Early Youth Is A Baffling Time

And There Is The Headlight, Shining Far Down The Track, Glinting Off The Steel Rails That, Like All Parallel Lines, Will Meet In Infinity, Which Is After All Where This Train Is Going.

A Singular Fact About Modern War Is That It Takes Charge. Once Begun It Has To Be Carried To Its Conclusion, And Carrying It There Sets In Motion Events That May Be Beyond Men's Control. Doing What Has To Be Done To Win, Men Perform Acts That Alter The Very Soil In Which Society's Roots Are Nourished.

What Began As A Bitter Dispute Over Union And States' Rights, Ended As A Struggle Over The Meaning Of Freedom In America. At Gettysburg In 1863, Abraham Lincoln Said Perhaps More Than He Knew. The War Was About A New Birth Of Freedom.

Beneath Everything Else, North And West, There Ran A Profound, Unvoiced, Almost Subconscious Conviction That The [american] Nation Was Going To Go On Growing-in Size, In Power, In Everything A Man Could Think Of-and In That Belief There Was A Might And A Fury That Would Take Form Instantly At The Moment Of Shock.

Progress Is The Sum Of Small Victories Won By Individual Human Beings.