PLUCK and perseverance are American characteristics; in all the world there are none superior. Perhaps more than to anything else the physical advancements of our country have been due to the tremendous desire and the will to go forward, to gain, to consummate. Almost everything that we as a people have set our hearts upon we have achieved beyond the expectations of ourselves and other peoples.
The building of the Panama Canal, the discovery of the North Pole, the results attained at the modern Olympic games are but minor instances of our determination; the accumulative values of inventions and their commercialism, the acquiring of vast wealth and well being express this more generally.
And the great World War has given additional evidence of the kind of stuff that goes along with American brawn and bravery; there was shown more than mere momentary force. The fighter par excellence is he who stays in the battle until every ounce of energy he possesses is expended, if necessary, to beat his opponent and goes back for more and more punishment, with the determination to give more than he gets. Such a fighter and of such fighters the American Army proved itself to be, collectively and with wondrously few exceptions individually; it was this quality, as much as anything else, that caused the foe to respect the prowess of the Yanks, to make way before them and to surrender often when there was no immediate need for it.
Despite much luxury and pleasure, much easy living, much indolence of a kind, the fighting stamina has been instilled into the American youth; history, sports, teaching, habits of life, all have conspired to make him the kind of man to want to smash the would-be bully and rough fully as hard as he deserves. And then, when injustice looks like coming back, to go in and smash some more.
Brighton Academy, in common with other high-grade schools, in the classrooms and on the athletic field, wisely implanted qualities of fairness and of determination into its boys. Imbued thus were the lads who had, from the halls of Old Brighton, gone forth to do and to die for their country against Germany, the thug nation.
Happy, then, was he who could go back after having been invalided home—and there were many, indeed, who gloried in it. One such, wearing the chevrons of a lieutenant of infantry, had come from Brighton Academy and had served with bravery and distinction in the trenches. He stood on the deck of the transport and gazed through moist eyes at the receding coast of the land of the free, for the most part seeing but one figure, that of a one-legged lad waving him a sad farewell.
“Poor old Roy! It’s the first time I’ve really seen him so sick at heart as to show it keenly. But who can blame him? He’d rather fight than eat and now he’s got to sit by and see us go without him.” So thought the youth on the upper deck, as he long held up his fluttering handkerchief.
And then, after not many days of glorious, semi-savage anticipation, there followed disembarkation at an obscure port of France and our returning hero, with many others, sauntered to the billets, laughing, some singing: “Where do We Go from Here?” and “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” Suddenly the young officer’s arm was seized, he was whirled about and found himself face to face with another lad, evidently a little younger, but quite as tall, with the accustomed military bearing, but upon his khaki sleeve reposed the familiar and much loved insignia of the Red Cross.
“Herb Whitcomb, or I’m a shad! You old dear, you! But ain’t it good to run smack into a son-of-a-gun from Old Brighton? And what now and where are you——?”