f war and
declare the gospel of brotherhood. Next day they began killing each other
again as the obedient instruments of governments they do not control and of
motives they do not understand. But the fact remains. It is a beam of light
in the darkness, rich in meaning and hope.

But if I were asked to name the instance of individual action which had
most impressed me I should find the task more difficult. Should I select
something that shows how war depraves, or something that shows how it
ennobles? If the latter I think I would choose that beautiful incident of
the sailor on the _Formidable_.

He had won by ballot a place in one of the boats. The ship was going down,
but he was to be saved. One pictures the scene: The boat is waiting to take
him to the shore and safety. He looks at the old comrades who have lost in
the ballot and who stand there doomed to death. He feels the passion for
life surging within him. He sees the cold, dark sea waiting to engulf its
victims. And in that great moment--the greatest moment that can come to any
man--he makes the triumphant choice. He turns to one of his comrades.
"You've got parents," he says. "I haven't." And with that word--so heroic
in its simplicity--he makes the other take his place in the boat and signs
his own death warrant.

I see him on the deck among his doomed fellows, watching the disappearing
boat until the final plunge comes and all is over. The sea never took a
braver man to its bosom. "Greater love hath no man than this ..."

Can you read that story without some tumult within you--without feeling
that humanity itself is ennobled by this great act and that you are, in
some mysterious way, better for the deed? That is the splendid fruit of all
such sublime sacrifice. It enriches the whole human family. It makes us
lift our heads with pride that we are men--that there is in us at our best
this noble gift of valiant unselfishness, this glorious prodigality that
spends life itself for something greater than life. If we had met this
nameless sailor we should have found him perhaps a very ordinary man, with
plenty of failings, doubtless, like the rest of us, and without any idea
that he had in him the priceless jewel beside which crowns and coronets are
empty baubles. He was something greater than he knew.

How many of us could pass such a test? What should I do? What would you do?
We neither of us know, for we are as great a mystery to ourselves as we are
to our nei