Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1915-03-09
By w1LHELM LAllszUs


They are climbing on to my knees
now, and give them ride-"this -
how we ride to war"
But they twine their soft arms
round my neck until at length l put
them down on the floor: Nov 60
to mummy
And now
A new picture. Flow very plainly
see it. We have gone out Of Sun
day afternoon beyond the suburbs,
gone out with bag and baggage. I
see the green fields bright and fair.
and see the two Riddles bright and
fair. They are rolling about in the
grass and chasing the butterflies, and
laughing up at me. and Growing with
delight as they run after the ball I
have thrown down for them to play
with. And the sky stretches above us
in its Sabbath blue. and so confidently
as II It all could never come to an end.
And Dora smiles at me with quiet
eyes.
Then I como back with start
feel my knapsack chahng my back-I
feel my ride-I see the dead at my
feet again
My God! how can these things be?
How can these two worlds be 80 ter
ribly close to each other?
And we pass on through this first
spring crop Of dead bodies. No one
says word. No one has a joke.
How surreptitiously the others glance
aside when some corpse, all too gro
tesquely mangled. meets their eyes.
wonder what is passing through
their brains?
Workingmen, tradesmen, artisans,
and agricultural laborers that's what
they are for the most part. They
themselves have as yet never smelled
powder, nor ever been under fire.
That, suppose, is the reason why
they have suddenly become so dumb.
Then a voice beside me says some
thing abruptly, and It seems as II the
voice rebounded hollow from the ST.
lence. -,
"The stuns1s laying about here same
as muck"
That was my yokel beside me.
Then he, too. relapses into silence.
and feel as IL could read behind
their shy eyes, as II all that is going
onqin these. dull brains had suddenly
become clear asgdaylight.
They're all drawn from that other
world, where life kissed US and coz
ened caressingly round our bodies.
You have brought US up as human be-
ings. That we have been human no
longer counts. Life and love no longer
count; flesh and blood no longer
count: only gore and corpses count
for anything now. How we used to
tremble in that other world, when a
naked human life was even in danger.
How we rushed into the burning house
to drive away the death for which
some poor old paralyzed woman
craved. How we plunged into the
wintry river to snatch starved beg
gar brat from the quiet waters. We
would not even suffer a man to creep
away out Of life by stealth while we
looked on. WeEcut down suicides at
their last sob, and hustled them back
into life. OF our mercy we set up
half-rotted wastrels with new bodies:
with pills, elixirs and medicines, with
herbalists, professors and surgeons.
with cauteries, amputations and cleo
trotherapy, we famed the pickering
life and fed the sunken flame with
oxygen and radium and all the ele-
ments. There was nothing greater,
nothing more sacred than life. Life
was everything to us. was for US the
most precious possession on earth.
And here lies that most precious OF
possessions-here 1t Is lying wasted
and used up-spurned as the dust by
the roadside-and we are marching
alonS over it as over dust and stones.
ITO Be Contjrued.)