WE'VB NBYER BEBN ACCUSBD

Or B.q.nKING (Up) Tnn WnoNG Tnnn

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-Cowley.

Yes, "the horse doth with the horseman run away," and then comes inflation. \Me're hearing and reading even more about inflation right this rninute as this piece is being typed, than we are about ttre war. fn order to get the cards right side up on the table, let me say that I do not understand this inflation business. Or perhaps it would be more truthful to state that I do not understand the things I'm hearing and reading about inflation.

I'm in identically the same situation as the Chinaman in the oldest story on earth. The professor in science explained at great length and in all scientific detail just what made an electric street car run. When he finished,.he asked the Chinaman: "Now is there anything you still don't understand?" And the Chinaman, of course, replied: ,,I understand everything except what makes the street car rrm."

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But there is one phase of the situation that faces us now that I do understand, just as everyone who can add two and two and get four understands it. 'We are told that we are faced with a grave disaster called inflation because we have been unable to hold down the cost of living necessities, and they keep right on rising, in spite of months of ,,freeze,' orders, and "ceilings." That one thing that I know is that we've been trying to hold prices down, without trying to hold down the chief price ingredient-labor. I know that when you lay down a dollar to buy goods-no matter what goods-anywhere from fifty to ninety-five cents of that dollar you pay is for labor. And will you tell a country boy who is trying to understand how in the name of all that's good and holy you can spike down the price of those goods without first spiking down that chief ingredient?

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Trying to keep down the price of a commodity without keeping down the majority element entering into that price, is like sitting on the lid of a powder keg, allowing someone to throw matches into the powder, and then trying to keep the thing from exploding by bearing down hard on the lid. We are warned that the explosion is imminent if we don't take immediate steps to avert it. Parity prices on farm products might help a lot; durned ifI understand that either. But the labor item in our entire cost of tiving is so many times bigger than the farm commodity element, that there just isn't any comparison. And until we stop the balloon ascension of labor costs, everything's going on up. How can it stop?

Nelson Phillips once said: "A great character, like thc oak thrives only in the open air of freedom. The free winds and the unhindered sunshine are the elements among which it grows and towers in stately strength. It is the wige ordering of God, that character and character alone, shall be seed and root of all true greatness and all true achievement." **!f

Speaking of our soldier dead, Beauford Jester said: "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." These words are found in Holy Writ, and are the words of the Savior of mankind.. But a more generous love and a more far-reaching sacrifice can be made by man than the giving of his life for his friends. This more generous, more inclusive, more far-reaching sacrifice is when one gives one's life for his country, and his country's cause. A heroic life does not die. Its influence and reach are beyond Death and the grave. Such a life partakes of the Infinite. Like unto the soul of man, it has the essence of immortality. It is not bounded by the finality of death, or terminated by the grave. Its ideals, aspirations, and love of country, produce vision, purpose, and patriotism in the lives of their countrymen for whom the life was given in sacrifice. The heroic life inspires and ennobles those who are its survivors and heirs.

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Some great man, f have never been certain who, long since wrote these inspired words, which are particularly pertinent and filled with meaning to those young men who are baring their breasts to the hazards of war: "Never strike a sail to fear. Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas." Isn't that a grand sentiment, heroically expressed? ***

General W'. T. Sherman, he who "marched to the sea" in that tragic war between the states, was the possessor of a kindly humor, and a sparkling wit. He had been, you know, a college president before the war started. On var- ious occasions after the close of the great war, he was genuine auttrority on t.he subject of the Civil War from called upon to act as toastmaster of important patriotic the Southern end of the battle line, and disdainfully debanquets, and he filled the bill always with cleverness and nies that the great Forrest ever said anything of the kind. kindly dignity. Shortly after the war ended he was toast- * * * master at a great dinner given to honor General U. S. Grant, In his new and splendid book entitled "The Army of and in opening the program General Sherman brought Tennessee," Horn tells much about the deeds of Forrest, down the house by suggesting that during the program, who has been described by another historian as "the perthe speakers make it their business to talk no longer than sonification of battle incarnate." But he disdains to admit they could hold their audiences, and the audiences indulge that his hero ever used that sort of language or grammar. in no lengthy or undeserved applause. That should have He reminds his readers that Forrest, while he was not a been a program worth hearing, for besides General Sher- college man by any means' was a very successful apd well' man, there appeaied as speakers Mark Twain, the na- to-do business man in Memphis when the war started, and tion's greatest humorist, and Col. Ingersoll, her greatest ' that he spoke a very good brand of everyday English, "even orator.

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But General Sherman sometimes found himself the butt of another man's wit. It is said that he always took a "kidding" well. Once, a few years after the war, the star of a stage play in New Orleans learned that General Sherman was in the audience. So when he stepped out to make a curtain call, he pointed out the distinguished visitor. He said: "We are proud to have General Sherman here tonight. Mighty proud. General Sherman is a fine man. A mighty fine man. A little careless with fire, perhaps, but a fine man." And the audience roared. and Sherman roared with them.

Which stories bring to mind the one that Carthell Robbins, lumberman, orator, and humorist from the free State of Arkansas loves to tell. He says there is a man who lives so far down in the old, deep South, that he never has been able to figure what great General is buried in Grant's Tomb.

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If you were asked what words with regard to the strategy of warfare have been oftenest quoted and most frequently reprinted in the last couple of years, you would, if you were one of those who fairly ate up all these warlike words and opinions, be forced to reply that the alleged philosophy of General Nathan Bedford Forrest "led all the rest," many times over. Every war expert and near expert tells us over and over again that to "git thar fustest with the mostest men," is the shortest cut to victory, and they credit--or charge-General Forrest with having uttered those words during the Civil War. In fact I've heard them quoted ever since I can remember. And what do you think? Along comes my old friend Stanley F. Ilorn, a as you and I." Horn says that what Forrest actually said was-"I take a short cut, and try to get there first with the most men." Means the same thing, but takes a lot of' color out of the philosophy, doesn't it?

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Marvelous stories about our American soldiers and their daring and gallantry' are coming back fast now from the various arenas of battle. If you want to thrill to your toes, and want every hair on your head to tingle like a jew'sharp, just read the stories of real life and adventure that are being printed every issue by Time Magazine, and others, about our own boys. Why, all my life I've reveled in the adventures of Dumas' great Three Musketeers, and thought them incomparable. And now, in my old age, I find a lot of everyday American boys who can spot D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis the fifteen ball, and beat them every game, for sheer daring and breath-taking, highhearted courage. Yes sir, the heroes of fiction are just everyday amateu,rs compared with a lot of these boys. That story in the September Readers Digest about the boys in the torpedo boats who brought General MacArthur out of Bataan, puts to shame any adventure stories of the past, either of fact or fiction. And did you read in Time about that Texas boy who w4s fighting in the Solomons, and every time he got shot shouted-"Goddammit they got me." But he kept on fighting, and they kept on shooting him in different places, and each time he let out that same curse' until finally he had so much lead in him he had to quit and get his wounds bound up. They hit him four times in tough spots before he quit fightt*tg;

Let us paraphrase the words of Shakespeare, and say: "IJpon what food hath they fed these American soldiers, that they have grown so great?"