The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-09-19
Obedience To Orders
Nv RICHARD sTROUT.

| By RICHARD L. STROUT
I SUPPOSE others who have felt the exultation
of the wars end and the thrill of being at the
wheel again have also experienced the queer
persistent twinge of conscience that followed
me through some of the happiest moments OF
my vacation Was it fair that ], civilian,
should be enjoying myself SO much and so
soon. I asked myself, with all the sacrifices
that had been made by those not yet home, or
never to come home? Ii was IN such mood
that l remembered the words written by a
man commemorating another great war, also
fought against oppression, 500 years before
Christ.
was heading north from Washington in my
liberated Studebaker, two days after gasoline
rationing ended, and still couldn't believe it,
At the top of the first hill reached automati-
cally for the key. Il have been coasting down
hills since Pearl Harbor.) Then checked my
SELF An hour or so later had reached the
point where could even let the motor idle
while waiting for red light. When the atten-
dant at Frederick, Md, said, "How many?"
and I said Fill 'er up!" we looked at each
other with trimming eyes, My, that attend
ant was having great time 1t wasn't gaso-
line he was selling, but happiness - and all
the tank would hold
He said people tried to kiss him. The A-card
holders were the worst. He kept saying, Like
old times, amt it?' and grinning. He said peo-
pie even yet couldn't believe it, and kept hand
ing him coupons. He was having all the fun
of playing fairy godfather; and of being paid
for it, too, by the Standard Oil Company.
I vented my gratitude by giving lift to
the entire American Navy, which discovered
was then en- route, by thumb, from Washington
to Pittsburgh
Well, my road went by the Gettysburg battle
field SO inadequately commemorated. There
is no single great monument there worthy of
the place; it is hodgepodge Of individual
statuary, mostly so years old - there on the
field of Pichetts charge, the high-water mark
of the Confederacy Bloody ANGLE and all
Even the marker for Lincoln's address, the
supreme poem so far written in the New World,
is not in keeping either with the greatness of
the speech or of the Nation that produced him.
And then got to wondering as drove on,
if those people, back then, had felt the same
release and joy was experiencing; and wheth-
er there can be any way Of making nations
mindful OF those who have fallen in their be.
halt, in the burst Of materialism that seems
always to follow every war? I remembered
having heard, long ago, the epitaph which the
Greek poet Simonides wrote for the Spartans
who fell with Leonidas at Thermopylae resist
ing the Persian might 480 B. c. It ran like
this
"Stranger-teI the Greeks that we lie here
in obedience to their orders"
Simple and stark; only that and nothing
more.
Christopher North, who tried his hand at
translating the noble epigram, said of it.:
'Tis but two lines, and all Greece for CEN
turtles had them by heart. She forgot them, and
Greece was living Greece no more'
How many lengthy speeches there have been
and will be again, trying to remind u.s. the
living of the responsibility we have to the fall
en-; and yet Lincoln said all there was to say
in two minutes, and Simonides in two lines.
AS drove on wondered if the great epitaph
were too grim for today's busy Americans who
want to forget the war; I imagined all the
scattered battlefields in Africa Normandy,
Germany, and Italy; in the Pacifc-Corregi-
dor. Two Jima, and Okinawa; and Of all the
quiet resting places with their rows of little
white crosses in neat perspective. And imag-
med myself coming some day to one of those
spots and Of looking up to read the inscription
cut there in the calm marble-the terse i'm.
personal, challenging words of Simonides, two
and half millenniums ago:
Stranger, tell the Americans that we lie
here in obedience to their orders. '-Christian
Science Monitor.