The Altar of Freedom

THE ALTAR OF FREEDOM
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published April 1917
Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own Mother.
The Man Without a Country.
We are virtually at war. By the time this is published, perhaps the declaration will have been made.
And even now, all over the country, on this bright spring day, there are mothers who are waiting to know what they must do. Mothers who are facing the day with heads up and shoulders back, ready to stand steady when the blow falls; mothers who shrink and tremble, but ready, too; and other mothers, who cannot find the strength to give up to the service of their country the boys who will always be little boys to them.
I love my country. There is nothing she can ask that I will not do. I am ready to live for her or die for her. Last stand of the humanities on earth, realization of a dream and fulfillment of an ideal, my home, my native land,—that is America to me. Because I am a woman, I cannot die for my country, but I am doing a far harder thing.
I am giving a son to the service of his country, the land he loves.
When I was a child, I lived on a quiet, tree-shaded street in this very city where now I am writing this. And, late in May of each year, when the ailanthus trees were in blossom, the street put up fresh curtains and red-washed the brick pavements. The cobblestones were swept, too. And then the procession came.