With Our Soldiers in France | Page 7

issue. In the last analysis the final question in human
life is between a material and a spiritual interpretation of the universe,
whether might makes right and the strong are to rule, or whether right
makes might and the moral order is supreme. There is a material and a
spiritual side of life. On this side is the brute struggle for life; on that,
the struggle for the life of others; on the one hand, the fight for the
survival of the fittest, and on the other, the fight to make men fit to
survive. On the left hand is selfishness and on the right service; on the
one side are the red battlefields of the enemy, and on the other is a
cross red in sacrifice of a life laid down in the serving and saving of
men. There is a final issue in the world between passion and principle,
between wrong and right, between darkness and light, between
mammon and God, between self and Christ.
This ultimate issue must be faced by individuals and by nations. It is
the challenge which confronts men in this war. Seventy years ago a
crushed Europe faced the issue in the prophetic words of Mazzini,
written in the hour of darkness and defeat:
"Our victory is certain; I declare it with the profoundest conviction,
here in exile, and precisely when monarchical reaction appears most
insolently secure. What matters the triumph of an hour? What matters it
that by concentrating all your means of action, availing yourselves of
every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and jealousies

of race which yet for a while endure, and spreading distrust, egotism,
and corruption, you have repulsed our forces and restored the former
order of things? Can you restore men's faith in it, or think you can long
maintain it by brute force alone, now that all faith in it is extinct?
Threatened and undermined on every side, can you hold all Europe
forever in a stage of siege?" [1]
Pasteur sees the same issue looming even in his day and states it in
burning words at the close of his life:
"Two contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays, the
one a law of blood and of death, ever seeking new means of destruction
and forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield; the other a
law of peace, work, and health, ever evolving new means of delivering
man from the scourges which beset him. The first seeks violent
conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The latter places one human
life above any victory, while the former would sacrifice hundreds and
thousands of lives to the ambition of one. Which of these two laws will
ultimately prevail God only knows. We will have tried, by obeying the
laws of humanity, to extend the frontiers of Life." [2]
Lincoln faced the same issue in the midst of the war weariness of our
own great conflict with words which come back to the nation now with
a prophetic call:
"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for
the people shall not perish from the earth."
[1] Life and Writings of Mazzini, vol. v, pp. 269-271.

[2] Life of Pasteur, p. 271.

CHAPTER II
WITH GENERAL PERSHING'S FORCE IN FRANCE
We are in the midst of an American army encampment in a French
village. For miles away over the rolling country the golden harvests of
France are ripening in the sun, broken by patches of green field, forest,
and stream. The reapers are gathering in the grain. Only old men,
women, and children are left to do the work, for the sons of France are
away at the battle front. The countryside is more beautiful than the
finest parts of New York or Pennsylvania. In almost every valley sleeps
a little French hamlet, with its red tiled roofs and its neat stone cottages,
clustered about the village church tower. It is a picture of calm and
peace and plenty under the summer sun. But the sound of distant guns
on the neighboring drill grounds, a bugle call down the village street,
the sight