with understanding too deep for us.”
It was only natural, then, that Yul-han and Induk felt it enough to have one such child. Often, indeed, they doubted whether they knew how to be good parents, wise enough, learned enough, for Liang as he grew to manhood. Again and again Yul-han had been unwilling to think of another child to be born, even while he saw Induk’s body swelling as months passed.
Nor did this unwillingness change now as he looked down into the small wrinkled face of his newborn daughter. In silence he knelt beside the bed upon which Induk lay. She looked at him with her delicate air of sadness and pleading, her narrow high-cheeked face as pale as ivory and her eyes long and dark. She had a tender mouth and a high smooth forehead, the combination just this side of beauty.
“Why have we dared to have this child and a girl, too?” Her voice was sorrowful and low.
He knew what she meant. In times like this, in the midst of hunger and gloom and lost freedom, how could they protect a daughter? He had felt his own heritage was unhappy enough, a country beset with quarrels and divisions and threatened war, but at least the country had still belonged to his people. Now they were no better than serfs, and the only ones who were not serfs were traitors who had sold themselves to the invaders. Only the Christians had solidarity in their hope that some day God, in whom they placed their single trust, would deliver them out of the hand of the enemy.
“We must make her childhood as happy as we can,” he said at last. “Let us at least give her something to remember.”
Induk did not reply and taking her long narrow hand, work-worn as it was, and warming it between his own hands, he noticed for the first time how different their hands were, his strong and square, but well shaped as were the hands of his people. Then he laid her hand gently on the coverlet and took the tiny clenched fist of his daughter into his palm. “Perhaps when she is a woman the world will be better and our country free,” he said. “Let us hope, for without hope we die.”
Spring passed into summer. Across the eastern seas all knew that young Americans were being called from their homes to become soldiers. The Japanese morning paper reprinted the notice:
ATTENTION
Register Tuesday, June 5th
On Tuesday June 5th every male between the ages of 21 years and 31 years, whether a citizen of the United States or not, must register at the nearest voting place in his ward. Registration does not mean liability to military service unless you are a citizen of the United States or have taken out first citizen papers.
The American President himself issued a proclamation which was also reprinted in the Japanese papers:
CALL TO ARMS
Now therefore I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, do proclaim and give notice to all — and I do charge that every male person of the designated ages is written on these lists of honor—
The great sonorous words rolled across the world and announced to the serfs and the slaves and to all who were not free, and to Yul-han himself, that those male persons whose names were to be written on the lists of honor would deliver not only his own people from the danger of invaders, but those who had been and were invaded.
In the church the missionary raised his hairy arms to heaven and asked God’s blessing on America and on the American President and from the thousands of the suppliant congregation of Koreans there came forth like thunder after lightning a great Amen.
… They were meeting in the church at night. In the night, when the lamps of the city were put out and the rulers slept, the Christians stole to the church and sitting in the darkness, listened to Yul-han who read aloud beside a single candle, hidden by a wooden shelter. What he read was news of the war halfway across the world. Japan had seized territories in China; yes, ships were sinking to the bottom of the sea; yes, young men were dying by the thousands, and then by the millions. Britain alone had five million young men dead; yes, but Woodrow Wilson was speaking again to the peoples of the world and the Christians crowding the churches in Korea listened:
“‘The military-masters of Germany who proved also to be the masters of Austria-Hungary, their tool and pawn, have regarded the smaller states as their natural tools and instruments of domination.’”
A long low moan came from the people. “We are also tools and instruments of domination!”
Yul-han read on. “‘Filling the thrones of the Balkan States with German princes, developing sedition and rebellion, their purpose is to make all the Slavic peoples, all the free and ambitious nations of the Baltic peninsula, subject to their will!’”
The people chanted in the same long moan, “We — we are the subjects of others’ will!”
Yul-han lifted his head, his voice rang out, dangerous with hope. “Hear further the words of Woodrow Wilson! ‘We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Baltic peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right and the opportunity to make their own lives safe from the dictation of foreign courts!’”
“Make us safe, too, Woodrow Wilson! Make us safe from the dictation of foreign courts,” the people chanted.
All over the world such words were sent by the magic wireless. All that Wilson said was sent, and set in the news of each day’s fighting were the messages of Wilson, put on the air as they were spoken and within twenty-four hours heard everywhere, from the mountains of South America to the mountains of Korea. Three hundred newspapers in the vastness of China received the news and told it to hundreds more in the surrounding countries until the voice of Woodrow Wilson was known everywhere and all that he said was believed.
In the midst of winter, as the war wore on, when snow lay two feet deep in the streets burying the frozen dead under its white cover, Yul-han came home one day from his school. It was evening and his mother was waiting for him.
“Come to your father,” she said, “he is weeping like a child and I cannot stop him, nor will he tell me why he weeps.”
Yul-han went at once across the courtyard and into his father’s library. There he found his elder walking up and down the room, sobbing aloud, and clutching against his bosom a crumpled newspaper. Yul-han caught him by the arms and held him.
“Father, what is it that makes you weep?”
Il-han freed himself, he flung out the newspaper. “See this!” he cried. “Fourteen Points — Wilson’s Fourteen Points—”