Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1919-05-22
THAT is AMERICA!
Splendid Work in France Typical
of Country.
Returned Soldier Tells Something of
Wonderful Doines in Which Every
Citizen Of Our Great Republic
May Have Pride.

soldier of the expeditionary force
conversed with US the other night. He
had been shot half to pieces. Never
again viii he be the same lad of swing
Ing gait and vibrant life who went out
for us Yet the spirit of him was I'M
touched
AS he talked he suddenly lifted the
veil between US and far-off coasts
we saw France.
From a port that had no docks OF
Importance before the war we saw
extend the new American-built
Sharves mile on mile. Great ships
were swinging in on hurrying tides.
Thousands of men, many of them
black giants from the South, the phys
zeal equals of any that ever bowed
TO labor, swarmed around them.
Mountains of supplies lowered on
every side.
From those great docks ran a four
track railroad; heavy steel rails,
heavy-timbered roadbed, rock bal
last, steel clamped, graded perfectly,
400 miles across France TO the roar
ing guns. Half way across that land
fhe tracks We're only two. No passen-
ger station on that line-only the
American highway for fighting mil
Hons, going up to battle, and their
supply depots.
Every ounce of that metal, made in
America dug out of our hills by men
Hike those of New Hampshire, was
smelted and forged and rolled and
beaten to our uses and set down by
the million tons in far-off places.
ON that road ran cars upon which
could have been laid two or three of
The lesser cars of the European lands.
On it ran locomotives such as the
world never saw, save in America.
Their monstrouS forms lowered above
the heads of the peoples of all the
earth. who stopped half in terror. as
the great machines rolled by. their
ponderous drive wheels dwarfing the
engineers that worked about them
when they rested.
AS he talked, this broken-bodied,
whole-spirited soldier told of his re-
turn from the field. TOW he was rat
Ned and bumped, and wrenched and
Sarred as he went over the lightly
built railway in the hospital train
Then there was a change. he feit
she bump and pull of an American To-
eomotiye. felt the solidlty of rock I'M
der his tortured body, the smooth
Yolling of wheels not to be mistaken
She localized, incarnated soul of Amer
fra IN unbending rails beneath the
rsoighty engine and the swiftly running
cars The landscape began to flash
by as by magic. Then" he SAID, l
knew was all right. Something had
not hold Of me-
That Is America. The soldier that
no wounds could dismay; the SOLID
rock the wonderful creation that
made not only the highway for our
mower but the foundation of our free
republic
Ae this shattered but strong-s spirited
lad told Of the tranquility that came
with the bump and pull of an Amerl-
can locomotive. our hearts were
stirred. Who Of US has not waited
with bat poised, the pitcher fumolins
the ball meanwhile, to see one OF our
mighty locomotives go laundering past
our improvised diamond? It was
more than locomotlve-it was sym
Dol, Perhaps we did not fathom the
symbolism Of it, but we felt It. Here
at last. is the Interpretation, brought
home by a soldier Of the Union tha'
in no small part has been made great
nv the vision, the daring, and the
downright work that conquered thf
wilderness, crossed the eastern noun
tains, swept over the prairies' mas
tered other and mightier mountains
linked the sunrise coast to that o.
the sunset Of steel, and converted
continent into neighborhood by th'
American locomotive, brother Of me
one that picked ur our wounded sol
der and made him feel that some
thing had got hold Of him tina
Something" had got hold Of the world
Manchester Union.