It was a listless marching--veterans on gummy asphalt all along the limp trees by the Park. The older men from the older war rode in mimic locomotives that bucked their front wheels, hooted sirens, clanked bells. Some current soldiers marched--carrying rifles with hot metal parts, and behind them came a show of mechanized equipment, with bands interspersed. I listened to the bands and thought of Shakespeare's reference to men who couldn't contain their urine when they heard the bagpipes play. Brass bands, as much as anything, had undone the loose hold of the Germans on sense. Songs about rolling caissons and lifting anchors were flaring the eyes and dropping the chins of the street-lining crowds here, too. I studied these people, remembering all philosophers and the scientists and their faith in reason. Man's monumental Thought--his pride--was silly in these surroundings. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Kant, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Descartes, Hume, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, and a hundred more--compartments of order in a chaos of shining orbs and panting tongues. Pretty compositions, real in themselves, and true enough--but floating in a flood their owners did not observe or--if they saw it--ruled irrelevant, nor realized they rode it, too. What old classic premise could stand the test of a brass band? None. I watched the bright horns and the dull guns. I stood at attention when the flags went by--feeling, as I always do, the aspiration in those white stars and those red stripes. We would continue to aspire--some of us--while breath stayed in us. But this stirring--this patriotic thrill--did not debilitate my sphincters. Tightened them, rather, against the multimillion goons who would as soon sell all of liberty down any creek as their own two-bit integrity. What patriots remain these days must battle harder against their countrymen for truth, for dignity, for honesty and love than ever against an outside foe. It proved a misfortune to be moved to lofty sentience, at that time. The tiresome military iron clanked by as it has clanked through every city on the earth for thousands of years. More men of the newer war came, canoe-shaped hats worn cock-eyed, bellies lean still, faces blank in the scalding sunshine. I noticed, now, that many paraders were moving among the spectators--marchers who had been dismissed some distance up the Avenue. These men, from other states, ticketed like parcel post, badge-thick and boozy, shoved among the ordinary citizens, cawing and singing, carrying pails, and shooting water pistols. Occasional cops watched them with the fixed, tolerating smiles taught in the department--proper address toward large political groups. The men, in what they thought of as boisterous glee, peed out their pistol streams at any pretty girl, blotting blouses, stippling skirts with dark dribbles, and evoking, as often as not, coaxing screams.