The soldiers went home to their waiting wives, to their glad children,
and to the girls they loved--they went back to the fields, the shops and
mines. They had not been demoralized. They had been ennobled. They were
as honest in peace as they had been brave in war. Mocking at poverty,
laughing at reverses, they made a friend of toil. They said: "We saved
the nation's life, and what is life without honor?" They worked and
wrought with all of labor's sons, that every pledge the nation gave
should be redeemed. And their great leader, having put a shining hand of
friendship--a girdle of clasped and happy hands--around the globe, comes
home and finds that every promise made in war has now the ring and gleam
of gold.