So That Was The Way. No Fair

The Aim Of Life Was Meat. Life Itself Was Meat. Life Lived On Life. There Were The Eaters And The Eaten. The Law Was: Eat Or Be Eaten. He Did Not Formulate The Law In Clear, Set Terms And Moralize About It. He Did Not Even Think The Law; He Merely Lived The Law Without Thinking About It At All.

But This Is Not A World Of Free Freights. One Pays According To An Iron Schedule--for Every Strength The Balanced Weakness; For Every High A Corresponding Low; For Every Fictitious God-like Moment An Equivalent Time In Reptilian Slime. For Every Feat Of Telescoping Long Days And Weeks Of Life Into Mad Magnificent Instants, One Must Pay With Shortened Life, And, Oft-times, With Savage Usury Added.

But It Did Not All Happen In A Day, This Giving Over Of Himself, Body And Soul, To The Man-animals. He Could Not Immediately Forego His Wild Heritage And His Memories Of The Wild. There Were Days When He Crept To The Edge Of The Forest And Stood And Listened To Something Calling Him Far And Away.

The Effect Of Civilization Is To Impose Human Law Upon Environment Until It Becomes Machine-like In Its Regularity. The Objectionable Is Eliminated, The Inevitable Is Foreseen. One Is Not Even Made Wet By The Rain Nor Cold By The Frost; While Death, Instead Of Stalking About Gruesome And Accidental, Becomes A Prearranged Pageant, Moving Along A Well-oiled Groove To The Family Vault, Where The Hinges Are Kept From Rusting And The Dust From The Air Is Swept Continually Away.

A Good Soldier Is A Blind, Heartless, Soulless, Murderous Machine. He Is Not A Man. His Is Not A Brute, For Brutes Kill Only In Self Defense. All That Is Human In Him, All That Is Divine In Him, All That Constitutes The Man Has Been Sworn Away When He Took The Enlistment Roll. His Mind, His Conscience, Aye, His Very Soul, Are In The Keeping Of His Officer. No Man Can Fall Lower Than A Soldier-it Is A Depth Beneath Which We Cannot Go.