Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-04-04
WHY THE IRON DIVISION
BRINGS MORE THAN VICTORY
II UpIif,s the Clean Code of the Soldier 10
Challenge Leaders in Civil Life

turning SOlultl' Ahu'i VI ~ 10 "''''>SS'
Most of it is futile.
There has been no one to rise and beg
us, for Gods sake, to stop chattering
about the soldiers vote, about the uses
that can be made of him and about the
imaginary mysteries of his mind, in
order that there may be an interval for
reflection on the challenge that he brings,
by implication, to the lazy and timorous
minds of his home country.
The men returning from overseas rep
resent the best that is in us-the best
that is in the world. So does their serv-
ice If little of their courage, a little of
their unselfishness and thousandth part
of their sacrifice could be duplicated in
the civil life of the nation all the woes
and worries that cloud the minds of busi-
ness men and statesmen these days would
disappear overnight.
For it is in the safe places at home,
where delusions still persist to make peo-
pie believe that rational eXstepce is pos
sible without a sense of obligation and
honor and decent spiritual code, that
life can often be more sordid than it is
on battlefelds.
1t remains for soldiers like ours to
find a hard way to the light of better
knowledge. Rich and poor were among
them, but no barriers remain. They
were friendly in a common cause. They
were unafraid of strange places, of un-
seen things, of risks and sacrifices and
realities.
They didn't lie They didn't pretend.
They lived according to an essential rule
which provides that you must help the
man next to you at all hazards and share
his trouble and his perils though the
heavens fall.
Before long the Iron Division will be
reviewed in Philadelphia. Any politician
who wants to save his soul, any man in
business who happens to feel befogged
in new confusion, could not do better
than look to their colors as you look to
light in darkness.
The members of the Iron Division were
plain men when they went away. Now
they are legend in a strange language.
Songs will be made about them by the
strangers they befriended.
They were fearless and they served
others. Theirs is an ancient code. 1t
never fails. At time like this it should
touch the Imagination of every man
whose concern it is to give the world
new equilibrium.
For no laws, no restrictions, no checks
and balances and adjustments fixed
solely upon materialistic concepts can
satisfy a world that seeks peace and
contentment.
What civilization needs, and needs
badly, is the viewpoint of these Ameri-
cans who found in the weight of great
responsibility a new sympathy and new
| understanding. Soldiers in the army
! sloughed off old delusions. They es-
caped the mean and petty concerns that
degrade and confuse existence for many
| of US. They became men.
The tragedy of the world nowadays is
that all the forces opposed to the Ameri-
can policy in struggle for supremacy
in world politics, whether they represent
A frank toryism or parade in the guise
of the ultra radicals, are essentially ma
terialistic in their aims and their phi
losophies. Hatred and suspicion is the
natural consequence everywhere, for
deep in human consciousness there is a
fixed longing for decency and fair play.
It may be for this reason. perhaps,
that the world loves a soldier. The
soldier represents that quality in human
nature that can carry man out of him
self in an emergency and whip him to
danger and death for the sake of what is
right.
Militarism is something altogether
different. 1t is properly loathed.
But plain men have never fought foi
causes that they did not believe to be
right. That is why quarrel for spoil.
at the Paris conference must seem 81
shameful and horrible an end to tn,
epic which free nations lived in the re
cent war.
ANY similar spirit of hard materialism
ANYTHING that is furtive and cowardl,
in the future life of America, will b.
detested by men who have endured tn
risks and hardship Of foreign battlefield
ON common footing. Their own cod
was clean and brave and they will hav
little patience with anything that
shifty and spurious at home. They vii
be instinctively critical and questioning
and they will be justified in demanding
that the ethical standards of normal lii
! in the future be not SO lax as to appea
shameful in the light of the hard bu
splendid etiquette Of trenches and battle
J fields.
: So. altogether, it is not too much [
, say that the men of the Iron Divisio
are bringing more than victory HON
{ from France. They are bringing intimi
tions Of rule Of life and human rels