The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1936-04-09

rain at the top of a communicating trench
somewhere in France A platoon of men from a
machine-gun company were coming out. They
were a sorry sight, bedraggled, hungry, and
utterly weary The first lieutenant who brought
up the rear stopped to enquire the way to the
nearest canteen He was sick, fever was fairly
burning him up. Tonsillitis,' he said as he lean
ed on a stick he had torn from the support of a
blackboard And trench-foot,' he added Pull
ing himself together he stumbled after his men,
watched him go. 1t was when he had taken a
few more than eighty-three steps-I covered
the distance in just that many little later
that three-inch high explosive shell let go in
that midst of that platoon. Hearing it coming
we had flung ourselves flat in the mud. And
then at the screams of agony we had hurried
over to the wounded and dead. We looked after
those who still needed the little we could do for
them and then we gathered together the frag-
ments.
"It was there on red highway of France that
I experienced Immortality. knew that the lad
with the aching throat, the lad whose sick eyes
had just looked into mine the lad with whom
I had just talked, was not in what was picking
up. had not talked to that! And I knew that he
was somewhere
II knew that there had been authority enough
to begin his life to carry his life from his moth
er's womb to that shell-scarred road Short of
Immortality I had just two alternatives either
Creative Authority willed to leave that per-
sonality there in the blood and muck, willed to
end it or to see it end in such sorry fashion;
or that Authority which could create was unable
to continue, was helpless before the event, was
without resources beyond that road in front of
Toul. Either conclusion was to me unreasonable.
That young lieutenant either stopped where
picked up his scattered body or he went on.
know that he went on.
"And know that those whose forms touch
when only their forms remain, when to my
touch there can never come again responding
pressure; those dear dead whom have lost,
have but lost awhile
I'm nature nothing is ever annihilated. Forms
change, patterns are altered, and I do not pro-
feSs to know the form and pattern of life beyond
that which we call death I do not even attempt
to anticipate the details. But to conclude that a
law which operates everywhere else in life
ceases to operate only in life's highest noblest
form - human personality - is unreasonable
Shall only thought and recognition and the you
of you be destroyed? AS winter comes, watch
the mother of my children put her flowers Ito
sleep" on the old New Hampshire farm. Buried
deep under the leaf mould and then beneath the
snow, they wait until their springtime But al
ways there is springtme and always the flow
ers come again. Am so less than these?
"Life does go on That which we know as life
is by our own experience incomplete. Nothing
gets done. Those who live the longest frequent
ly leave the most that is unfinished. There isn't
time enough to write the books, to paint the pic
lures. There isn't time enough to see our visions
through tell you that either these earth bound
years are but the beginning, are but the child
hood of our immortality, or there is in creation
itself colossal immortality.
"And so across the ages soul meets soul and
reason walks with the heart as the Easter dawn
breaks over the world and the Voice calls from
the open tomb! I am the Resurrection and the
Life"
Hungary has forbidden the singing of song
that prompted a score of jewellers in that land
to commit suicide. Not little of the music that
States makes us sometimes yearn to kill the
composer. Possibly we too are in need of the re-
straining hand of the law.
Italy has sent out decree making training in
aviation cOmn111SOrv for all vOn0 mon whose