ago in the
United States Coast Guard Magazine. Under the title "_Thirteen
Mistakes_," the coast guardsmen raised their warning flares above the
13 pitfalls. It is a mistake:

1. To attempt to set up your own standard of right and wrong.

2. To try to measure the enjoyment of others by your own.

3. To expect uniformity of opinions in the world.

4. To fail to make allowance for inexperience.

5. To endeavor to mold all dispositions alike.

6. Not to yield on unimportant trifles.

7. To look for perfection in our own actions.

8. To worry ourselves and others about what can't be remedied.

9. Not to help everybody wherever, however, whenever we can.

10. To consider impossible what we cannot ourselves perform.

11. To believe only what our finite minds can grasp.

12. Not to make allowances for the weakness of others.

13. To estimate by some outside quality, when it is that within
which makes the man.

The unobserving officer will no doubt dismiss this list as just so
many cliches. The reflective man will accept it as a negative guide to
positive conduct, for it engages practically every principle which is
vital to the growth of a strong spiritual life in relation to one's
fellow men.

Certain of these points stand out as prominently as pips on a radar
screen to the military officer bent on keeping his own ship out of
trouble. The morals contained in 4, 5, 12, and 13 all come to bear in
the story told by Sgt. Fred Miller about Pvt. Fred Lang of Hospital
No. 1 on Bataan. Miller had tried to do what he could for Lang, but no
one else in the detachment was willing to give him a break. He was an
unlettered hillbilly and, being ashamed of his own ignorance, he was
shy toward other men. The rest of the story is best told in Miller's
words.

"When the Japs made their first bombing run on Marivales, most of us,
being new at war, huddled together under such cover as we could find.
Some people were hit outside. We stayed where we were. But we looked
out and saw Lang. He was trying to handle a stretcher by himself,
dragging one end along the ground in an effort to bring in the
wounded. I remember one member of our group remarking, 'Look at old
Lang trying to do litter drill right in the middle of a war.' Lang was
killed by an enemy bomb that night. I guess he had to die to make us
understand that he was the best man."

There is hardly an American who has