Lest We Forget Part 10

AT SCHOOL NEAR THE LINES

The boys and girls in America have listened with great interest and sympathy to the many stories of children in devastated France, left fatherless, homeless, perhaps motherless, with no games or sport, indeed with no desire to play games or sports of any kind. For them, there seemed to be only the awful roar and thunder of the cannon, which might at any moment send down a bursting sh.e.l.l upon their heads. The clothes they wore and the food they ate were theirs only as they were given to them, and so often given by strangers.

In America the school children worked, earned, saved, and sent their gifts to those thousands of dest.i.tute children, and with their gifts sent letters of love and interest to their little French cousins across the seas.

Many of the letters were written in quiet, sunny schoolrooms, thousands of miles from the noise of battle. But many a letter thus written reached the hands of a child who sat huddled beside his teacher in a damp, dark cellar that took the place of the pleasant little schoolhouse he had known.

But in those cellars and hidden places, the children studied and learned as best they might, in order some day to be strong, bright men and women for their beloved France, when the days of battle should be over and victory should have been won for them to keep.

The gladness of the children when they received the letters will probably never be fully known. Perhaps it seemed to some of them like that morning on which they marched away from the school building for the last time. The sh.e.l.ls had begun to burst near them, as they sat in the morning session. Quickly they put aside their work, and listened quietly while the master timed the interval between the bursting of the sh.e.l.ls. At his order, they had formed in line for marching, and at the moment the third or fourth sh.e.l.l fell, they marched out of the school away into a cellar seventy paces off. There, sheltered by the strong, stout walls, they listened to the next sh.e.l.l bursting as it fell straight down into the schoolhouse, where by a few moments' delay, they would all have perished or been severely injured.

So, while they heard the cannon roaring, they were happy to know that their friends in America thought of them and were helping them. No one will ever realize just how much it meant to the French people to know that America was their friend, or the great joy they felt when the American soldiers marched in to take their places in the fight for France and the freedom of the world.

Odette Gastinel, a thirteen-year-old girl of the Lycee Victor Duruy, one of the schoolrooms near the front, has written of the coming of the Americans. Throughout the United States her little essay has been read, and great men and women have marveled at its beauty of thought and wording, and have called it a little masterpiece.

In the first paragraph, she tells of the great distance between the millions of men (the Germans and the Allies) although separated only by a narrow stream; and in the second, she speaks of the closeness of sympathy between France and America,--though America lies three thousand miles over the sea.

It was only a little river, almost a brook; it was called the Yser. One could talk from one side to the other without raising one's voice, and the birds could fly over it with one sweep of their wings. And on the two banks there were millions of men, the one turned toward the other, eye to eye. But the distance which separated them was greater than the s.p.a.ces between the stars in the sky; it was the distance which separates right from injustice.

The ocean is so vast that the sea gulls do not dare to cross it.

During seven days and seven nights the great steams.h.i.+ps of America, going at full speed, drive through the deep waters before the lighthouses of France come into view; but from one side to the other, hearts are touching.

It is no wonder that the great American, General Pers.h.i.+ng, stopped, in all the tumult and business of war, to write to people in America:

[Ill.u.s.tration: (hand written letter from General Pers.h.i.+ng)

Headquarters, Am. Ex. Forces.

France.

In the veins of the fatherless children of France courses the blood of heroes. Theirs is a heritage worth cheris.h.i.+ng--a heritage which appeals to the deepest sentiments of the soul. What France through their fathers has done for humanity, France through them will do again.

Save the fatherless children of France!

John J. Pers.h.i.+ng.

April 12, 1918 ]

A PLACE IN THE SUN

The history of Rome about 1500 years ago tells us of "the wild and terrifying hordes" of Huns, with ideas little above those of plunder and wanton destruction, led by Attila whose "purpose was to pillage and increase his power." They came near setting civilization back for hundreds of years, but were finally subdued. When we remember these facts, we do not wonder that the Germans are called, and probably always will be called, Huns; but another explanation is the true one.

When in 1900, a German army was embarking at Bremerhaven for China to help other nations to put down the Boxer rebellion, the German Kaiser, William II, in addressing his troops said: "When you come upon the enemy, no quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken. As the Huns under their King Attila, a thousand years ago, made a name for themselves which is still mighty in tradition and story, so may the name of German in China be kept alive through you in such a wise that no Chinese will ever again attempt to look askance at a German."

The United States helped put down the Boxer rebellion, and with other nations was paid an indemnity by China. By vote of Congress, the United States returned the money to China. Germany acted very differently, for but three years before, she had seized from China the land about Kiaochau Bay and the port of Tsingchau, as reparation for the murder of two German missionaries. Although Germany had strongly fortified this territory, j.a.pan besieged it and regained it in November, 1914.

In speaking in 1901 of Germany's then new possession in China, the Kaiser said: "In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my duty to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun's rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts." The German Crown Prince, in an introduction to a book published in 1913, said: "It is only by relying on our good German sword that we can hope to conquer the place in the sun which rightly belongs to us and which no one will yield to us voluntarily. Till the world comes to an end, the ultimate decision must rest with the sword."

These statements make clear to us how the modern Huns would win the place in the sun which they have been taught to believe rightly belongs to them.

It is possible that the Kaiser took his idea of "a place in the sun"

from a wonderful old copper engraving by the greatest of all German artists, Albrecht Durer. The engraving was made in 1513 and represents a German knight in full armor mounted upon a fine war horse, riding into a dark and narrow defile between cliffs, to reach a beautiful castle standing in the sun on a hill beyond. A narrow path runs down from the castle, which the knight can reach only by pa.s.sing through the gloomy and dangerous defile between the rocks. If he would reach his desired place in the sun, he must be afraid of nothing, even though human skulls and lizards are under his horse's feet and death and the devil travel by his side. His horse and his dog are evidently afraid, but the knight himself shows no fear as he rides forward with his "good German sword" at his side and his long spear over his shoulder. A recent German writer has said about this picture, "Every German heart will comprehend the knight who persists in spite of death and the devil in the course on which he has entered. Such a man of resolute action is not tormented by subtle doubts."

So has Germany in the World War tried to ride through the valley of death and destruction, with death and the devil always by her side, to reach a coveted place in the sun. That such a place can be attained only by force is the terribly wrong ideal that has been taught to the German people, to the children in the schools, to the adults in public meetings and in the public press, until at last they have come to believe it, and are willing to ride through the world accompanied by death and the devil if they may thus gain "a place in the sun."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEEKING A PLACE IN THE SUN _By Albrecht Durer_]

They are, as a German poet, Felix Dahn, wrote, the kith and kin of Thor, the G.o.d of might, who conquered all lands with his thundering hammer; and it is their destiny to conquer the world by "the good German sword."

This is the ideal that the Allies are fighting against. What is the ideal they are fighting for? It may also be ill.u.s.trated by a picture, but this time by a word picture written by a man long familiar with Durer's wonderful engraving. For years he had a copy of the engraving hung above his desk. As he studied it, he finally saw himself a knight riding on through the world; and he saw riding with him, not death and the devil, but two other knights. One of the knights was hideous to look upon, and rode just behind him; and one was wonderfully beautiful and strong, and rode just ahead of him. And all three rode at full speed forever and ever, the knight, who was the man himself, in the middle, always striving to outrun the knight who was behind him, and to overtake the one before him. Finally he put the thought in verse, for it seemed to him to represent the life of every human being who was free to live out his life as he would wish.

THE QUEST

A knight fared on through a beautiful world On a mission to him unknown; At his left and a little behind there rode The self of his deeds alone.

At his right and a length before sped on-- Him none but the knight might see-- A braver heart and a purer soul, The self that he longed to be.

And ever the three rode on through the world With him at the left behind; Till never the knight would look at him, Feeble and foul and blind.

Desperately on they drave, these three, With him at the right before, While the knight rode furiously after him And thought of the world no more.

Forever on he must ride on his quest And peace can be his no more, Till the one at his left he has dropped from sight And o'ertaken the one before.

Thus ages ago the three fared on, And on they fare to-day, With him at the left a little behind, The right still leading the way.

This knight seeks not a place in the sun but a change in himself, to become a better, a braver, a truer knight. Then, wherever he may be, he will find his place in the sun; and that nation whose people seek to grow wiser and better and n.o.bler will always find "the sun's rays falling fruitfully" upon them.

To win prosperity and happiness through becoming abler and better people, under a government which will do all it can to aid them, because it is "a government of the people, for the people, and by the people," is the ideal for which the Allies fight.

"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so n.o.bly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under G.o.d, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

MARSHAL JOFFRE