The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1919-07-17


personification of the anatomy OF mel
ancholy, it was your bounden duty to
hustle him back to his old self by
fair means or foul. For tomorrow
1t might be your turn to sink into
the shadows, and it would be his turn
to convince you that all was not lost
as long as ones feete rested on the
upper side of the lawn.
In the army no one ever inquired
mans fraternity or club or religious
afiiliation before giving him first aid.
The old helping hand was out for the
derelict and highbrow alike Those
of the three million who walked in
the valley Of the shadow at Chateau
Thierry, st. Quentin, and the Argonne
know how simply the street-cleaner
or the banker can lay down his life
for his fellow And the souls of both
entering upon their great adventure
could not be distinguished one from
the other.
The purgatory the men went through
has cleansed their vision as well as
their souls. and they come home with
a sense Of values they never had be-
fore. They know the things worth
while and the triyialities, and they
will not be handed the latter. | fancy
that when in the future some rising
young statesman with designs on the
votes of the three million mounts the
platform in frock coat and fellow
citizens" them in honeyed accents,
they will want to know what he was
vember IL, 1918, before giving ear
to his plea. And If 1t should happen
that he was doing nothing during those
momentous months, except possibly
talk, he will be politely but firmly told
to clear out and make way for a wei
eran of the wOrld-war.
The arst night each individual Of
the three million spent in the army
he began to adjust himself to a new
set OF values, and 1t is this adjustment
that has worked in him the greatest
change Of all. Perhaps he had a re-
past OF cold mush, served on the board
table of the bleak mess-hall which
was not hung with pictures of fish and
game and fruit, as in the dining-room
OF the old home.
With the cold mush giving him a
sensation of extreme heft in the mid
die, he slept, or rather lay, that night
on one blanket spread over the springs
Of an iron cot. In the morning the
wire springs had printed neat red
checkerboard pattern on his anatomy
and he felt about as timber as the
iron bed.
In his ante-bellum days clean sheets,
sugar In his coffee, butter on his bread,
and proper respect for his inherent
right as all American youth not to
do anything he didn't want to do were
matters of course. One was never
without those. you know. But when
he went weeks and weeks without
taste of sugar in what it would be
fiattery to call coffee, when he got
to the point where he was willing to
sleep on anything that wouldn't roll
away from him, and when, in line,
nobody seemed to think he amounted
to one, let alone row, of pins, then
realization came with a dull thud.
The man that wrote the line about
a fellows never knowing when he's
we'll off was soldier in some war.
Whoever could go through one month
of army life as buck private in the
rear rank and then be able to go home
and conscientiously kick to his wife
because the butter was salty or the
sheets not folded properly, ought to
have his head examined.
Those who didn't get over saw
enough and experienced enough to
make them want to run the author
of Home, Sweet Home" for Presi-
dent, and those who did 60 over
well, watch them as they climb off
the transports. The fact OF. the mat
ter is, the American youngster has
had lot of foolish, pampered no
tions bumped out of his bean. He has
been face to face with the funda-
mentals, and he is coming out like
tempered steel
Uncle Sans kindly old visage may
well spread itself into a broad Yankee
grin as he strokes his goatee and
watches the three million coming
home. He knows they are three
million fairly good guarantees for the
future safety and prosperity of the
country.
There's something else that every
soldier now knows In his earlier
days, on such occasions as Washing
toms Birthday and Flag day. he used
to mount the teachers platform to
declare, in halting accents, ofttimes
wild and always polysyllabic beyond
the faintest notion of his understand
ing, the glory that was and continued
to be America But it meant little
or nothing to his young life, except
possibly that Washington was goody-
goody boy who never told lie and
that Lincoln's Gettysburg address, Pat
rick Henry's Give me liberty" and
the rest of the time-honored favorites
were ogres that held horrible pitfalls
In every line for the youth of faulty