By Major Arthur J. Burks.

From the original article: Art Burks, during the early and middle thirties, sold better than a million words a year; twenty and thirty thousand words a week for years on end. Once he wrote a novel for Funk & Wagnalls between the time a plane took off from New York and landed in the State of Washington. For Street & Smith be wrote a short story while seated as a guest in Sing Sing’s hot seat. His stories were pounded out hot, never revised, and were written faster than most writers type. Frustration, Burks said, made people want to write; not satisfaction. His advice to writers: "Replenish yourself as you go. Husband your wares and dole 'em out as you go. Don't try to get all the dough there is the first year. Learn all you can from brats, as once they learned from you."

Originally published in August 1944 issue of Writer's Digest. Extensive research discovered no evidence that copyright was renewed.

For over two years I have more or less forsaken my second love, that of fashioning words into my own kind of jewels, for my first love, that of being a marine. How humbly grateful I have been for the great opportunity which has been given me to be of service to my country, and to the thousands of men who have, in greater or less degree, been given into my charge. It seems to me I have always been a trainer of men, men of all ages, all races and all religions. I have seen them come into the Marine Corps by thousands, bemused, confused, somewhat fearful civilians. I have seen them leave the Recruit Depot, at Parris Island, months later, full-fledged marines. They required more advanced training, but they were marines.

Thousands whom I knew went out to Bougainville, to the Marshalls, the Carolines. Men for whom I called cadence went ashore on Tarawa. And some are still there. They are the dead who will never die, and their troubles have vanished as the mist. For them I have no great feeling, save that of happiness that I knew them, and was able to mould them a little, so that when their time came they met the issue, as they met the enemy, unafraid.

Soft warm winds sing over their graves, and I know that they know, and are glad that they could prove themselves to their country with the greatest gift each of them could give—his life. No, I do not forget them, but I do not pity them. I no longer have a duty to them. I do have a duty to the living. My duty here is to make use of my gift of words. For here, where words are routine, and so countless many times the same, I have learned the deeper meaning of words. Here, where I have done, I feel, almost all that will be required of me, short of combat, I have watched and felt more deeply than words can convey. Yet convey them I must, somehow; for one day soon I expect to follow the men I have helped to train, to be with them in battles now in prospect, and though I know that I shall return, some of them may not, and these words I find welling up in me, addressed to the people of my second love, who knew me personally, or knew of me, and all of whom I knew because all of us who write are closely kin, must find their way to help the living who come back. Others have a greater gift of words, but will they think of this? Others turn neater phrases, but can they say what I can say, which I can say because it has been given me to see so deeply into so many human hearts? The hearts of men who knew they were being trained to go out and fight and live for freedom, but who might die in the struggle for survival, for all their training and self-assurance? Tarawa taught its bitter lessons, that even the brave and strong and almost invincible can die.

What can I do for the living who return? It is very simple. I can write to you, who write for the people I used to reach. You can write to and for the people, throughout this nation, who are losing ground in the struggle this great war really is; this reality which not everybody can visualize. I hasten to add that I cannot visualize it, either, but in the eyes, words, hearts of the men, the individuals, who have fought it, are fighting it now, and will continue to fight it, I can read the personal bit each of them has contributed to the inconceivable whole. And from these small bits, important only to each individual, you and I can put the puzzle together, to fashion an appalling thing: The loss of the greatest war on earth.

Oh, we shall win against the Japs and the Germans. The men in uniform will see to that. But shall we truly win? If you win something, you should have something to show for it. What will we have when it is over? I wish I knew the real answer to that. I don’t, but I know bits of it, and the bits are not happy.

A chasm is widening between the men and women in uniform and the men and women out of uniform, between service folk and civilians. Maybe I am dreaming all this up. I hope so. I do not believe so. It is too serious, too apparent, even though at this moment I see it from the viewpoint of a marine officer who finds it difficult to remember that, just over two years ago, I was a civilian myself, and a writer, who had all but lost the military viewpoint—had lost it in spite of the fact that I had been in the Marine Corps during the First World War. Now, as I regard my own career, if it can be called that, it seems to me that perhaps destiny has given me a mission after all, with repeated experiences as a marine, repeated experiences as a civilian, to at last give me the opportunity to _see_—

I see thousands of men depart on furlough, after only a brief few weeks in uniform. But during those few weeks they have changed from white-skinned, soft fellows with doubtful eyes, into tanned, hard, unbeatable, calm-eyed, certain MEN! They have taken a long step away from the life they knew. Now, for a few brief weeks, they are returning to what they left, expecting to find them as they were when they went away. Then, the meeting, and the mystifying, mutual sense of awesome change. And this, mind you, after only a few weeks of training. How strange and dreadful and fearsome will this change be when those same men go on furlough again, after they have charged through bullet-spattered surf onto grenade-blasted sand, enroute to palm trees, behind which await the bayonets and swords and knives of the ruthless enemy? That second furlough, if the man lives to take it, will come months, perhaps even years, off there in the future. And what will it be like? I am afraid I have the answer. It will be unbearable unless, by some miracle, the ones who go and the ones who stay are somehow kept in touch. But how? Through letters? Perhaps, but those who write and those who receive letters are thousands of miles apart, living lives in which the others have no part, cannot even visualize. Both sides see, as they write, the recipients of their letters, in their memories, the people whom they really no longer know. Life goes on, here, and there, and here the life is different, there it is different, too. Those who go cannot remember, or what they remember is no longer true. And those who stay cannot be made to see. For how can even a movie, filmed on the spot, supply the feeling which must be part of the experience of the man who goes through the Hell of War. Only experience can supply the feeling; and feeling is how and whereby a man, or woman, lives. There are thousands, millions, of wounds on service men, and women, who have not yet listened to the moans and cries of the dying, who may never listen to the whistling of bullets, the crashing of bombs, grenades and high explosive shells, and thousands, millions of wounds on those who have. They are deep-seated wounds which only the Great Healer can find, because they are etched on the souls, the spirits, of the men who have experienced and felt. There is no way of transmitting an inkling of this feeling to those who have not known it, so that they will understand—except through the imagination of the gifted of words. It can be done, perhaps, with music, for those who understand music; with painting for artists and those who understand art. But only words can reach every son of man and make themselves felt. So to the weavers of words we must go to make sure that our victory is not lost to mankind because of mankind’s lack of understanding of himself, of his brethren.

How can we reach the people of tomorrow, the people of today who will build the world of tomorrow, so that that world may be a world worth living in, worth the lives of those millions of all nations which have been given and will be given to preserve it.

Words are the Father’s gift to humanity, one of His greatest, most profound, and there is truly nothing they cannot do. The simplest man may make himself understand by the most complex man, through the Divine Authority of words. How fortunate then are those who have many words and know how to weave them into flesh from the thought and feeling of others. You can do it, because you can write, Therefore reach out, gifted ones, with all the Authority which has been given you, and make use of it as I believe it is intended that you should.

Somehow that chasm between those in uniform and those not in uniform must be bridged. The only all-purpose, all-serving bridge is the bridge of words. How many people can you reach? What is your medium for the use of words? Are you using every channel available to you?

Can you somehow reach people who, unable to see beyond their own limited daily lives, even though they have men in the service, write to those men, filling their letters with complaints about conditions on the home front? I’ve talked with many men who yearn for letters from home, yet dread to receive them because those letters make them feel as if they are actually cheating the folks at home.

"You men who have everything provided for you have no idea what we have to endure at home!"

This is hard for the man to understand who knows that he may die tomorrow, because death is his constant companion, and the odor of death is in his nostrils as he reads. It is almost impossible for the man to understand who has seen men blown to pieces, has seen men horribly wounded, blinded, burned, scalded, blasted asunder. How can he answer such a letter from a loved one? What struggles must he undergo to reconcile his reason with his love, and keep them both! In that alone there is room for a library of gifted words; but they must be words that live, that sing, not words that bore. Men who have been in combat have been close to death. It is so close to them still, in their feelings, that it would be strange if they did not speak of it to their loved ones. But what if the loved ones, fed on the war daily through newspapers, magazines, books, and the radio, are too fed up with a struggle which has touched them in almost no other way to even pretend interest? Is the home comer to ignore it, pretend that he has never known it, that nothing has changed, himself least of all? How, for him, can the chasm be bridged? What is to become of him in this new world he has lived to create, or which has been created for him in his absence, upon the soil he has kept free of enemy footprints? How can he and his loved ones be brought back across the chasm, to meet each other face to face, with the recognition which was theirs when, morning after morning, day after day, before the war came, they met and loved and felt together? You, with your gift of words, can help to do it. If you reach but one person, in how ever many tries you make, you will have accomplished a work too great and important to be paid for, which is beyond any price that man could give you.

Can you reach writers of letters? Reach them, show them how to write. Can you reach the magazines read by soldiers and civilians alike? Reach them, make them know one another—for there are many writers in the service who will see the service side, many civilian writers who will see the civilian side, and writers at least should understand one another. But make this a labor of love and of understanding. Do not make it a duty, for by the time your message is needed, both civilians and men and women in uniform, will be well fed up with anything that has the sound and smell and feel of duty—though to do his duty, all the rest of his life, will be second nature to the soldier, sailor, marine, coast guardsman. He will only prefer not to be told, many times a day, just where it lies.

God gave you the gift of words.

Take my word for it that the time to use your gift is now. Spread the influence of your genius, little or much as you may be endowed with, as far as-your strength, determination and endurance will impel you—and further still—for even one little word, rightly sent forth, can do more good than man can imagine. It has more power than any instrument of war mankind has made. But, it can be twisted…

Words of love, spoken emptily, can sound like words of hatred; let there be no hint of hatred in anything you write to build this bridge I have so sketchily described and proposed.

Words of humor are not the kind we need; for men who have seen too much have so often lost their sense of humor. Graves, and ruin, and holocaust and memory, form a wall through which levity cannot find its way—_as yet._ Give the groping one the time he needs to readjust, and show him how. There are as many ways for the writer to help in this great work I am suggesting, as there are writers —multiplied by all the people, uniformed and civilian, whom each writer, and all of them together, can possibly reach.

Sit down, alone, when you have read this plea, which comes as near to praying as any words I have ever spoken, and try to find within yourself that segment of this world-girdling bridge which is your allotted part to build. And you will find that segment, and you will build, if truly the Wisdom of the Father is in you. And it is, it must be—else whence come the words which picture your genius?

Whenever the urge to write is on you, and may it be often, remember the Bridge of Understanding, and in each thing you write, be it letter, poem, newspaper article, book, song, story, play, sketch, essay or sermon, build!

You don’t know how?

Ah, but you will. It is in you, together with your gift of words. And if the desire is right, and deep, and sincere, those words will well up like the cool soothing waters of a spring that eternity cannot diminish. For with each expenditure of words there will remain many others for greater work on the Bridge tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Passed by censor USMC; for publication WRITER'S DIGEST only. The opinions or assertions contained in this article are the private ones of the author and are not to be construed as official.