is a parasite still, but he is a parasite That was inexcusable. That murder is

legally approved.

Becoming a soldier, he forfeits a lot of a man's rightful freedoms, but how much real freedom did he ever have? Now it is true that he will be

subjected to a process of degradation, stultification and demoralization, but the hours of labor are short and he can do some things that he could not do before. He is usually well fed and he can carry a little pocket money. He can use filthy language and adopt a cynical system of evil thought if those courses strike him as means of asserting his new manhood, and he'll find his fellows doing likewise. He can consume tobacco and liquor and can gamble, and he will find himself, as he does those things, attracting friends who will presently be in positions to serve his interests.

He can use (as Saint Paul puts it) women and girls. He can use them with unaccustomed impunity if he be bestial enough, and his companions will be doing the same things. He can exploit an occasional pansy, shamelessly. Slavery, he finds, has its compensations.

He can get away with murder. Let us be clear here. To kill a man because that man deserves killing and you know that he deserves it may be a duty, not a crime. To kill him, though he may deserve it, when you do not know that he deserves killing or when you are actuated by improper motives is not to have the same justification. To kill when you merely guess the killing justified and-as fits many a soldier's case precisely-when you don't give a damn about the justification is murder.

Hiroshima's bombing was murder. Violating that United States law which forbids any officer to deny quarter, United States officers murdered armed men and civilians alike, murdered men and women alike, murdered friend and foe alike and murdered grown-ups and little children alike.

approved by the officers of the United States today. Those officers stand ready to murder tomorrow. When a recruit associates himself with murder he becomes an accessory, becomes himself guilty of murder.

We soldiers of the United States who adhere to our constitutional duty are bound to repudiate acts and po-

licies that contravene that constitution, acts that break the law, acts that appall the moral sense.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just." He had a point.

THE RIGHTS OF BOYS

Freedom to be homophile, which may be the responsibility to be a homophile, is a boy's right. From the time he is 13 or 14 we deny him that right at our peril. When he is a man in fact he should be recognized as a man, take a man's powers and shoulder a man's burdens. His powers will only cause trouble if he be forbidden their exercise.

As soon as manhood is upon him he should be facing up to life's realities, planning his participation in his man's world. At five, at ten and possibly at 15, a 15, a boy can say to his teacher or parent, "I believe the things that you tell me. I trust you as my guide." At 15, perhaps at 14 and possibly at 12, he will have ceased to have exactly that attitude-somewhere along there he will have ceased to have any right to keep that attitude. He doesn't know everything, but he does know some things.

It is true that a man grown, a man of sixty perhaps, can attend a class and learn something. But as a rule that is something of a luxury for him. It is easier to listen to a good lecturer than to read a book, but study may be a more manly course than listening. And when a man listens to a lecturer there is something like make-believe in his attitude. When you go to a

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