were—­the mother and Judith Page.  Others saw him as the soldier, the generous brother, the returned hero.  These two looked deeper and saw the new man who had been forged from dross by the fire of battle and fever and the fire of love.  There was much humility in the face, a new fire in the eyes, a nobler bearing—­and his bearing had always been proud—­a nobler sincerity, a nobler purpose.

He spoke not a word of himself—­not a word of the sickness through which he had passed.  It was of the long patience and the patriotism of the American soldier, the hardship of camp life, the body-wearing travail of the march in tropical heat.  And then he paid his tribute to the regular.  There was no danger of the volunteer failing to get credit for what he had done, but the regular—­there was no one to speak for him in camp, on the transports, on the march, in tropical heat, and on the battlefield.  He had seen the regular hungry, wet, sick, but fighting still; and he had seen him wounded, dying, dead, and never had he known anything but perfect kindness from one to the other; perfect courtesy to outsider; perfect devotion to officer, and never a word of complaint—­never one word of complaint.

“Sometimes I think that the regular who has gone will not open his lips if the God of Battles tells him that not yet has he earned eternal peace.”

As for the war itself, it had placed the nation high among the seats of the Mighty.  It had increased our national pride, through unity, a thousand fold.  It would show to the world and to ourselves that the heroic mould in which the sires of the nation were cast is still casting the sons of to-day; that we need not fear degeneracy nor dissolution for another hundred years—­smiling as he said this, as though the dreams of Greece and Rome were to become realities here.  It had put to rest for a time the troublous social problems of the day; it had brought together every social element in our national life—­coal-heaver and millionaire, student and cowboy, plain man and gentleman, regular and volunteer—­had brought them face to face and taught each for the other tolerance, understanding, sympathy, high regard; and had wheeled all into a solid front against a common foe.  It had thus not only brought shoulder to shoulder the brothers of the North and South, but those brothers shoulder to shoulder with our brothers across the sea.  In the interest of humanity, it had freed twelve million people of an alien race and another land, and it had given us a better hope for the alien race in our own.

And who knew but that, up where France’s great statue stood at the wide-thrown portals of the Great City of the land, it had not given to the mighty torch that nightly streams the light of Liberty across the waters from the New World to the Old—­who knew that it had not given to that light a steady, ever-onward-reaching glow that some day should illumine the earth?

* * * * *