KIPLING HAD IT RIGHT LONG AGO

"Stoned on guard for thee" (Gazette, Feb. 5). What a silly headline. Before
you and I were born, Kipling observed:

"If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep,

And all we know most distant and most dear,

Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep,

Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?

When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters

And the horror of our fall is written plain,

Every secret, self-revealing on the aching whitewashed ceiling,

Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?"

We have taught them to kill, or to be killed, or both. They do not enjoy
the luxury and security of your world and mine; they provide for it. Leave
them alone.

Frederick Warren

Dollard des Ormeaux