grip me. And I have tried to keep my promise. For every tree I saw
splintered I have tried to plant another somewhere. I have been able
to do this because of that old neighbor of mine.

"When I came home a wreck and said that I wanted to be a doctor, people
laughed at the idea. But the man who does not believe in war came to
me at night and offered to help me through the medical school. It was
that man who made a doctor of me. He had the courage to believe and
trust when every one else laughed.

"Yet that is the man Green Valley has been punishing all these years.
You have been counting that man a coward when you know he is no coward.
When Petersen's fool hired man let that bull out of its stall to rage
through Green Valley's streets it was Green Valley's coward who caught
him at the risk of his life. When Johnny Bigelow was sick with
smallpox it was the coward who nursed him.

"You know all that. Yet, because of outlived and mossy tradition, you
let that man ride alone, keep him out of a Green Valley day, you who
count yourselves such good neighbors.

"I tell you we men in blue and gray are dead and our tool of war is a
poor and clumsy thing of the past. Ours was a brave enough, great
enough day. But it has passed, its story is over and done with.

"It is the new brand of courage that the new generations want and will
have. And no old soldier here but is glad to feel that the days of
bloodshed are over, that somewhere in the days ahead there is coming
the dawn of peace, a world peace forevermore."