If America hadn't come into the
war none of us who have loved her and since been to the trenches,
would ever have wanted to return.
But she's home now as she never was before and never could have been
under any other circumstances--now that khaki strides unabashed down
Broadway and the skirl of the pipers has been heard on Fifth
Avenue. We men "over there" will have to find a new name for
America. It won't be exactly Blighty, but a kind of very wealthy first
cousin to Blighty--a word meaning something generous and affectionate
and steam-heated, waiting for us on the other side of the Atlantic.
Two weeks here already--two weeks more to go; then back to the glory
of the trenches!
There's one person I've missed since my return to New York. I've
caught glimpses of him disappearing around corners, but he dodges. I
think he's a bit ashamed to meet me. That person is my old civilian
self. What a full-blown egoist he used to be! How full of golden plans
for his own advancement! How terrified of failure, of disease, of
money losses, of death--of all the temporary, external, non-essential
things that have nothing to do with the spirit! War is in itself
damnable--a profligate misuse of the accumulated brain-stuff of
centuries. Nevertheless, there's many a man who has no love of war,
who previous to the war had cramped his soul with littleness and was
chased by the bayonet of duty into the blood-stained largeness of the
trenches, who has learnt to say, "Thank God for this war.
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