And does not that common picture show the nobleness of action, and its accomplishment—while criticism, ignorant and powerless, is blown back into the four winds ashamed of its fragility?
Alone
I have been a lone sentry many nights now in this distant outpost, and, like a single plover seeking out the flock, I could utter his weird, wild cry of loneliness. Love is surely the strongest motive in our lives, and ah! it is cruel, and cold, and barren without any of it.... Yet I carry on, though sometimes losing control of wariness and pitching among the far-off fields of dream-land in search of the old home ... then back to this lone, wild beat as before.
Is it an untamed spirit beating its life out because it has not the saving faculty of control? or is it lost for a time on unbeaten tracks, out of the course that it was intended to keep?
The virtue of life is not in learning to get what you want, but in learning to do without what you want; and a soldier may have to do without everything. A motto is no good if it is only an ornament on the wall. If we live up to it, then only does it become worth while.
There is one thing greater than strength that will carry one far, and that is endurance.
UNDERLYING SADNESS
It is the fate of youth, in simple trustfulness, to venture forth on the broad highway of life a dreaming idealist; and to return, if the wars go against him, with deep-cut scars and bowed head. He knows that there are plans made otherwise than his, and that they will remain unalterable, while he must break his spirit to change, and self-denial, and humbleness.
There is something of bitterness in the struggle, but it is that bitterness which makes for deeper experience and ultimate strength, though underlain with haunting sadness.