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Carry On by Coningsby (Coningsby William) Dawson
page 103 of 104 (99%)
Somewhere deep down in my heart I've felt a sadness ever since I've been
out here, at America's lack of gallantry--it's so easy to find excuses
for not climbing to Calvary; sacrifice was always too noble to be
sensible. I would like to see the country of our adoption become
splendidly irrational even at this eleventh hour in the game; it would
redeem her in the world's eyes. She doesn't know what she's losing. From
these carcase-strewn fields of khaki there's a cleansing wind blowing
for the nations that have died. Though there was only one Englishman
left to carry on the race when this war is victoriously ended, I would
give more for the future of England than for the future of America with
her ninety millions whose sluggish blood was not stirred by the call of
duty. It's bigness of soul that makes nations great and not population.
Money, comfort, limousines and ragtime are not the requisites of men
when heroes are dying. I hate the thought of Fifth Avenue, with its
pretty faces, its fashions, its smiling frivolity. America as a great
nation will die, as all coward civilisations have died, unless she
accepts the stigmata of sacrifice, which a divine opportunity again
offers her.

If it were but possible to show those ninety millions one battlefield
with its sprawling dead, its pity, its marvellous forgetfulness of self,
I think then--no, they wouldn't be afraid. Fear isn't the emotion one
feels--they would experience the shame of living when so many have shed
their youth freely. This war is a prolonged moment of exultation for
most of us--we are redeeming ourselves in our own eyes. To lay down
one's life for one's friend once seemed impossible. All that is altered.
We lay down our lives that the future generations may be good and kind,
and so we can contemplate oblivion with quiet eyes. Nothing that is
noblest that the Greeks taught is unpractised by the simplest men out
here to-day. They may die childless, but their example will father the
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