The Soldier Speaks
THE SOLDIER SPEAKS THE series of resolutions passed by the American Legion in its seventh annual convention at Omaha make a very important document indeed. The more it is studied the greater...
...things which, whether we approve them or no, are far stronger than reason...
...The conscription of flesh and blood while wealth goes scot free must take its place as one of the evil mistakes of the past...
...That he should pronounce on the merits or demerits of foreign policy was a thing contrary to etiquette and "esprit de corps...
...Bereavement is bitter, but beyond the compass of the state or of anything human to allay...
...Sometimes it seems that the faculty of honest indignation, like the great god, Baal, "is dead, or maybe sleeping...
...It is not even quite certain that, if anything else came, we should appreciate it...
...When the doors of the Temple of Janus turn outward on their hinges today, the thrill that passes through the male population of fighting age is a personal and intimate affair...
...Towards the League of Nations ks support may be considered temperate by intemperate champions of that much discussed panacea...
...It was the supreme test which should give meaning and justification to long years of monotonous preparation...
...It sets itself squarely against the narrow and sinister current of national self-glorification and self-righteousness, which, whether it masquerade under the cloak of belligerent nationalism, sectarianism, or simply aloofness, is robbing American life of grace and color, and cheating her people of the rich interchange of thought and feeling that comes from being one, intellectually and spiritually* in a community of nations...
...Neither is the fact that a vast national reserve of military talent and aptitude for arms was revealed by it...
...But what gave the last war its peculiar hideousness, socially considered, was the inequity which helped certain meanl and avaricious men* with no patriotic vision at all, to reap rich profits from the world's blood, and tears, while letting the economic burden fall squarely upon the shoulders of meat, the very worth of whose patriotism made personal profit unthinkable...
...As an immediate result of the late war, we possess, and shall possess for many years, a large population of civilians who know war at first hand...
...But that it was in the minds of the men at Omaha, old soldiers, all* seems clear from their third resolution, which calls for "the prompt enactment into law of the principle of the universal draft...
...The Legion resolutions show what we may expect from them...
...Even more important and directly in line with the work which The Commonweal is making its objective, is the seventh resolution, whose opening words are worth quoting literally...
...Death is short and sharp, and the common lot...
...At least the men who propose, in the sixth resolution passed at Omaha, "close cooperation with the Fidac* in carrying out its educational program adopted at its recent convention in Rome for the purpose of educating the youths of the nation to understand, sympathize and cooperate with those of other countries," are not likely to agree that the first duty of America to the immigrant is to invite him to jettison his inherited culture before he lands, in order that he may emerge from the ordeal of learning the American Constitution, a "tabula rasa," or blank sheet, on which some standardized design, arbitrarily conceived by men of one racial stock and of all but one religion, may be inscribed...
...The question whether war is worth while must never again be put to men who can answer it slapping their pockets and with a chuckle in their throats...
...Shane Leslie's phrase, is "cannonable" at all, is "in...
...No etiquette nor "rule of the service" closes their mouths...
...From the professional soldier—the soldier by trade —it is too much to expect anything but a professional view of war...
...But if the further recommendation* that he be a mouthpiece for full and frank publicity as to proceedings, bear any fruit, one of the chief reproaches in American eyes to its work and methods will have been removed...
...Everyone who, in Mr...
...No other persons," declares their preamble,, "know so well the nature of modern war, its horrors and evils, as do the members of the American Legion...
...But he must from now on share this consideration with a vast number of men in civil life who will be soldiers whenever a national emergency arises* Modern wars are too big for him to handle alone...
...This is wefl put...
...For anything approaching an uprising of national conscience against the scandal, the world has waited in vain...
...An old proverb tells us—"When war is over and the wrong righted, God is forgotten and the soldier slighted...
...The repercussion of their frank comradeship should not only make wars harder, but put an effective crimp in the meaner and more furtive campaign that breeds the war spirit at home by setting man against man on grounds of faith and blood...
...For the first time it invaded national life for a cause that was not primarily a national concern...
...The great war was unlike all previous wars in many respects, but most of all in this...
...That the draft was loyally and cheerfully borne by all but a trifling minority of the nation is not in question for a moment...
...capable, after a few months' intensive training, of taking its place by men who made soldiering their life work...
...If he welcomed war (and there is no doubt he did) he welcomed it from a wholly manly and worthy motive...
...That old compromise, an American "observer," is all that is suggested at present...
...He was, in the blunt words of Matthew's centurion, "a man subject to authority, having under me others...
...The respect we pay the regular sol142 THE COMMONWEAL December 16, 1925 dier is not diminished...
...What is more important in the present conjuncture is that it broke down the conception of the army as a caste...
...Of suggestions as to how to realize what has hitherto been dismissed as the pious vision of a world at peace, and with no wars lurking at the hidden end of its activities, the Legion gives us good measure...
...The Legion resolutions come like a breath of fresh air through the fog of post-war bigotry...
...But, equally, no one looked to him for corporate action in the cause of peace...
...Sickness and disability, with a few glaring exceptions that excited indignation when they were exposed, have been grappled with...
...Such a resolution, passed by the category of our citizenship who have a right, bought at the price of two years of devotion and discipline, to set the fitting bounds to the temper of patriotism, is almost limitless in its possibilities for good...
...The only fault, if fault it be, that can be found with it, is that it does not mention another fact, which none know better or from more bitter experience than old combatants "returned to civil life...
...Least of all does he forget if he is a man who, in the midst of activities which never contemplated war as a possibility affecting himself, has had his career disrupted, two or three of its most precious and formative years torn from his calendar, and who, while he is striving to pick up the threads again is forced to listen to the old jangle of international rivalries, threatening to head the world back to what severed them...
...But the mere fact of its mention gains immeasurable importance from the fact that it is the first Legion conference in which it has been so overtly referred to...
...The soldier of old days—the citizen in uniform who manned and officered standing armies, was recognized as a man apart...
...But if the soldier is forgotten, he does not forget...
...No one grudged him the honors and promotion which it brought him, since they were stakes against which he played his life...
...It is hard to imagine anything of better augury if or when the possibility of being stampeded into another war looms as a possibility, than their sane and temperate comments...
...We urge writers and teachers of the youth of our land to inculcate in their pupils an appreciation, not only of our own national virtues, but also of those of other nations and races, and an understanding with and sympathy for their glories and ideals...
...Federation Internationale des Anctens Combattants (International Federation of Veterans of the War...
...The more it is studied the greater does its importance grow...
...In every country which contributed its quota of men and resources, victor or vanquished alike, the ugly face of the profiteer emerged at the end The smoke that covered so much obscure bravery and devotion, was a screen behind which his greed reaped its harvest...
Vol. 3 • December 1925 • No. 6
