The Chivalry of
Congressmen
We learn that when the Mount Vernon sailed from Brest there
were certain congressmen on board who insisted on taking the places of
soldiers. The congressmen had done no military duty, but they wanted to get
home. So did the soldiers who had been through hell and out again that
congressmen might lift to draw fat salaries and talk interminably in the
comfortable upholstered council chamber.
The soldiers were left behind.
Some soldiers were allowed to come—after the congressmen had
all been assured that room would be made for them. But the soldiers were not
allowed to keep the quarters that had been assigned to them. Army officers who
had been through the fiercest of the fighting were compelled to give up their
staterooms to professional politicians who found Prince Alberts more
comfortable than khaki.
The officers were not eager to make the change, but the
politicians insisted.
The matter is trivial, and yet it has its bearing on
philosophy. It rarely pays to be a hero—in some one else’s behalf. The world
has changed very little since the days of Sennacherib. We speak of the recent
war as a holocaust, an Armageddon, an upheaval, a cataclysm. We give it several
names that are common-place bromidic journalese. We declare that the world has
been revolutionized—that human nature is now metamorphosed, transformed.
It isn’t much transformed. It will take us about a year to
realize what a singular durability the more nauseous traits of human character
have shown in surviving a purging process that should have eliminated them it
will be chiefly noticeable in those who did not really go thru the keynote
process at all. Any congressman whose natural vulgarity formed the keynote to
his character before the war will continue to exhibit that vulgarity to the end
of his political activities.
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