Gravely, earnestly, he wrestled with his soul, mouthing with gusto the inspiring jargon of the crusade.
For the present, said the professors, was his Place not Here?
Did his Conscience tell him that he Had to go?
If it did, they said gravely, they would say nothing more.
But had he considered the Larger Issues?
“Is not,” said the Acting Dean persuasively, “is not this your Sector?
Is your own Front Line not here on the campus?
Is it not here that you must Go Over The Top?
Oh, I know,” he went on with a smile of quiet pain, “I know it would be easier to go.
I have had to fight that battle myself.
But we are all part of the Army now; we are all enlisted in the Service of Liberty.
We are all Mobilized for Truth.
And each must Do His Bit where it will count for most.”
“Yes,” said Eugene, with a pale tortured face, “I know.
I know it’s wrong.
But oh, sir — when I think of those murderous beasts, when I think of how they have menaced All that we Hold Dear, when I think of Little Belgium, and then of My Own Mother, My Own Sister —” He turned away, clenching his hands, madly in love with himself.
“Yes, yes,” said the Acting Dean gently, “for boys with a spirit like yours it’s not easy.”
“Oh, sir, it’s hard!” cried Eugene passionately.
“I tell you it’s hard.”
“We must endure,” said the Dean quietly.
“We must be tempered in the fire.
The Future of Mankind hangs in the balance.”
Deeply stirred they stood together for a moment, drenched in the radiant beauty of their heroic souls.
Eugene was managing editor of the college paper.
But, since the editor was enlisted in the corps, the entire work of publication fell to the boy.
Every one was in the army.
With the exception of a few dozen ratty Freshmen, a few cripples, and himself, every one, it seemed, was in the army.
All of his fraternity brothers, all of his college mates, who had not previously enlisted, and many young men who had never before thought of college, were in the army.
“Pap” Rheinhart, George Graves, Julius Arthur — who had experienced brief and somewhat unfortunate careers at other universities, and a host of young Altamonters who had never known a campus before, were all enlisted now in the Student’s Army.
During the first days, in the confusion of the new order, Eugene saw a great deal of them.
Then, as the cogs of the machine began to grind more smoothly, and the university was converted into a big army post, with its punctual monotony of drilling, eating, studying, inspection, sleeping, he found himself detached, alone, occupying a position of unique and isolated authority.
He Carried On.
He Held High the Torch.
He Did His Bit.
He was editor, reporter, censor, factotum of the paper.
He wrote the news.
He wrote the editorials.
He seared them with flaming words.
He extolled the crusade.
He was possessed of the inspiration for murder.
He came and he went as he chose.
When the barracks went dark at night, he prowled the campus, contemptuous of the electric flash and the muttered apologies of the officious shave-tails.
He roomed in the village with a tall cadaver, a gaunt medical student with hollow cheeks and a pigeon-breast, named Heston.
Three or four times a week he was driven over the rutted highway to Exeter where, in a little print shop, he drank the good warm smell of ink and steel.
Later, he prowled up the dreary main street of the town as the lights went up, ate at the Greek’s, flirted with a few stray furtive women until the place went dead at ten o’clock, and came back through the dark countryside in a public-service car beside a drunken old walrus who drove like a demon, and whose name was
“Soak” Young.
October began, and a season of small cold rain.
The earth was a sodden reek of mud and rotten leaves.
The trees dripped wearily and incessantly.
His eighteenth birthday came, and he turned again, with a quivering tension, toward the war.