Page 26 - 1918 February - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 119

CHILDREN OF T H E LIGHTS

To every lover of children has there come in these last years that
p i t i f u l picture of French and Flemish plains crossed by long lines of
straggling, tired folk, trundling, dragging, or carrying those some-
times doubtful blessings—their children. We have seen them, boys
and girls big-eyed from fear and wonder, red-cheeked babies in white
caps, holding close in their arms some treasure which they could not
leave behind; and we have said, one to another. "We live in
America, thank God! And even though this most awful of wars
comes to us, our children can never know such loneliness and separa-
tion as that!"

Thus far our predictions have seemed true. Our children have
not known such sadness as that, and yet this nation-wide Gethsemane
through which we are passing has not spared them all. There are
little war-sufferers, not indeed on our coasts, but off them—children
living on the rocky islands which form our light-stations—children
whose lives are sadly different from the lives of your boys and girls.
They are the little patriots, too slightly known and honored, who are
helping to defend our coasts in order that you and I may not only
live in safety, but that we may also receive unimpaired the provi-
sions brought overseas. More than any of us whom they protect have
they felt the hardships and privations of this war which has forced
upon them the utmost loneliness and separation.

It has always been lonely at the light-stations, but never as it is
today. The children, who for years have welcomed white-clad
"summer folks" with strange accents, proudly showed them the great
light, and talked about them for days afterward, no longer have those
pleasures. They can only watch the boats sail by and wave a shy
greeting from the rocks. The fisherman, who used to land f o r a
neighborly call now and then, cannot break Uncle Sam's command
that no one stop at the light-station, and they, too, chug past. Rela-
tives and friends are not exempt. They cannot land even though
sickness and death may come to those in the lighthouses.

And so, although our children are not called upon to look back
across a brown, dust-covered plain to the smoke of burning villages,
some of them are today gazing from surf-beaten, tide-worn rocks
across a gray sea, patrolled here and there by the grim, lead-colored
boats of our coast defense, to a mainland hazy in the distance or to no
mainland at all. Are they not learning what war means more than
you and I , even though we perhaps have sent our sons to training
camps?