violent fire from the enemy, they attempted on the second trip to come still lower in order to get the packages even more precisely on the designated spot. In the course of this mission, the plane was brought down by enemy rifle and machine-gun fire from the ground, resulting in fatal wounds to Lieutenant Bleckley, who died before he could be taken to a hospital, and in the instant death of Lieutenant Coettler. In attempting and performing this mission, these men showed the highest possible contempt of personal danger, devotion to duty, courage and valor."

Here was conduct deliberately planned in the contemplation of certain death. The thrill and the glamour of adventure had disappeared with the first trip. They were not fools; they loved life as all brave men do. It is also impossible to believe that the love of fame lured them. How shall we explain the motives which led to such transcendent nobility of action? Equally valuable is the following official report of Lieutenant Arthur V. Savage, who, on July 15th, with the aid of a lone private, fought an entire regiment of picked German grenadiers and guards who were attempting to cross the Marne in their last attack on Paris. "Lieutenant Savage and a private named Thomas Oakes, from Texas, of Company E, 144th Infantry, found themselves the only members of their command remaining in action. The Germans were crossing the Marne. Seizing a machine-gun whose operator had been killed, they faced an entire regiment of Ger

man soldiers and assisted most effectively in stemming the German advance over the Marne at that point. Finally, they were surrounded from the rear, and fell, fighting to the last, with their faces to the enemy, the dead bodies of whom strewed the ground around them."

It is in the letters which they write that men reveal their inmost selves. Here are two extracts from letters which display a remarkable insight into the meaning of duty and courage which are the most fundamental of all virtues in the educational process:

OCTOBER 17, 1918.

"We, too, had a sad death over the lines recently, that of Wilbert W. White, Jr., of New York. We were on a balloon strafing expedition-the balloon attacker, Brotherton, went on to one on the ground, leading us away from the large body of Spads supposed to protect us. We last saw Brotherton diving on this low balloon, amid a hail of machine gun bullets. Our three planes were attacked from five Fokkers at that moment, 10 kilometers from our lines and well behind the large protecting formation of Spads! White was leading, so when a Fokker dove on Cox, a new pilot, White turned in his tracks and went back at it. The Fokker kept diving on Cox as White raced back, head-on at it, firing without effect. He must have realized that Cox would be shot down unless he put the Boche out of the fight, so he never swerved. I watched them come together, thought for a moment they

would just pass side by side, but next instant off came a wing of each plane amid a cloud of splinters and shreds of fabric, and down they went spinning like tops, nose on into the ground, not 50 feet apart. White was married, had two children, was to have received orders returning him to the States in a few days and knew it. But he never hesitated when he saw his duty cut out, which makes his act all the more heroic. It was his seventh official plane."

How accurately this young aviator analyzed the mind and motives of his companion and incidentally revealed the calibre of his own soul is seen by reading the following extract from a letter written by young White to his father from Fort Worth, Texas, in January, 1918:

"The situation as it now stands is that I am a qualified cadet, temporarily and it may be permanently attached to the 147th Squadron.

"Life to me now is a whole lot more serious matter than it ever has been before. I realize that I've something to live for, and if necessary to die for, and I'm fully prepared to do either. If God wills that I come through this war with my senses, I'm going to do a lot of things I was never thinking of before-and if I'm not to get back-well, I will at least have given my life for the right. It is a great war we're in, father, a wonderful war; a war between right and wrong and I'm in it heart and soul to the end."

In the book entitled, "The Love of an Unknown Soldier," there is the most intimate and amazing

revelation of character. The book is a series of letters written by an English Artillery officer, but never mailed. As one reads through the pages he becomes increasingly conscious that here is a man seeing through life with the eyes of God.

"In this strange world where courage masquerades as duty we have left all hope behind us. To hope too much is to court cowardice. In the past I was so selfish and full of plans for happiness. Then this war came. One had to sink personality and ambition and stand the chance of dying in a manner which seemed incommensurately obscure and ghastly. And why? Because Calvary had repeated itself; after two thousand years to die for others had become again worth while."

A little later on he adds this pertinent comment: "I suppose even in peace-times the chance was always there, only one's eyes were blinded. Perhaps the sacrifice demanded wasn't large enough.”

Here are sentences which enable us to trace the groping of his mind toward the discovery of the higher self:

"Unhappiness is a form of disloyalty."

"If I needs must die I will at least die with honour."

"Life becomes a murky affair only when people are cowards."

"The beginning of all aristocracy is the subjugation of fear." This sentence he quotes approvingly from "The Research Magnificent

There is a sense of reality about the following passage that is most refreshing. For moral earnestness and grandeur it is unsurpassed, and the wonderful thing about it is that we can look into it as into a mirror and see reflected the mind and character of the young manhood of the world.

"Don't you see," he writes to the young Red Cross nurse whom he has come to love ardently, "how I was learning that it isn't the thing you plan to do, but the thing you are inside yourself that counts? And life, as I say, was going by while I, in my earnestness that future centuries might be better, was neglecting the dear, simple, daily, loyalties.

"Then this war broke out, stripping us of our sham refinements and clothing us in the armour of duty. We hadn't known how to live wisely; God restored to us the chance to die for something worthy. He'd grown tired of seeing us charging windmills, so He set over against us the mustered hosts of hell. How real everything has become of late! All the ghosts of distrust and derision have vanished. Men's souls gleam in their eyes. We have regained the old primitive strength of the saints to strike sin where we find it. We no longer doubt when the sky is overshadowed that heaven floats above the clouds."

This profound moral and religious experience of the American and British soldier was shared equally by the Frenchmen. Nowhere is this more finely voiced than by the French historian Hilaire