The daily progressive-miner., 1919-03-06

ciassed as beyond physical endurance.
 However, we ali staggered in at the finish, walking like men in their sleep,
 weaving from one side of the road to
 the other, and with the totally ex-
 hausted being supported by those
 more able.
 Moreover, it has made many men
 more religious, though that is not just the word l want to use there. What |
 mean is that this life has given many
 opportunities for little acts of kind ness and self-sacrifice, (that is the word | should have used. self-sacri- fice.) It has been interesting to see how at first many men were rather ashamed to be caught doing some thing kind, or giving up something in
 return for the happiness of generosity.
 Later, however, the principle of shar-
 ing everything with the other fellow custom of saluting officers; really be-, came nstinctive. As for religion in itself, all 1 can say is that no man can go through one battle, with it's ev- er-occurring miracles Of courage and self-abnegation, where one juegles with death at every step, without com ing back with an ron-bound faith in Divine Guidance.
 Lastly. every man Jack of us has given more time to serious thought than we ever did before in our lives. For a little instance, let me tell you that last night l listened to two men in hunks near mine. one of hem an uneducated Russian from the Ukraine, and the other an illiterate coal-Wagon driver from Philadelphia, discussing the underlying principles of this war, and trying to see why it was neces- sary for so-caled civilized nations to take up arms against one another. AL though could have improved upon their diction and grammar, was aSHdHleQ Lo dofIit ttiat titOJ "oAO SS ing deeper into many questions than | had ever done, and were showing that they had worked out phisosophes of life to a much finer point than ! had ever attempted.
 Many of us have an opportunity to focus our mental lens, newly clarified by cur experiences over here, on our lives "befo' the war;" and have been rendered capable of seeing that, some of our ideas and ideals were wrong, and l feel safe in saying that more "aood resolutions" have been formed by Americans in France since the war started than were made on all the New Years Days of the past ten years. There is one salient difference. though and that Is that the proportion osl these resolutions which is carried out is going to be far greater than the pro- verbal New Years ones. Therefore, 1 taking it all in~ all, feel safe in saying that l expect you will find me greatly changed when you next see me Not physically, for outside of couple of scars and pair of frosted ears bear no physical signs of my trip, but mentally, for l believe will have shed a little of the queerness with which 1 did most of my thinking and feeling, and have become just a normal, ordin- ary creature, giving little more thought to things worth while, and into life with little more definite aim.
 No doubt you will have some sort of a (Christmas) celebration, though oothina like the old ones of Seventy sixth Street. However, please present my greetings to any of my friends with whom you happen to be on that day. You will probably see M.. MT. E., Uncle w., and others that know, so just tell them that l will be