TWENTY YEARS HENCE

There has been a great deal said about the tragedy of the thousands of brave men who have given up their lives for the perpetuation of an ideal. Yet there has been nothing said about the tragedy of those who have made no sacrifice.

If we knew the purpose of existence, we should know the value of a human life, and how much or little the world is benefitted by the annihilation of that life in seeking tremendous goals. But since we do not know, nor even the shrewdest men, for all their cleverness, dare to guess, we cannot say what value to place on mortality, and whether it is better that men live their allotted term of three score years and ten heedless of the fall and rise of worlds, or whether it is better that men die before their time that great deeds may be accomplished. But all men who think hold a philosophy of life. And that philosophy determines their actions.

It will not make a great difference forty years from now, when most of this generation will have completed their brief course and given place to the next generation and the next, to men who are now in the fulness of life whether they met the end of existence now or at some later period in those forty years. It will make no difference at all sixty years from now, when even the most cowardly, though he board his life as a miser hoards gold, counting it repeatedly that the tale may be complete, will have died from senile decay in a feather-bed.

It will make a great difference twenty years from now. Unless the unforseen happens, within the next year, many courageous young men will be called on to pay the last tribute to their nation. Other men who, not from weakness, but by chance, having fought well and side by side with those who perish, are left unscathed by war, will have the knowledge to elevate their spirits that they shunned in now way injury or destruction because of fear, or weakness soaring into dishonor. But what of those men who now fearfully and silently, are contemplating how they may avoid, by perjury or any means that will not harm their mortal lives, the imminent danger which goes with battle? If they are alive in twenty years, will they face the memory gladly of that which they might have done, and left undone? Will they find the life they have lived so all surpassing lovely? And they, the very cowardly, will they go to meet death with more bravery or less, when the inevasible end shall come, because they failed to seek death out where brave men fall within the fight?

"We would not die in that man's company.

That fears his fellowship to die with us. . .

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon St. Crispin's day!"