The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/War's Spiritual Compensations
WAR'S SPIRITUAL COMPENSATIONS
But, thank God, there is another side to the
picture, both for young and old. If we are to
be poorer we shall be more free. If we are to be
weak and faint from loss of blood we shall rest
at night without dread of that shadow of the
sword which has darkened the sleep of humanity
for forty years. If the countries of our enemies
are to be closed to some of us in the future, the
countries of our Allies will be more than ever
open; nay, they will be almost the same to us
as our own. France will be our France, Italy
our Italy, Belgium our Belgium, and the next
time I, for one, sit by the stove in the log cabin
of a Russian moujik on the Steppes, I shall feel
as if I were in the thatched cottage of one of
my own people in our little island in the Irish
Sea. So does blood shed in a common cause
break down the barriers of race and language
and bind together the children of one Father.
The dead of our Allies become our dead, and our
dead theirs. That Frenchman died to save my
son; therefore he is my brother, and France is
my country. "One's country is the place where
they lie whom we loved."
Thus war, brutal, barbarous war, has its spiritual compensations, and pray heaven the present one may prove to have more than any other. If it does not, something will break in us after all we have gone through. Our faith in the invisible powers to bring a good end out of all this welter of blood and destruction has become a religion. It must not fail us if our souls are to live.