And Wes Thompson was one of these. Deep in him his emotions were
stirring. The old tribal instinct--which sent a man forth to fight for
the tribe no matter the cause--was functioning under the layer of stuff
that civilization imposes on every man. His reason gainsaid these
stirrings, those instinctive urgings, but there was a stirring and it
troubled him. He did not desire to die in a trench, nor vanish in
fragments before a bursting shell, nor lie face to the stars in No Man's
Land with a bayonet hole in his middle. He would not risk these
fatalities for any such academic idea as saving the world for democracy.
Always when that queer, semi-dormant tribe instinct suggested that he go
fight with the tribe against the tribal enemy his reason swiftly choked
the impulse. He would not fight for a political abstraction. He had read
history. It is littered with broken treaties. If he fought it would be
because he felt there was need to strike a blow for something righteous.
And his faith in the righteousness of the Allied cause was still
unfired. He saw no mission to compel justice, to exact retribution, only
a clash of Great Powers, in which the common man was fed to the roaring
guns.
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