Essay（s） by Heywood Broun
The Unknown Soldier
Heywood Broun
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They call him "the unknown hero." It is enough, it is better that we should know him as "the unknown soldier." "Hero" suggests a superman and implies somebody exalted above his fellows. This man was one of many. We do not know what was in his heart when he died. It is entirely possible that he was a fearful man. He may even have gone unwillingly into the fight. That does not matter now. The important thing is that he was alive and is dead.
He was drawn from a far edge of the world by the war and in it he lost even his identity. War may have been well enough in the days when it was a game for heroes, but now it sweeps into the combat everything and every man within a nation. The unknown soldier stands for us as symbol of this blind and far-reaching fury of modern conflict. His death was in vain unless it helps us to see that the whole world is our business. No one is too great to be concerned with the affairs of mankind, and no one too humble.
The unknown soldier was a typical American and it is probable that once upon a time he used to speak of faraway folk as "those foreigners." He thought they were no kin of his, but he died in one of the distant lands. His blood and the blood of all the world mingled in a common stream.
The body of the unknown soldier has come home, but his spirit will wander with his brothers. There will be no rest for his soul until the great democracy of death has been translated into the unity of life.
[The end]
Heywood Broun's essay: Unknown Soldier