Page:Armistice Day.djvu/57

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
 
AMERICA GOES IN SINGING
35

proved. Mile after mile of men in khaki, tramping the measured cadence down the miry highways to the front, are lifting in lyric unison their battle anthems—"Where Do We Go From Here, Boys?" and "Over There" and "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag." These swarming caravans moving toward the firing line like inspired clockwork, without confusion—these rumbling guns outlandishly bespotted to hide them from the prying eyes aloft—these motor-trucks and rocking, rumbling wagons roofed with brown, and above all and before all, these marching columns of men pressing forward to relieve the warworn thousands in the trenches with their irrepressible youth and strength and high, joking courage—all this means for us at home and for us who are over there a shining dream brought true, a great day dawning for America, a saving grace for our country where liberty, so dearly bought by the blood of our fathers, is forever cherished and forever sanctified.

America is in the fight because she "can do no other." Our men could not endure to wait an hour longer. "Watchman, what of the night?" was the interrogation that ran from armed camp to armed camp. Their brothers beneath the Union Jack and the Tricolor were in the thick of the hardest battle ever waged on earth, and were falling and dying. With a righteous indignation