The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-01-16

class. My heart, too, ungalantly huddled up
in a corner and went on strike, SO that there
wasn't much blood in circulation to keep me
warm, and quite as a matter of course l got cold
feet"
In the nervous tension my scalp contracted so
that my hair felt as if it was so many pricking
needles, goose flesh writhed in creepy lines over
my body, while my spine seemed like nothing so
much as an animated icicle and my nerves were
rasped by the demon of fear, for, mind you, every
one OF those dim-limned gravestones was a po-
tential ghost that might at any instant raise its
uncanny arms and sweep awesomely out and
claim me for its own.
Did you ever pass a graveyard at night when
alone? And didn't you feel just about that way
when you did?
Much az l might wish to be a boy again, I
should not ever care to have to pass a graveyard
at night-alone.
There has been so much said and written pro
and con in discussing the tactics of the Germans
in sending their forces at the enemy in what
is known as the mass formation" that it seems
as II little could be added to the argument.
But there is a human side to this policy that
SO far has not been presented; not to my kpowl-
edge, at least.
1t is a simple phase Of the question that has
to do with the element of human nature: the
mental process Of the mass, as disclosed by tha
individual as its unit.
Why is it that the man who quakes with fear
at the approach of an impending battle quite
often, as the records show, is the one who goes
in at the charge with apparently the daredevil
'recklessness and disregard for danger that dis.
.tinguished him among his comrades as the man
.~unafraid or as being crazy with the heat"-of
battle?
However, before he attains to this degree of
courage and comes eventually to be stricken with
battle fever he must have been divorced from his
sense of fear by some process or association aside
from his conscious control Fear and tho nm
crete evidence Of bravery are seldom if ever COM
bined in any hazardous undertaking, and espe-
cially in the case where the individual faces
the enemy in battle or other mortal danger-un-
supported and alone.
And that brings us again to the weird and fear
some specters that take form in the dreadful dark,
along the silent and deserted road at the edge of
the ghost-haunted graveyard.
It is interesting, and not a little amusing, now
that I (and we are all pretty much alike in that
respect) look back over the years and coldly an
alyze the mental attitude in which under the
curtain of night l hesitatingly approached, trem-
blingly passed and thankfully left behind those
harmless and sacred villages of the dead at the
time I was an impressionable lad.
For, you see, when fortune favored me with
companions on the infrequent occasions of my
nocturnal journeys past the old graveyards, even
If it were only a small boy not yet old enough to
recognize the possibilities Of a ghost in a dusk
shrouded tombstone, my courage always retained
enough stamina 10 carry me through the OIner-
wise nerve-shredding or~deal-without having to
resort to the e~xpedient of ~whistling myself out of
breath, at any rate.
There might be Trowling ghosts over there in
the lowering dark of the somber aisles running
through the shrubs and the weeping willows
but whag fellow should be afraid of ghosts with
a faithful comrade touching elbows at his side?
However, on occasions when there was a COM
pany of us, four or six or more boys, that walked
together along the graveyard road, why, there just
simply we're no ghosts at all.
But If one Of us had by some fortuity become
separated from the main body and suddenly real
lied that he was stark alone among the momen-
tous possibilities of his ominous surroundings, his
false keyed bravado would instantly have lost its
grip and hit bottom with a PUNK.
The chances are, as a matter of fact, that he
would have been scared stih''-too stiff to get out
Of his tracks-for the moment, at least And,
quite unblushingly, / am assuming that that boy
must have been myself.
And. as for any of us to have ventured in the
circumstance to go in there alone-quite unthink-
able, / assure you.
But what, you are asking, has all this to do
with the question Of the German general war
stafrs tactics when storming a fortress or charg-
ing the battle line in sending their troops at the
enemy in close order or "Inass formation?"
Well, the man is the boy and the boy is the
man, and the mental attitude Of the soldier in
relation to battle is precisely that of the boy and
the night-Veiled graveyard.
With this difference. all boys, unless it be the
occasional exception that proves the rule, are