Master Signal Electrician E. J. Moore ” 304 Corporal John J. O’Brien ” 354 INTRODUCTION _Bravery_ By RUPERT HUGHES Formerly Major United States Army Bravery is the beautiful, impatient gesture of the soul at its highest reach, baring its own breast to a fatal wound in its eagerness to deal a fatal blow at something it abhors. Bravery is poetry, drama in deed instead of word. It has always been lovable and beloved. There is distinguished valor as there is distinguished art, for there are degrees of courage as of intelligence and talent. Many people think beautiful thoughts: a few express them. Someone frames an old idea with an exquisite twist of phrase and a universal proverb results. So some one citizen expresses in one felicitous act an ideal of his people and is accepted as their national hero. Conspicuous bravery always owes part of its success to good fortune. At the cry of a leader—or in this war at the arrival of “zero hour” on the wrist watches—a whole regiment went forward, nearly every man doing his duty with complete courage. Some heroes were dogged and unimaginative; some revealed ingenuity or invention. But to a single man fell the opportunity and the inspiration to do some extra task with a certain picturesque felicity. His unluckier companions and his generals rejoiced to celebrate him, diminishing their own prestige to enhance his. And the story of his happy thought becomes the delight of his nation, and perhaps of many nations. There is a kind of injustice in it as there generally is in awards and preferments. Where all have forgotten selfishness and comfort and cast their lives into the furnace, it seems a pity that only a few should emerge with fame. And yet since we can no more remember all our heroes than we can call the roll of the stars in our sky, it would be a mistake to favor no one, to have no crosses of war. The schoolboys cherish the name of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylæ. But they ignore the 700 Platæans who perished also, and as bravely. This is regrettable, and yet it is better to make a watchword of the name Leonidas than to forget the whole event because it is more than the brain will carry. Fame is a lottery with a few capital prizes. The winners show perhaps no more wisdom, no more courage than all the other gamblers. In the baseball phrase they simply “luck in.” Yet they will get their names in the papers, people will boast of knowing them; prestige and fortune will be theirs and oblivion will absorb the others. But if you are going to have lotteries succeed, you must offer capital prizes and pay them. And war is the lottery of lotteries. There have always been wars and, unless hope shall triumph over experience at last, there always will be wars; and there will always be an appetite for tales of heroism. The earliest literature records them and so must the latest.