Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-06-04
ADDRESSED TO TwENTY.ONE
Lines Written for the Million Young Men
Who Have Reached the Age Of Mill.
tary Service Since June 5, 1917

TT is becoming almost pleasure to
| fight Germany, because Germany is so
unutterably mean When a man hap
pens to be your competitor in trade YOU
do not poison him and mutilate his chill
drcn and dynamite his house and muir
der him in the night. Germany does.
She has applied such methods not to one
man, but to nations of men. In the Ber-
| lin code a man fails disgracefully who
doesn't use every advantage to get what
| he desires. SO the Hun shines IN ten-to-
one charges, in his tCor on ,Comen and
children, on hospitals, churrhcs and m
! protected ships.
i there some deerer motive that has
caused the youth of the world to fling
it-elf singing to France and battle? You
| sh ould know-whether the greatest ad-
venture in history calls you or not. Is
| it because the bleak doctrine of an insane
enemy opposes most violently the things
that look best at weIty-one-chivalry
| and decency, hope and aspiration, faith,
gentleness, imagination and purity of
| heart? In France all gentle things and
| places and people have suffered most
cruelty under the German heel.
Loneliness never fails to draw German
fire. Is this why youth so often aches
to set into the struggle?
In any event. this war is going to be
hard. But it is going to be glorious, as no
war ever was before. 1t is easy to
imagine that a man who writes his name
for a draft board tomorrow will do so
with some confusion of feeling, with a
sense almost of separation already en-
dured. That part of it isn't easy. To
| look into eyes that will weep when you
go isn't easy. 1t never was. But there
are compensations.
The sense of separation from familiar
things is not all illusion. The American
| who takes up arms in this day moves
automatically to a new sort of citizen
ship in a new community that has no
boundaries and that is not limited by
any national tradition. The Allied
| armies are nation in themselves ont
! H,2n a mission so high 'oith motives so
rroud that men hare stopped trying to
| describe them in Uords. We are now
| fighting a war of defense. But we are
| fighting for the future and for all time.
There were millions in it before us.
! And tired men everywhere in the world
who are holding back the consuming fire.
muddy chaps in listening posts, tired
crews at machine guns will be stronger
when you write your name as one with
them. And that is but the least of it.
There is France, smiling through her
matchless torment with all the strange
| and moving implications that shine from
her name-France that is not so much
nation as cry of eternal truth ringing
through the darkness of these wild days
to touch and challenge the souls of men.
With one hand France shields her mil
| lion orphans and with the other she
holds back the hurricane from half a
world. You shall hare the lore and the
allegiance of France'
That in itself is much indeed But
France is more than a battlefield. The
men of your own blood will be there in
millions, one with the great-hearted men
| from almost every other civilized nation,
whose odd experience it is to have had
their souls cleansed of every desire but
the wish to be brave and to be noble.
And in France there were men without
number who smiled at death, even when
it came terribly upon them. There were
others who fought through loneliness and
desolation and at the last quietly insulted
their executioners in the instant of the
volley. In France there are the women
who looked up from their murdered chill
dren and stood upright and stiffened
their shoulders and folded their arms
and sang a passionate defiance as
sullen enemy plodded into their villages
though they could not see for the tears
that blinded them.
There are towns and cities of harassed
and homeless children in France. Their
mothers have held them close in the
night and whispered of men such as you
who were coming to help them. And
these little children shall look up, if ever
you march in France, revercntly, as they
are accustomed to look for the gifts and
wonders of heaven. All these and such
as these, the brave and the humble, the
living and the dead, are citizens of the
new nation that is yours. They too, are
your own people now. They are your
brothers and your sisters.
War, you will see, can be glorious.
And all that is best in the past and in the
present and in the future is upon your
side. For Germany could not win were
she to overrun the world. Her sins have
been such that the mere memory of then,
will torture the minds of successive
generations. Thoughts of what Ger
many has done would blaze and burn in