Note 14 — XIII. JIMMIE HIGGINS

Sinclair appears, under the name of Sanford Peyton, as a pro-war Socialist in a novel by the present writer, An Old Man’s Folly, which deals with American pacifists in war-time. Sinclair, in reviewing the novel, remarks that the war-time opinions attributed to him are correct, and adds: “I can only tell him that reading them over now makes me very unhappy, and I find myself with a continual impulse to get into jail with the rest of his characters! I have had almost ten years to think the thing over, and what I have to report is that if at the beginning of 1917 I had known what I know to-day, I would have opposed the war and gone to jail with the pacifist radicals.” Later in the review he remarks of the Presidential idealist in whom he believed at the time: “I cannot forgive him; it is not merely that he made a fool of himself, but he made a fool of me!”