and stayed at
home. And for that Green Valley has marked that man a coward and every
year sits in judgment upon him.

"Yet the man who would not go to war stayed at home to plough my fields
and plant them. He it was who saw to it that that wife of mine and the
wives of other war-mad boys did not want for bread. He stayed at home
here and minded his business and ours as well. He wrote letters and
got news for our women when they got to fretting too hard. He
harvested our crops, tended our stock, and mended our fences because he
is so made that he cannot bear to see things wasted, neglected, ruined.

"As a soldier that man was worthless, for the business of a soldier is
to kill, to burn, to waste, to maim. He knew that and he knew that
being what he was he could serve his country better doing the things he
liked and believed in.

"I came out of that war a physical wreck but with a heart purified. I
saw such a hell of evil, such destruction, such misery that to-day I am
a doctor and a planter of trees. When I saw men torn to rags and
lovely strips of woodland ripped to splintered ugliness I vowed that if
I ever came through that madness I would make amends. I swore I would
go through the world mending things. So terribly did those war horrors
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. Ou