"
Jackson was too overwhelmed to reply at once.
"As a matter of fad," Clayton went on, "it's a national move, in a
way. You don't owe any gratitude. We need our babies, you see.
More than we do hats! If this war goes on, we shall need a good
many boy babies."
And his own words suddenly crystallized the terror that was in him.
It was the boys who would go; boys who whistled in the morning; boys
who dreamed in the spring, long dreams of romance and of love.
Boys. Not men like himself, with their hopes and dreams behind them.
Not men who had lived enough to know that only their early dreams
were real. Not men, who, having lived, knew the vast disillusion
of living and were ready to die.
It was only after Jackson had gone that he saw the fallacy of his
own reasoning. If to live were disappointment, then to die, still
dreaming the great dream, was not wholly evil. He found himself
saying,
"To earn some honorable advancement for one's soul."
Deep down in him, overlaid with years of worldliness, there was a
belief in a life after death.
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