Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

years and a butt active duty in World War Two, plus ten years reserve, and I am

proud-very proud!-of her naval service. I am proud of every one of our women in

uniform; they are a shining example to us men.

Nevertheless, as a mathematical proposition in the facts of biology,

children, and women of child-bearing age, are the ultimate treasure that we must

save. Every human culture is based on “Women and children first”-and any attempt to

do it any other way leads quickly to extinction.

Possibly extinction is the way we are headed. Great nations have died in the

past; it can happen to us.

Nor am I certain how good our chances are. To me it seems self-evident that

any nation that loses its patriotic fervor is on the skids. Without that

indispensable survival factor the end is only a matter of time. I don’t know how

deeply the rot has penetrated-but it seems to me that there has been a change for

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the worse in the last fifty years. Possibly I am misled by the offensive behavior of

a noisy but unimportant minority. But it does seem to me that patriotism has lost

its grip on a large percentage of our people.

I hope I am wrong. . . because if my fears are well grounded, I would not

bet two cents on this nation’s chance of lasting even to the end of this century.

But there is no way to force patriotism on anyone. Passing a law will not

create it, nor can we buy it by appropriating so many billions of dollars.

You gentlemen of the Brigade are most fortunate. You are going to a school

where this basic moral virtue is daily reinforced by precept and example. It is not

enough to know what Charlie Noble does for a living, or what makes the wildcat wild,

or which BatDiv failed to splice the main brace and why-nor to learn matrix algebra

and navigation and ballistics and aerodynamics and nuclear engineering. These things

are merely the working tools of your profession and could be learned elsewhere; they

do not require “four years together by the Bay where Severn joins the tide.”

What you do have here is a tradition of service. Your most important

classroom is Memorial Hall. Your most important lesson is the way you feel inside

when you walk up those steps and see that shot-torn flag framed in the arch of the

door: “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”

If you feel nothing, you don’t belong here. But if it gives you goose flesh

just to see that old battle flag, then you are going to find that feeling increasing

every time you return here over the years . . . until it reabhes a crescendo the day

you return and read the list of your own honored dead-classmates, shipmates,

friends- read them with grief and pride while you try to keep your tears silent.

The time has come for me to stop. I said that “Patriotism” is a way of

saying “Women and children first.” And that no one can force a man to feel this way.

Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no

uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he

did.

In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father

used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons.

It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a

railroad line cut straight through it.

One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She

apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of

a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.

But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were

working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying

to pull the young woman’s foot loose. No luck-