The World Will Never Be the Same Again, Oct. 31, 1918

From the front page of The Roanoke News, Weldon, N.C., Oct. 31, 1918

The World Will Never Again Be the Same World

In these days of horror how much of the past seems like a dream! Gone those common daily tasks which flowed on so quietly and forgetfully that we were hardly aware of their passage. Often they grew dull and irksome in their respected monotony, and we sighed for something different, even something painful so it were different. Now look back from the midst of war and tumult and terror, and the monotony seems sweet.

The old affections still persist, of course, and always will, since nothing can uproot them. But there is something vague and elusive about their persistence, as if we knew them but could not realize them, had not time or strength to enjoy their comfort and delight. Loved faces tease us as do the shadowy figures of a dream.

And the old, simple pleasures: a walk in the fields, or a dinner with friends, or the pleasant progress of our gardens, or an evening with books. Either they are gone because we haven’t time for them, or if we keep them up, there is the same haunting flavor of unreality, of dreaminess. We seem to be moving and laughing and loving in our sleep.

Let us at least insist upon the same quality in what is hideous and hateful. For the nightmare of this war will pass also like a shuddering shadow. The world will never again be the same world. It never is the same world for two years or two minutes. But cruelty and hate will pass out of it, as joy for the moment passed. Some day, sooner or later, mankind will reawaken to brotherhood, tranquility and peace.

What concerns us meanwhile is so to bear ourselves that in the dream memories of that future we and those we love shall find nothing to be ashamed of. Let us fill our lives with courage and dignity and patience and hope, so that we may be fully worthy of that glad awakening when it comes. In the words of the great poet who has most felt this dreamlike uncertainty of life:

So fairly carry the full cup, so well

Disordered insolence and passion quell,

That there be nothing after to upbraid

Dreamer or doer in the part he played,

Whether tomorrow’s dawn shall break the spell,

Or the last trumpet of the eternal day,

When dreaming with the night shall pass away.