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Show RELIGIOUS PACIFIST GREATEST INDIVIDUAL FIGHTER OF WAR Corporal York, "Battling for the Lord," Slew 24 Germans in Machine Gun Nest, and With Five Assistants Captured 132 of the Enemy, Including Four Officers Was Willing to Drill, but Not Kill. without saying a word. And he didn't mean to be unsociable, either. Corporal Cor-poral York- took- after him. The York estate comprises. 40 acres of land, of which part Is rich bottom land, but most is hill country. The house has one room on the ground floor, which Is dining room, sitting room and all, while Hie loft is everybody's every-body's bedroom. The kitchen is a Jan-to, built against the house. The farm crops are corn and hay and the live stock consists of a pair of mules, a cow, some hogs and chickens. All about the place Is tall virgin timber. Lived Life of a Pioneer. So Corporal York, before he went to war, lived in the one-room house in n clearing, which was the usual home of the American pioneer, and the life he lived was just such r life as his forefathers had lived for generations. When not engaged in tilling bis 40-acre 40-acre farm he commonly went hunting. All of the men thereabouts go hunting hunt-ing and are good shots, but York was especially efficient with the rifle. The standard and favorite game of the section Is the squirrel. Every man has a squirrel dog, and a good one Is worth $35 or $40. The dog trees the squirrel, and the hunter shoirts it always through the head, so as not to mangle the meat. If yon want to know-how know-how Ccrpornl York learned to shoot, try to knock a squirrel out of a tall hickory tree with a rifle, shooting always al-ways for the head. They also hunt foxes here, running them with dogs and bringing down the swift quarry from a "stand." On autumn nights coon hunting is in order. The coon is chased up a tree by the dogs. In the old days the tree was then always chopped down, so that the dogs and the coon could fight it out, no matter mat-ter who owned the tree or how valuable valu-able it was. Recently, owing to the high price of lumber, a sentiment against cutting down a $10 tree to get a $1 coon has developed, and this is regarded with contempt by the old-timers old-timers as a sign of the degenerate modern mod-ern mercenary spirit. The law in this section is whatever local custom approved, and it does not approve of restricting a man's personal freedom. This is a fact of prime Importance to the understanding of Corporal York. Every man here carries car-ries a gun, and is prepared as a matter mat-ter of course, to shoot anyone who presumes to trespass on his premises. prem-ises. Men Make Their Own Liquor. Every man who wants to" do so makes his own whisky, keeps it in his house and drinks it when he pleases. Stills are operated somewhat quietly, in deference to federal regulations, but tbe revenue officer does not intrude much. It would be impossible here to enforce the Mann act, the Harrison drug law, the prohibition law, or any other law which involves opening baggage bag-gage and invading premises. These people stand by the Constitution as it is written, not as it is interpreted. Their creed in brief is that as long as a man does not interfere with anyone else, no one has a right to interfere with him. That was the gist of Patrick Pat-rick Henry's bill of rights. Like most men who' value their liberty,' lib-erty,' these mountaineers have a strong sense of justice. They believe in the proper use of liquor by responsible persons. When a couple of bootleggers came into the neighborhood and began selling whisky to boys, a posse was organized and the bootleggers disappeared. disap-peared. Tbe law was not invoked. Mountaineer Is Religious. Next to his personcl freedom, the thing that a mountain man takes most seriously Is his religion. He believes in the Bible as the source of truth, and as a guide for human conduct. In these regions the church is a place of sincere worship, a place of social so-cial gathering and an emotional experience. expe-rience. No doubt in all remote regions re-gions the church takes somewhat the By FREDERIC J. H ASK I N. In tho Chicago Daily News. Nashville, Tenn.-iHe began his military mil-itary career as a religious conscientious conscien-tious objector. B(s was convinced of the need for killing Germans by arguments argu-ments drawn from the Bible. And lie acted on this conviction by killing 24 Germans in a machlae gun nest, with his rifle, and capturing, with live assistants, as-sistants, LS2 of the imemy, Including four officers. This achievement oi Corporal York, which has been called vy General Pershing Per-shing the greatest sif-gle exploit of the war, has become famous, but the man himself remains ui known. And surely such a man deserves to be explained. ex-plained. You want to luftw what sort of a chap he Is, and what environment fostered such a combination of moral courage and physical sli.11. The answer to these Questions is found here in the sectiofl that produced pro-duced Corporal York. It mfiy be stated in a sentence by saying thtft York belongs be-longs to the vanishing rs-ce of old Americans. Men who werft just like him In their faith In God, theh courage and their straight shooting won the Revolution and several subsequent wars. Of Pure American Breed. Such men have become scarce in America now. Nev breeds ht'Vfi come In and the old breeC has been changed by changing conditions. But 'here is one section of America in wMch the old American race still breeds true to type, and more than that still lives almost as it Jlvo(l when the iSoones-oro iSoones-oro men threw fovn their axr-s, took their rifles and weht out to exterminate extermi-nate General Ferguson's command at King's mountain. The section referred to is the southern south-ern Allegheny mountain region. The place where Corporal York was born and lived all his life until he was called to war, is a typical bit of it. His home post office is Pall Mall, Fentress county, Tennessee, about 100 miles east of this city. There is nothing nt Pall Mall except the post office, and the three forks of the Wolf river, which come together there. On all sides are the wooded ridges of the Allegheny Al-legheny mountains. Until two years ago it was 35 miles to ihe nearest railroad. rail-road. Many men who went to war from this section saw a railroad train for the first time when they answered the call to arms. To all intents and purposes they stepped out of the eighteenth eight-eenth century and into the twentieth. That Is what Corporal York did. Region Where Clemens Was Born. All the people in this region are of Scotch, English, Welsh and Irish stock. Their ancestors came down through the mountains from Virginia and North Carolina in colonial days, and the lands have been held by the same families fam-ilies ever since. One of these families is the Clemens family, which produced Mark Twain. He was born at Jamestown, James-town, the county seat of Fentress county. coun-ty. His father owned large areas of land near there, which he sold and traded about in such a way as -to immortalize im-mortalize his name, for they are still trying to straighten out the titles to the Clemens lands, and tbe old man's dealings promise to furnish occupation for many more generations of lawyers. law-yers. York is the "third from tire top," as they say down here, in a family of nine children, and is twenty-seven years old. His father having died, and his two older brothers married, he became the head of the family and took care of his mother and the family fam-ily homestead. He once described himself him-self as being "a kind of a raommer's boy.'" He is not, however, given to describing describ-ing himself at length. In this country where people never talk much unless they are running for office, the Yorks had a reputation for silence. His father fa-ther is said often to have gone through a whole day in the company of a friend place that tire theater, the movie, the parade and other similar stimulants of emotion take in cities. That is one reason why the camp meeting, with its wild crowd emotionalism, Is found in all backwoods sections. It also probably prob-ably explains in part the appeal of such sects as the Holiness church. York's father was a Methodist, and he was brought up a Methodist, but he and his mother and sisters becam converts to the Holiness church. The belief of this church seems to be that if a mortal neither does wrong nor thinks wrong, he is already, in effect, an angel, and may taste on earth something some-thing of the bliss "of heaven. At its meetings there are brief readings from the Scripture, then periods of silent meditation, then shouting of great joy, as the full glory of their triumph over sin and trouble burst upon the congregation, con-gregation, all at once. These alternate periods of silent meditation and frenzied fren-zied rejoicing often extend far into the night, and throw the congregation into a state of religious ecstasy. York took his new faith seriously. It satisfied some cravings of his nature. He still carried arms. He was still prepared to fight when need arose. But when he heard of the war and the draft law he realized that he faced a great crisis. He believed in fighting for the right, but he did not see how, as an angel on earth, he could kill a fellow who had never as an individual done him any harm. Willing to Drill, Not Kill. York and his mother went to S. E. Frogge, a merchant and farmer living liv-ing near them, who was their representative repre-sentative in the state legislature, and begged that Frogge try to obtain an exemption for York. The young man said that he could never kill in war. Frogge, of course, could do nothing. A few days later York left for the first time in his life tbe little clearing and the cabin and the wild woodlands which had theretofore been all the world to him. He took his convictions convic-tions against war with him unshaken. As soon as he reached camp he said that he was willing to drill, but not to fight. He made his position perfectly clear to the captain of his company. In having this captain, York was fortunate. for-tunate. If be had been imprisoned, hazed or mistreated, as other conscientious conscien-tious objectors were, he would almost certainly have spent the period of the war in prison. But this captain was a man of insight. He saw that York had In him the making of a fine soldier, sol-dier, and he also saw that York was a conscientious objector by sincere religious re-ligious convictions. This captain was something of a Bible Bi-ble student himself. He now refreshed, refresh-ed, himself on th'e Scriptures, called York to him. and set out to convert him to war by the good book. It is said that the argument lasted far into the night, that it was audible at quite a distance, and that Biblical quotations thundered back and forth like big guns in a battle. But when the pale dawn came, one mountain man was convinced con-vinced that his God commanded him to go forth and slay Germans. Battled for the Lord. When he went home on a furlough. Corporal York, late conscientious objector, ob-jector, was a soldier through and through. A hunter and marksman by I training, lie was fascinated by modern military arms. The machine gun, with its deadly sweep and play, the vicious army automatic, the military rifle with its wonderful range and flat trajectory, now held his heart as the creed of holiness on earth had held it before. There is nothing more to tell about Corporal York, except that when he performed his wonderful feat of shooting shoot-ing 24 Germans and capturing 132 of them, he did not take the prisoners back to his own battalion, but to another. an-other. Nor did he report what he had done. His exploit was discovered and verified by accident. He did not battle bat-tle for glory, he buttled for the Lord. |