I have written for the Atlantic occasionally over the years, most recently in the current issue (“The Mind of George W. Bush”). Curiously I was at a dinner last night in New York that the Atlantic hosted for media types and friends of the magazine. I never worked with Michael Kelly, nor even met him, yet I knew him, and depended on him, through his passionate writing and tremendous reporting.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a series of epitaphs for people who died in World War I, some actual, others imagined types. They are brief and haunting, like the small poems in the Greek Anthology. For a panel in the Hall of the Institute of Journalists Kipling wrote this: “We have served our day.”