The Unknown Soldier: A Product
of Modernity

James Truslow Adams (1878 – 1949) made a number of interesting remarks in this 1927 article that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in which he noted that one of the maladies of the modern era was the creation of a cult that celebrated “the common man”:

“Man has always delighted to honor the great…But now for the first time whole nations, and those the most enlightened, have come to honor the man of whom we know nothing: the Unknown Soldier. As a matter of unfortunate fact, the particular body may be that of one who fought the draft to the last ditch and was a slacker in service. That, however, is of course wholly irrelevant; for it is not really the Unknown Soldier who thus receives the almost religious adoration of his people, but the Common Man, for that is what he is intending to typify…”

During the war James Truslow Adams had served as a U.S. Army Intelligence officer as well as a delegate to the Versailles Treaty.

– from Amazon: