Omaha daily bee., 1919-06-03
Getting Back to Civil Life
From the PHILADELPHIA Ledger.

The men in Americas service in war often
looked on their return to Gods country" and
to the peaceful old life they knew much as lost
souls in hell-according to theologians of past
times-were supposed to gaze at the gates OF
heaven. They could think of no happiness
greater than that of doffing the trappings OF
war for the habiliments of peace and going back
to work a the good old job.
Now that they are back, with all their de-
served honors thick upon them, and now that
the process of rehabilitation is every day re-
turning many of them to civilian costume and
custom, it is not the exceptional but the general
experience for man to find himself lost i'll at
ease-restive and positively uncomfortable in
the life of peace, to which he thought he would
slide back so easily.
His work brings him within four walls again
out of the open. To be sure the out-of-doors
was often made intensely horrible for the SOL
der by the damnable contraptons of the Ger
man. He could not retire to his dugout secure
against the gas or famesprojector: But at the
times when it was not poisoned or blackened the
air was fresh and the life was as free as mill
tary duty permitted.
In the camps at home the bugles blew for
all sorts of things at all sorts of hours, and a
man had to turn out for a great variety of ex-
ercises not when he liked, but in concert with a
mighty host who must synchronize their move
ments.
That not liberty. 1t nothing like
liberty. The men concerned were Temporarily
giving up their liberty that they might gain
liberty for all the rest of us. At home or abroad,
individual prerogative and initiative were sacrl-
feed for the greater good of the greater num-
Der that came of concerted action.
But whether in cantonment here or in the
field over there, the were members Of a
great machine of quick action and alert de-
clson, which to great extent did their think
ing for them. They were in the groove of
routine They did not come by their daily
bread by their own business. They got about
$50 month and their keep" in place usually Of
the very much larger sum which they had made
for themselves by their own enterprise. Now
that they have returned there is nothing auto
matte, nothing self-determining, about the days
regimen. They are thrown entirely upon their
own resources, and no longer upon those of
vast, complex military establishment mechanic
ally functioning to make provision for them
justment No wonder that many men feel
strangers though at home There is curtain
of blood and fire and hurting shells between
the present life and the past between today and
yesterday. 1t is part of your proper concern
and mine to ease the transition as much as we
can, to make our sympathy felt, to hold the
doors open, to be little indulgent to those who
have stepped out of world of sharp command
and instant obedience to our, easy-going, u1l-
imaginative and even unsympathetc sphere that
humming the tune "The War is Over" goes
blithely about its appointed tasks SO soon for
getting its hero worship and the wounded men.
Surely after all they did for US we must be
mindful of them and try in all ways to reconcile
them to their present surroundings.