Read the story “On Courage” by A.G Gardiner given on below of the Text. On Courage
… But if I were asked to name the instance of individual action which had most impressed me, I should find the task more difficult. Should I select something that shows how war depraves, or something that shows how it ennobles? If the latter, I think I would choose that beautiful incident of the sailor on the Formidable.
He had won by ballot a place in one of the boats. The ship was going down, but he was to be saved. One pictures the scene: The boat is waiting to take him to the shore and safety. He looks at the old comrades who have lost in the ballot and who stand there doomed to death. He feels the passion for life surging within him.
He sees the cold, dark sea waiting to engulf its victims. And in that great moment – the greatest moment that can come to any man – he makes the triumphant choice. He turns to one of his comrades. ‘You’ve got parents,’ he says. ‘I haven’t.’ And with that word – so heroic in its simplicity – he makes the other take his place in the boat and signs his own death warrant.
I see him on the deck among his doomed fellows, watching the disappearing boat until the final plunge comes and all is over. The sea never took a braver man to its bosom. ‘Greater love hath no man than this …’
Can you read that story without some tumult within you – without feeling that humanity itself is ennobled by this great act and that you are, in some mysterious way, better for the deed? That is the splendid fruit of all such sublime sacrifice. It enriches the whole human family. It makes us lift our heads with pride that we are men – that there is in us at our best this noble gift of valiant unselfishness, this glorious prodigality that spends life itself for something greater than life. If we had met this nameless sailor, we should have found him, perhaps, a very ordinary man, with plenty of failings, doubtless, like the rest of us, and without any idea that he had in him the priceless jewel beside which crowns and coronets are empty baubles. He was something greater than he knew.
“The sea never took a braver man to its bosom. ” What does Gardiner mean by this expression? Do you agree with Gardiner? Write your views in a paragraph.
