the human race, the
great things it has bred in us. Well if the 'war virtues' aren't killed
by an armed peace, then I don't think we need worry much about ever
losing them. It's the people at war for peace who are going to conserve
and utilize for the future the strong and shining things which days of
war have left us. Men who must base their great claim on what has been
done in the past are not the men to shape the future--or even carry the
heritage across the bridge. War is now a faithful servant of capitalism.
Its glorious days are over. It's even a question whether it's longer
valuable as a servant. It may lose its job before its master loses his.
In any case, it goes with capitalism; and if the good old war virtues are
to be saved out of the wreck it's the wreckers will save them!

"Which is not what I started out to say. This play into which I'm
seeking to get the heart of what I've lived and thought and dreamed is
not the impersonal thing this harangue might make it sound. I trust it's
nothing so bloodless as a study of economic forces or picture of the
relationship of old things to new. It's that only as that touches a man's
life, means something to that life. It's about the army because this man
happens, for a time, to be in the army--it's what the army does to him
that's the thing.

"Though it seems to me a pretty dead thing in these days. Life itself is
a dead thing with you gone from it."

In the letter she received that night he wrote: "Katie, is it going to
spoil it for us? Can it? _Need_ it? We who have come so close? Have so
much? Are outlived things to push us apart? That seems _too_ bitter!

"Oh don't think that I don't _see_. The things it would mean giving up.
The wrench. And, for what?--your friends would say. At times I wonder how
I _can_--ask it, hope for it. Then there lives for me again your
wonderful face as it was when you lifted it to me that first time.
_You_--and I grow bold again.

"I don't say you wouldn't suffer. I don't say there wouldn't be hurts,
big hurts brought by the little things arising from lives differently
lived. I know there would be times of longing for things gone. For the
sunny paths. For it couldn't be all sunny paths with me, Katie. Those
years in the dark will always throw their shadow.

"Then, how dare I? Loving you--laughing, splendid you--how can I?

"Because I believe that you love me. Remembering that light in your eyes,
knowing _you_, I dare believe that