The
new moon, a silver thread, hung over the tree tops. He thought of that
dusky grey-haired child of four thousand years of ignorance and
helplessness and the tragic role he had played in the history of our
people. And for the first time faced the question of the still more
tragic role he might play in the future.
"I'm fighting to free him and the millions like him," he mused. "What am
I going to do with him?"
The longer he thought the blacker and more insoluble became this
question, and yet he was going into battle to-morrow to fight his own
brother to the death on this issue. True the problem of national
existence was at stake, but this black problem of the possible
degradation of our racial stock and our national character still lay
back of it unsolved and possibly insoluble.
The red flash of a picket's gun on the shore of the river and the quick
answer from the other side brought his dreaming to a sudden stop before
the sterner fact of the swiftly approaching battle.
He snatched but a few hours sleep before his regiment was up and on the
march to the water's edge. A dense grey fog hung over the river and
obscured the town. The bridge builders swung their pontoons into the
water and soon the sound of timbers falling into place could be heard
with the splash of the anchors and the low quick commands of the
officers.
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