The 

 Human 

 Harvest 



War 



sometimes 

 inevitable 



[104] 



"Sons of American Wars," societies which 

 find their inspiration in the personal descent 

 of their members from those who fought for 

 American independence. The assumption, 

 well justified by facts, is that revolutionary 

 fathers were a superior type of men, and 

 that to have had such names in our person- 

 al ancestry is of itself a cause for thinking 

 more highly of ourselves. In our little pri- 

 vate round of peaceful duties we feel that 

 we might have wrought the deeds of Put- 

 nam and Allen, of Marion and Greene, of 

 our Revolutionary ancestors, whoever they 

 may have been. But if those who survived 

 were nobler than the mass, so also were 

 those who fell. If we go over the record of 

 brave men and wise women whose fathers 

 fought at Lexington, we must think also of 

 the men and women who shall never be, 

 whose right to exist was cut short at this 

 same battle. It is a costly thing to kill off 

 men, for in men alone and the sons of men 

 can national greatness consist. 



Butsometimes there is no other alternative. 

 War is sometimes inevitable. It is some- 

 times necessary, sometimes even righteous. 



