Our Soldiers' Doctrine of Death

Our dead soldiers compel the world they saved, but have themselves lost, to seek the meaning of their death.. Answers expressed in terms of their death's accomplishment or of its revelation of human worth leave us uncomforted. Only if we can see in their dying an actual and permanent good for those who died will our hearts be appeased for the else unendurable glory of their sacrifice. Such an answer, if it can be won, enfolds all those at least who are of their spiritual kindred, affects all our other faiths and the whole end and art of living. What answer have our soldiers themselves given? What did death mean to them? It is the American soldier whom Americans question, because we understand best the language of his deeds; while we recognize that whatever was great in his answer was shared by the soldiers of our allies, whom we include in one impartial sorrow, reverence, and hope. Death did not mean to our soldiers the vastness commensurate