The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-04-22
AN ANSWER TO QUESTION,
 WHY MUST MY BOY GO?"

T used to think when as Q boy I stud jed history in school that men were great est when they were most active physi- cally Generals in battle were great be- cause they hurried to and fro on the battlefield But since that time I have | come to learn that the greatest moments of mans life are the moments when he is most still; when not an eyelash moves or muscle quivers. Perhaps at sometime in the past you have heard the shrielS of the frebel in the little town in which you lived, and you have | rushed pell-mel along with all the other inhabitants of the village to the confIa- grafton, and when you arrlved you foun1 circle had been formed around the burning building and whitened faces full Of tragedy and mute helplessness were turned toward a second or third or per haps fourth story window, wherein stood a mother with 8 babe in her arms, with
 flame and smoke hiding her occasionally from view A deathly stiffness had set tied down upon all the excited tumult.
 and the majesty of silence calls aloud for a man. louder than any iron-throated f1rebell could call. And then as the si- lence still relgns and the crowd waits, suddenly man steps out from the throng "a citizen of the village of whom no one had ever taken any very particular notice before. He goes straight toward the ladder, and while the people with eager faces and anxiously beating hearts look on, he mounts the ladder, disap- pears a moment within the window re- turns with the mother and babe in his arms and then slowly, round by round, deScends and deposits his burden safely upon the ground. And then loud and prolonged cheer goes up for such hero.
 But there is one thing I want to tell you about that crowd-people of your own home town perhaps-there was not one of them with face bedeviled enough to peek it over the shoulder of a neighbor and ask: Was he a Methodist or a Bap- tist? No. Herosm does not depend on such para phernalia, and the world does not ask whether such a man is a dem- ocrat or republican or even a pacifst.
 What I'm trying to get at is that the heroic feat in that mans fife was not when he was going up the ladder, not when he took the mother and babe in his arms and with them climbed safe ly to the ground, but the supreme and sublime and splendid moment when he was greatest, when he rose to the pin nacle of his divinity, was just the mo- ment before he went up the ladder, when not an eyelash moved or muscle quiv- cred, it was during the stiffness of the crowd, it was while the mother and babe waited for deliverance and the silence cried out: Oh, for man.!
 And during that brief interval I can imagine something very much like this took place in that mans soul:
 Away down in the secret chamber of his innermost being, in a council room curtained with rich tapestry, in stately dignity at the head of a table sat the God-part of himself. Opposite, stood for a moment Mephistopheles, who, with cyn- ical smile and folded arms, argued that a man who tried to save somebody else's life is very likely to lose his own life. Suddenly Mephistopheles disappears, for enters Memory with the odor and charm of lavender and old lace, and as she swept into the room the vibra tions of her loveliness stirred the water in the gold en urns And just as she turned to speak the man is still no longer. He moves straight-straight toward the lad der. And why?
 Tn the face of Memory he recognized the face of his mother. And, so, my that all heroic deeds have their birth in stiffness, but in that stiffness always resides an angel. It may be a mother, 1t may be a wife, it may be sweet heart-but whoever 1t is, she it is who keeps the temple fit, she it is who re- plenishes the golden urns with holy wa ter, she it is who keeps the fires alight under the incense burners, she it is whose face when recognized starts us heroically towards deeds of daring.
 "Well, nobody says Amen but as 1t is fairly good place to say something, I will say just what every man and every boy here is thinking, Thank God for angels in the stiffness
 And these are the heroic deeds of our lives as well-these moments when moth- CTS are asking on street cars and in their homes and at the altar of prayer. Oh, God, why is it that my boy must go?' '