AND CROWN TRY GOOD, WITH BROTHERHOOD'

...God help the Big People if no such peace is forthcoming...

...We heard over the radio about the air being filled with torn paper and the rest...

...With nobody keeping step, we marched past the spacious, newly-painted homes of the hundred-odd whaling captains who made this port famous in the great years in the middle of the last century, the gracious low-lying houses with the "widow's walks" on their roofs beside the huge white chimneys...

...Her brother was over there, and he would be coming back, how soon nobody knew, but coming home at long last, since he could qualify as one of the lucky two million, and at the thought of it, our band-leader threw her baton higher and did little jigs of her own devising...

...But if I were to pray I would pray that the hearts of the Big People who are to make the final peace be moved by the cry of the plain, little people from the ends of this tortured earth...

...There were some Big People in our celebration, celebrities in literary and artistic circles over on the "Continent" as we call the mainland, but as I have said it was the little kids who took the show...

...No one was throwing paper around...

...His empty right sleeve was pinned up to his shoulder, but he was smiling as happily as the rest of us who have learned to hold out our left hands when we greet him...

...We came past the cemetery where are the graves of the Puritans who came with the intrepid Mayhews to settle here in 1642 and make a community at peace with the Indians—a peace never broken despite the Indian wars that raged all around them...

...The other day an old Negro woman said to me: "Don't you think there are too many Big People in this world...

...You're always hearing about how this one is Big and that one is Big and still and all, they don't seem to act very Big when the time comes...

...I am not a religionist...

...Roosevelt, they snapped from the top of their staffs in the breeze from the harbor, for a brief hour of thanksgiving...

...The Presbyterian faith of my fathers has petered out in me, I am afraid...

...No one was drunk...

...I expect things were a lot more exciting in New York...

...The Cry Of The Little People Would that we could stay that way in the troublous days ahead...

...In front of the court-house, where the flags had been at half mast in honor of the late Mr...

...All New England history stood in review of our straggling, happy ranks...

...Old men on the pavement waving their fishermen's caps could tell of how their dads saw Daniel Webster and other New England leaders when they visited this island...

...All of us fell into some sort of line and marched down South Water street by the dreaming blue of the harbor, dotted still with war-craft which four long years ago displaced the gay racing knockabouts with their painted sails...

...On the curb in civilian dress stood a lad, back from the war for 3 months now...

...This town has been torn with hates and fears, baseless prejudices and childish mass inhibitions...

...When we came back to the court-house the band played Nearer My God to Thee in the memory of the men from this island who will never come back over the waters, and then we took up the day's occupations, the farmers who had come in for the celebration climbing into their wagons, the carpenters going back to repairing the damage done by the hurricane last Fall which is still evident in shingle-torn roofs and great elms lying across the door-yards, the fishermen setting out in their draggers...

...Descendants of the Mayhews and the other yeomen who gave this town its homogenity and strength 3 centuries ago were in the band ahead of us...

...In all the yards the first green was dotted with daffodils, for Spring has been late here, and ours is a world of blue and white and gold, against an emerald background...

...The High School band was out behind its comely "majorette" who flung her baton, making bright shafts of silver in the morning light...

...The great tide of thanksgiving that in Europe, at all events, the guns were still at last, swept us together...

...The band played The Star Spangled Banner and America and then started to march to the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers...

...But these were forgotten on this day of victory...

...When the matter-of-fact voice of President Truman and the triumphant organ-tones of Churchill had proclaimed the end of hostilities, there was the sound of drums on Main Street and we all hurried into the soft May sunshine...

...THIS writer was in a small New England town on this little island off Cape Cod, when word came of the ending of the slaughter in the West...

...Now they could celebrate in the absence of their fathers and brothers and sweethearts, and they did so proudly and with their heads up, in a way that gave you confidence, and the hope that somehow they will make a better world than we have done, that eternal hope that will not down in generation to generation of those of us who are still old-fashioned enough to believe in the fundamental American credo of human progress...

...The war has done evil things to many of the people who have not been within 3,000 miles of the shooting...

...It was a day for youth, for the teen-agers who have felt themselves shut out from participation in what they have been assured are the most momentous events of our times...

...It was the real democracy that marched through the streets of our town, the waitress from the Inn swinging alongside the banker's young son, the distinguished English novelist in the rear ranks with the clerk from the Co-op store...

...A Day For Youth The band was made up chiefly of girls who clashed their cymbals and blew their horns like good fellows...

...Maybe we wouldn't have any more wars if the little people got hold of things, just for once...

...As far as we were concerned, this was as stirring and significant a celebration as one could ask for...

...If we could only make true the words of America the Beautiful which the band played with such gusto—"And crown thy good, with brotherhood...

...These want no vengeful peace that will be but an uneasy interlude between wars...

...Everyone was smiling and friendly...

...The only uniform visible was worn by the traffic cop...

...They want a peace of justice, written by men of the Lincoln stamp which will bind up the wounds of war and give us a commonwealth of nations wherein the Big Men will be the servants rather than the masters of their people...