But deep down in my heart there is the horror of
my Viking forefathers of dying in bed, unable to strike back, as
it were. I know it is wicked and foolish, but all my life I have
so wished to get on a horse with a sword, and slam in just once,
like another Sheridan. I, who cannot sit on a horse! Even the
one Roosevelt got me at Montauk that was warranted "not to bite
or scratch" ran away with me. So it is foolishness, plain to see.
Yet, so I might have found out which way I would really have run
when the call came. I do hope the right way, but I never have felt
quite sure.
The casualties of war are not all on the battlefield. The Cuban
campaign wrecked a promising career as a foreign correspondent which
I had been building up for some ten or fifteen years with toilsome
effort. It was for a Danish newspaper I wrote with much approval,
but when the war came, they did not take the same view of things
that I did, and fell to suppressing or mutilating my letters,
whereupon our connection ceased abruptly. My letters were, explained
the editor to me a year or two later when I saw him in Copenhagen,
so--er--r--ultra-patriotic, so--er-r--youthful in their enthusiasm,
that--huh! I interrupted him with the remark that I was glad we
were young enough yet in my country to get up and shout for the
flag in a fight, and left him to think it over.
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