THE KING’S BUSINESS
1089
from current-utterances editorial and ora torical, is an earnest desire to wallop some foreign nation, especially if it interferes with our business. I had thought that that style o f patriotism was going out but it has returned again as swiftly as the full skirt. National honor? Well, I have yet to make out just what that isV but it seems to be the thing that fosters in us that most piti ful form o f cowardice—the fear that some body will think we are afraid. Personally I have a brand o f honor which cannot be injured except from the inside. National honor seems o f a different kind. A mere impudent grimace from an outsider will shiver the fragile thing to tinkling splin ters and then, if we have in us a trace of the heroic, it will take all o f oUr horses and all o f our men to put humpty dumpty together again—a large proportion o f said horses and men being killed in the process. And every dying soldier can hug to his torn breast the . blessed consciousness that he has helped to vindicate the national honor and benefit the steel trade. Oh, what a mess! How can I stay and burn the old incense on my boyish altar o f patriotism; when the old idol has tum bled, smashed and revealed on his “ insides” the same sort o f simple machinery by which the ancient priests o f Isis were wont to delude the simple worshippers o f their god dess? What joy to me to die on the bat tlefield? To the last gasp I would doubt if my death really benefited by country— aside from its resultant fertilizing mater ial. And then I couldn’t be sure just what I was dying for. One never gets a chance to die but once, and if he dies voluntarily, he dislikes to throw his death away, so to speak. N o ! I won’t die in uniform. How ever urged by blood o f soldiers in my veins, fear o f public opinion in my heart or tradi tions o f three thousand swashbuckling years in my head. I won’t do it ! And on the other hand, I will not kill in uniform, either. Did you ever look at your fellow-man over a gunsight? I did, once. You get an entirely new view o f him that
way and one that you seldom care to remember. Right now I can imagine myself glancing down a rifle barrel (that slender steel syllo gism by which the militarist guarantees to prove the eternal righteousness o f the rot- tenest cause) with the sights lined to the breast o f a Mexican peon. It is a rag ged, greasy breast with a patch o f brown skin showing through the open shirt, but behind it beats a heart in all essentials just like mine. My sights wander up over the bare brown throat to the face. What a face! Child o f a race misbegotten, misled and misgov erned through unknown generations, a creature systematically deceived, defrauded and debased for the profit o f men more clever than he, yet on the dark face there is a gleam o f manly idealism as, blindly and cheerfully, he prepares to die for a patria which, having given him nothing and stolen from him whatever o f value he could accumulate, now demands his life at the last. As my finger tremble's on the trigger another figure floats in front o f the muz zle, a familiar figure with red stains upon the hands and the feet, and clad in gar ments brighter than the shimmer o f the sun on the white mesas. I'know him. It is He to whom I and millions like me have said “Lord, Lord,” so often. Illusion! Blaze away! No, wait! i. He is speaking, and those old words which have sounded so sweetly down the ages take a new and terrible significance: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one o f the least o f these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” A pacifist? Aye, a pacifist, a non-resist ant, a mollycoddle. While I have to look into the mirror every morning and live with myself all day and meet myself after dark, I dare be nothing less in this age. Shall we fight for a cry, or a caste, or a corporation when there’s a bigger, cleaner fight to be made for God ? Pro patria, you say? Oh, things have drifted past that point. Shauvinism has had its day. This is
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