From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [160]
Prew leaned on his rifle muzzle and listened to this one as he had listened to the other ones, the only thing you can do with a telling off, but now he was only half hearing what The Champ was saying. Because he was not there now. He was standing with The Champ but his mind was thinking of the problem. He could see it all in his mind, unfolding like a run off the reel between the hands, each picture following the other logically and with a beginning at the one end and an ending at the other, one two three, right down the line.
The only trouble was you could not see the beginning now as it was lost in all the tangled swirls of celluloid on the floor, and you could not see the ending because it was still on the turning reel.
He remembered though that out of all of them the only noncoms who would not take their turn at booting this brand new ball around were Chief Choate and Old Pop Karelsen, both known openly as his friends. But even they had been offered plenty of chances. But like the non-jockstrap Pvts they preferred to stare uncomfortably off into the middle distance. Or watch the dazzling purity of the slow moving glaciers that were the fair weather cumulus cloud formations, white mountains high above dark mountains.
Well, what did you expect them to do, he thought, rise in mutiny and deliver you? You must surely realize you are not being forced into anything, dont you? You are doing all of this of your own free will, you know, he told himself. Yes sir, you are that, he thought, that you are.
Free will, he thought. There is free will. And then there is free love, dont forget free love. And then also there is free—let me see, free what? Free politics! Nope, not free politics. Well, free what then? Why, free beer, of course. Of course, free beer. Free will, free love, free beer.
But this now is free will. Your own free will, thats doing this. Not them thats doing this. They are merely offering your free will a free choice. Kindly but logically, seriously but without malice, a free choice for your free will.
1) You can go out for boxing. 2) You can not go out for boxing and you can blow up and fight back; in that case you go to the Stockade. 3) You can neither go out for boxing nor blow up and fight back; in which case you can continue to suffer indefinitely this unpleasantness that hurts you because you are sensitive and an artistic bugler, instead of an artistic fighter which would have made it very simple. And, if you continue in this unpleasantness which you are free to choose and which is without malice, but which shows no promise of letting up, the logical sequence will be company punishment for inefficiency plus extra duty plus restrictions plus, eventually inevitably, the Stockade.
Now if we reduce these fractions we have on the one hand, go out for boxing; and, on the other hand, we have go out for the Stockade. Since you are an artistic bugler (instead of an artistic fighter, like The Champ here) we can cancel out the first. So, reducing still further, we have 1) go out for the Stockade; or, 2) go out for the Stockade. The choice is up to you, a rather restricted choice but nevertheless a choice, presented to your free will unemotionally logically without partisanship, and without personal malice or meanness of spirit.
He would, he thought, much have preferred that they hate him, that they band together in the sacred name of Home & Country (not Family, I think we can leave Family out of this one) and oppress him with the mace of Law & Order. Law & Ordure, he thought, or, perhaps, shall we say, Slaw & Hors D’Oeuvre. As, say, the Nazis do the Jews, for instance. Or as the English do the Indians. Or as the Americans do the Negroes. That would have been much better, wouldnt it? Yes. Then you would have been a hated human, instead of an unhated number (# ASN 6915544,