Lincoln High School - Lincolnian Yearbook (Tacoma, WA)

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26 THE. LINCOLNIAN to know but that some other man's religion, the Hindoo's belief in rein- carnation or any other creed might be the truth and my own involuntarily accepted ideas far astray? Might not all these religious doctrines be merely man-made confessions of his own weakness and a resignation to all philosophy by attributing the infinite, inconceivable universe to be the work of a god to relieve his own mind of the task of accounting for its exist- ance? That night, as l lay there with my face to the stars staring into the dark- ness alone with my thoughts, l made the change from the thoughtless boy into a philosopher. Not that l wish to boast: l merely wish to say that l became a man, for all men are phi- losophers. Then the great questions, doubts, and fears that come to all men poured in upon me and l strove long to answer and to understand that which may only be answered by long experience and thought and possibly then only by resignation. My brain worked with feverish clearness and speed and my mind leaped up follow- ing new paths, climbing heights where it had never explored before, ever plunging in and bringing forth from the inner apartments of my brain the plunder of all former reading with amazing accuracy. But again and again it was baffled as if facing the unanswerable, again leaping up in a wild frenzy to know, until this Mind seemed to possess my whole person, gripping me with a great strength, amazing me by its violence of desire like a great chained monster beating at its fetters and prison walls until they rocked in its madness to free its self and know the truth. This was a new experience for me and there was something wonderful about it that held me spellbound like a child with a new plaything. l had never had time to realize before in my rush for a good time and seeing life that there was within myself the most marvelous creation in the Universe, the mind of a man, for it is really a part of the Great Supreme, whatever that may be. As these new thoughts crowded fast on each other through my mind they filled me with a sudden wild exhilaration and my spirit seemed to rise the prison of darkness and seek divine joy among the clouds of light. l wanted to live-live to think, to create everything all anew for myself and find what l really was and what l thought. l wanted to learn more and to bring the spoils of great read- ing to feed this strong new appetite. Then l knew that l was afraid. Life had a new luster for me now and l wanted to live to remember this great war that l might some day tell of it to my children. Even in my former doze l had realized that the world was beginning to move in a new orbit: that the great things were happening now, greater and swifter events would come soon. The whole world was seething, struggling for a new birth, a renaissance and even in this day of slaughter: Bliss was it that dawn to be alive. But to be young was Heaven. Was it to be thus awakened and then to die? The thought of the trenches and the approaching struggle with grim death chilled me and make me shudder. There was none of the glory of war here: it was just numb- ing, terrible realityg dying like corn- ered rats in a hole. l have heard of and even talked to me who claim not to be afraid in battle, who, according to their story, like to fight. l know of but two pos- sibilities where human beings may be unafraid in modern warfare: one is lacking the necessary intelligence to realize the conditionsg the other, being so weary of life that death, even in

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THE LINCOLNIAN 25 aid of the American forces the tide had been checked and that we had fallen heir to the task of starting it back again. Well l remember the night before we first went into action-there could be no mistaking such preparation. It was to be our great experiment and we hoped that we would not fail. Up to this time l had been a man of my only little reflection. For months thought had been live and to take my chances, face death with a laugh: if l came through all well and good, if l went west it could not be helped and l would not be alone. But as l lay there in the darkness and quietude of the night my carefully erected stoicism of feeling and immunity to thought began to melt and give way before the onrush of new emotions. -My mind reached out and in an instant spanned the five thousand miles between myself and home. l thought of my mother and the care- free smile died on my lips. There are those who invest their time and efforts, their very lives in the making of money or in some similar pursuit until it becomes all that they care for: but my mother had devoted and consecrated herself to the raising of her boys. Her willingness and desire to sacrifice her own pleasures and comforts for their benefit was due to the fact that she lived not for herself but for them and to see them happy and well supplied with every advant- age possible. If some cause should arise which would call the men who live to gather riches to give up their lives' accumulation for a principle, most of them would fail to come for- ward to the sacrifice and if forced would surely raise a sorry din: but my mother had given what she had spent her life in carefully molding and more. Many people can see what they have worked for vanish and stoop and build it up with worn- out tools but she had not only given her life's produce but her ideal: and when the ideal is gone life is a blank. l looked also at my father, he who had never been so eternally youthful, so cheerful, and full of hopes. But he was growing old and in his hair there were streaks of silver and as l looked his shoulders seemed to stoop a trifle more, his gray head bowed while all the careful plans and specu- lations which we were to finish on my return faded dim, and l choked and shut my eyes on a little house- hold shrouded in the terrible shadow of gloom. As l lay there with the far-off din of the high explosives rolling to my feverish ear it seemed to me that l was a coward going laughing into battle and possibly to an easeful death while my old parents suffered many times the pangs of death and stood alone, weakened, to fight the great battles of life that should have been mine. Then my mind's eye turned in up- on myself and l began to wonder if l were really what I had believed my- self to be. Was l ready to face death? Had l lived long enough in this life to be ready to leave it now? Was l as carefree and fearless as l had tried to make myself believe? Then my thought drifted to religion and l wondered what my religion really was. As I have said l had been a man of little contemplation and tho during all my life l had been trained along the orthodox path it had been merely a form with me and had had no deep effect, as is true, l believe, in many more cases than we usually suspect. Suddenly the question presented itself: How do I know but that this thumb-wom re- ligion of ours may be but a form of revised mythology, for while we are trained to believe one, yet stripped of its halo of undoubtability one seems as absurd as the other. How was I

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THE LINCOLNIAN 27 this form, has no terrors for one. ln the first case the individual would be merely an object of pity, in the second, he is really a coward, for the great battle of life has so broken and cowed his spirit that he shows white and flies in despair to his last refuge -death. But for a man in all the strength and glory of youth, with high plans for the future and with a great en- thusiastic desire to live and progress, and see ideals completed: for him to go down into the Valley of the Great Shadow by sheer force of spirit and face a thousand forms of loathsome death, takes courage. Somehow that night passed and I arose the next morning in a strangely excited condition, intensified by an absolutely sleepless night. After six hours of the most terrible suspense conceivable, we went into action. At last our trial had come and we did not fail in the hour of great need. For four days we threw ourselves upon the enemy's lines and sent him reeling back toward his own territory. At the end of that time we were given a short rest and then moved to Soissons, where l was -gassed, Rheims, Verdun and finally to the Argonne Forest, the remembrance of which is etched upon my brain with terrible clearness. Here, while going over in my last service, l was shot through the chest and both legs by machine-gun fire. During alliof my experience under fire l was highly conscious of the great strain under which we all acted. ln the most ap- palling positions l seemed like one in a dream, scarcely knowing what was happening. My Argonne adventure nearly suc- ceeded in dispatching me West and l lay for several weeks on the border- land between the living and the dead. But even when the doctors despaired of me my constitutional strength and toughness of fibre, gained in the hill- lands of the West, came to my rescue. ln the hospital again my newly-ac- quired thoughts came to me once more and again l lay wakeful thru long nights, when sleep should have quieted me, and let my stimulated mind work over-time in the develop- ment of new ideas. l had seen something of war and its disastrous effect upon the life and health, the intelligence and the morals of nations, and was convinced that it could accomplish very little. It could stop the German hordes, but that was all. War can notlmake the world safe for democracy, war can not make the world a decent place to live in, war can not make an end to wars. War breeds hatred, hatred breeds war. When any group of per- sons grow so sure of the truth of their views that they must force them on others by means of arms, just then another group, equally sure of their honesty and justice, grow tired of the normal means of accumulating power and spreading doctrine and resort to arms: the liberal progressive forgets that evolution is the only sure way and resorts to revolution: the conservative, unwilling to stand on the judgment of an over-wrought public, hold to the old order not by justice but by the arms they control. War destroys the riches which have been slowly accumulated thru the ages, it kills the best of manhood and depraves the mental and moral ua- tures of the participants, changing them from sensible, cool and kindly crazy, chauvenistic, animal by hatred and passion. lt moral nor practical. War people to controlled is neither never was moral, but for a long time men have delusion that war was practical! What fools ye mortals bel been laboring under the What we need is men to think for themselves. l had followed my course