bowing to graven images. Appellant's idea was that any act of obeisance, any deference, any homage to that which was without eyes to see with, without ears to hear with, without a mouth to taste with, and without a nose to smell with, was forbidden by holy writ.
....
Conscientious objectors are excused from combat military service. A great hero of 1918, even after being drafted, for a time held doggedly to the conception that the Bible banned war: yet when Sergeant York became convinced that national safety was threatened he used rifle and pistol with deadly effect.
....
Contempt, as defined by Webster's New International Dictionary, is the feeling with which one regards that which is esteemed mean, vile, or worthless; an act of contemning, or despising.
An impulsive declaration by one suddenly confused or confounded that the flag means nothing to him (assuming, for the purpose of this discussion, that appellant made such comment) is at most a method of emphasizing ignorance. If to the remark is coupled the further assertion that appellant characterized Old Glory as a rag, still consideration must be given the undisputed evidence that in thus designating the object of controversy appellant modified his meaning with the explanation that because the flag was something inanimate he could not how down and worship it.
It is a strange philosophy—if appellant's belief may be dignified by that term—which blunts a citizen's patriotic sensibilities when in the presence of his country's emblem, or dulls his comprehension of its status.[1]
In spite of my own lack of sympathy with appellant's attitude, irrespective of an entrenched belief that a country would not endure if peopled by men entertaining the
- ↑ General Sir E. Hamley, referring to the colors of the Forty-third Monmouth Light Infantry, wrote:
"A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten Pole,
It does not look likely to stir a man's soul.
'Tis the deeds that were done 'neath the moth-eaten rag,
When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag."
