With Our Soldiers in France | Page 7

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 of the broad cowboy hats and the khaki uniforms of the American soldiers, arouse us to the realization of a world at war and the fact that our boys are here, fighting for the soil of France and the world's freedom.
We are in a typical French farming village of a thousand people, and here a thousand American soldiers are quartered. A sergeant and a score of men are in each shed or stable or barn loft. The Americans are