Lincoln High School - Lincolnian Yearbook (Tacoma, WA)

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28 THE LINCOLNIAN ' because that was what every one else did. Had l been born in Germany l would have been found in the front trench fighting all that was best in the world in fear of death and longing for peace, because that was what most Germans were doing. It made me think of thaht strong-faced ob- jector to war who l had seen many months before go quietly to a ewenty- year prison term, to a position of social ostracisrn because he was man enough to follow the dictates of his own conscience. The officer said he was a coward and treated as they would any ordinary criminal. But what would have been the story had there been a few thousand more heroes like this coward in Germany, or a few thousand less heroes like the cowards who rushed to a miser- able death upon the bleeding hosts civilization because they were afraid to do otherwise? The trouble is not that we have too many men of con- science in America but too few in Germany. Few who have attacked these men claimed that they were not moral, but contended that they were not practical: but practicality has not always proved a good judge of ethics. When we have a world full of people who will not kill each other because they are told to do so then we may look forward to the itme forseen by Robert Service: When Hans and Fritz and Bill and me Will click our mugs in fraternity And the brotherhood of labor shall be The brotherhood of peace. ln my days of convalescence I worked long on my salvation of man. l built a Utopia, l civilized humanity, I brought to earth the end of wars and the brotherhood of man. But when my carefully erected air-castles confronted reality, when my passion- ately soaring hopes were .arrested from their elevated Flight and brought to cool their heels in the dark, frosty chambers of cold facts, l often felt that progress moved in a vehicle more decripit than the proverbial snail. When my faith weakened, my en- thusiasm chilled, l would throw the political economy and the shade of my tired eyes aside and walk out under the open sky 'to be refreshed. Here the night breeze cooled my weary brain and the quiet stars lifted the petty cares of this small world from my shoulders and their beauty entered my soul to be food and drink. Then revived and again hopeful l would return to my den, but now l turn to my literature, to the prophets of hope, and climb with them, the best minds of the ages, to the spotless, snow-crowned heights of inmortal poetry or to dig deep into the rich mines of divine philosophy. Oh! l know if it were not for literature our mad-houses would be over-flowing. So after the battle we have strag- gled home again. We have accom- plished all that armies may do and must leave to the honesty of states- men and the decency of public opin- ion the task of making a world that is fit to live in and safe for mankind. lf men do not wake up after this bomb- shell l shall have to say with Mark Twain, that l am ashamed of the human race. It is our work ot move ong if we fail. on our heads fall the results. Only the future will tell what our ffeorts have accomplished.

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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

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Ad Captandum Vulgus fAn attempt, By ELMER WRIGHT The fiower of love has leisure for growing, Music is heard in the evening breeze, The mountain stream laughs loud in its Hnwing, And poesy wakes by the eastern seas. HE arrival and departure of the steamer at the little port of Koholalele was always an oc- casion for the Konakas to indulge in a holiday: the men would come in from the plantations, dressed in their best, and the women would be re- splendent in gay calico mother hub- bards. Apart from the various crowd of merrymakers at the wharf stood a little group of a dozen or so white people-missionaries and planters. Yes, l know just how it feels, Miss Jardin, spoke Mrs. johns, the wife of the missionary. When I landed here with my husband l would have given anything to see my mother back in the states. There was a lump in my th'roat that was choking me. l couldn't swallow-the lump would neither go up nor down. The young woman addressed was about twenty-five years of age, with dark hair, blue eyes, and a nose slightly turned up: admirable teeth and a complexion to which the tropical sun was threatening speedy ruin. Withal, Alife Jardin was a very vivacious-appearing young woman, very generous with her smiles-Alice's smile was indeed bewitching-in fact, as some of the bookkeepers said later, it produced the same effect as tasting the lotus Hower. Two weeks later. Scene: The veranda of the mis- sionary's cottage. Mrs. Rogers, her peice, and one of the young men from the office are conversing upon the porch. Jack Cray is a very en- gaging young man whose father has sent him down here from the states to discipline him. He has quite won the graces of the minister, Mr. johns, and his wife, in the year he has been in the island, and as Mrs. Rogers notes, of Alice herself in the scant two weeks they have been on the island. K Jack is praising in very flowery phrases the virtues of the island, and he tells of the glorious sunsets and the moon in the summer months and the enchantment of a tropical night -a moon, a gentle Pacific breeze, and the mournful, melodious sounds of the not far distant Kanakas sing- ing before their huts. How much like the old planta- tion days of my girlhoodn Mrs. Rogers interrupted. lf there were only banjoes instead of ukeleles and uncle jake bringing out nice cool- Stop!-enough! Do you want to bring down upon us the wrath of Mrs. John's? just suppose she over- heard you speak of intoxicants this way -jack was the interrupter. Mr. Gray, isn't this that awful man whom we saw yesterday and you told me About later? asked Alice. For a figure came up the pathway toward the house and then walked toward the trio on the porch. jack arose and lit a lamp which was suspended from the ceiling of the porch. By its rays they saw a gaunt man with shaggy beard and hair streaked with gray and a sun-browned face. The man seemed wilder than any of the savages yet seen by any- one on the island, with his uncovered matted head, his ragged shirt open at the neck, and sleeves torn to the shoulders. His trousers were ab-