And it is those women that the men worship. It is a
masculine trait to want to be a sort of hero in the eyes of the woman
you love. When she doesn't look at it that way, your plumes droop!"
And now the bugles rang with a clearer note--not, "You will go, you
will go--" but, "Do not wait, do not wait, do not wait."
The cry from abroad was Macedonian. "Come over and help us!" It was
to America that the ghosts of those fighting hordes appealed.
"Take up our quarrel with the foe,
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch--be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders' field--"
Gradually there had grown up in the hearts of simple men a flaming
response to that sacred charge. Men whose dreams had never reached
beyond a day's frivolity, found springing up in their souls a desire to
do some deed to match that of the other fellow who slept "in Flanders
field."
"To you from falling hands we throw the torch--be yours to hold it
high--," the little man who had measured cloth behind a counter, the
boy who had sold papers on the streets, the bank clerk who had bent
over his books, the stenographer who had been bound to the wheel of
everlasting dictation, were lighted by the radiance of that vision, "to
hold it high--.
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