Shoot, Luke, or Give Up the Gun.
Most men are presumed to have sense enough to know when the sun is up, and when it is down.
To no mortal on this earth is it a matter of vital importance to know the exact moment it rises and sets.
Even if any inquisitive lunatic wanted to know, he couldn’t find out, for the simple reason that the hour of sunrise and sunset varies with every mile of the earth’s surface, and is earlier to the man at the foot of the mountain than to the man on top.
In the military establishments of the world, however, it is considered to be a matter of life and death to know just when the sun rises and just when he sets. So extremely indispensable is this piece of daily information that a gun, a cannon we mean, must be fired to proclaim the tidings.
“Boom!”—the sun is up.
“Boom!”—he’s down.
Whereupon, your true soldier can sleep with a conscience childlike in its freedom from care.
Otherwise not.
If that gun (mind you, a cannon) was not fired, solemnly and formally fired, every time the sun rose and every time he set, the military breast would be racked with rude alarms, and the military mind would be tossed to and fro with dread forebodings.
To fire off a musket wouldn’t do; wouldn’t begin to do.
It would be unconstitutional, if not actually anarchistic and revolutionary.
To start the day without firing a cannon—why the military establishment could no more perform its traditionary functions without a cannon salute to the coming and going of the sun than one of the old parties could exist without stuffed ballot boxes.
Therefore, the custom is fixed—rooted, as it were, in the soil of our civilization. It is one of the greatest advantages we have over our untutored ancestors.
However much they may have yearned to shoot the sun up and shoot it down, they couldn’t do it. They had nothing to shoot with. They were so completely engulfed in the currents of stupidity and barbarism that they just had to trust to their eyes to know when the sun was up, or was down.
You might ask how the soldiers do on cloudy days. You might ask, with unseasonable levity, if the army doesn’t have to go by the clock when the sun is not to be seen. And you might, out of your desire to be smart and show yourself off, ask whether the army couldn’t go by the clock as well on fair days as on foul ones.
But such questions as these will do you no good, and they would cause you to lose friends. They are irrelevant impertinences.
For, you see, when anything has been done a long time, the presumption is that there is sense in doing it that way.
Therefore, all nice and respectable people put salt in the fire when the screech owl twitters, and make a cross mark and spit in it, whenever they turn back in their tracks. We all do this because the custom has age and good sense on its side.
If you think you can prance through the world smashing steady old customs which have been handed down to us from time immemorial, you are in a fair way to get yourself into trouble.
Consequently, if you don’t like the way the armies of the world spend the people’s money shooting for the sun, you had just as well make up your mind to the wisdom of laying low, and paying your share of the expenses.
Every two years, your chosen representatives in Congress approve the item in the Military Appropriation Bill which gives $20,600 to the army to shoot the sun-shoots with.
Now, if you don’t like it what are you going to do about it?
The soldiers are not going to go by clocks or by eyes—they are going to shoot those cannon, at all the military posts, every time the sun rises and every time he sets.
And you will continue to pay the expenses, as formerly.
What else are you here for?
“Boom!”—the sun’s up.
“Boom!”—he’s down.
And it only costs $20,600.
See how great a thing it is to be civilized.
We shouldn’t be surprised if the sun had lots of amusement watching us fools down here.
Boom!!!