KEN

I

n the course of growing up, I have worked (like others) under limitations needless to count and with one major asset. That asset was early discovery that any strength of character I possess grows out of my capacity to love a fellow man with loyalty. while any goodness in me comes from desire to merit love and loyalty in return.

—

Like countless others, I was still in my 'teens, and in uniform, when I learned what I could not have guessed. Not about sex, for that was old knowledge. I learned, rather, how unite him unselfish love can pull all of a man's scattered wits and parts together transfigure him, almost. It is an amazing experience to any of us when it comes; we can never quite describe it to one who has not known it; and we ourselves understand it no more than the soft iron that is suddenly magnetized and finds itself lifting loads far beyond its own weight, by merest touch.

But I must somehow try to make you know what went on inside me then, for it all bears on a later discovery. What I felt for that comrade made me ten times the man I ever thought I could be. Energies were released; I was tireless; I was suddenly at once responsible and bold; I was freed from all the old doubts of self-value — for was I not preferred by the one I preferred? It was as if, were he behind me and a machine gun in front, I could have wrenched that gun apart bare-handed.

-

We took care of each other. One may put it that simply. And should any fool smile, I'd gladly line his throat with every tooth he shows.

-

For two youths had suddenly come into the greatest of ultimate human knowledge how one man would give his life for another gladly. Some smirk when they say "love" they can't distinguish one 4-letter word from another. We two had discovered together how the manliest thing in a man's life can be the manhood he gives to, receives from, inspires in another.

What man, after that discovery, would ever again capitalize the name of a god whose priest said, "Tear that dark evil out of you, you son of the Cities of the Plain!"

And that, incredibly was what a Baptist chaplain from Georgia said -the day when the dirt had been tossed into the grave I couldn't look at, and I was trying (and blindly) to reach out to some humanity to which I could talk.

It is very hard to make the incredible emotions of a boy seem credible on paper. You will forgive me for doing badly. Had I known more at 18, I might have managed to say to that plump chaplain, even in that moment, that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was transfigured at Athens into glory.

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