We were in no mood for argument then, and the subject dropped; but it recurred frequently to my mind, and the more I have dwelt upon it, the more I am convinced (your pardon, dear speaker!) that such a statement is not, cannot be true. War has its compensations, its beautiful compensations; and I very much question, whether, if the statistics of the good deeds, the kind, warm, large-hearted actions, could be registered, as are those of crime, we should not find that those performed in times of war, greatly overbalance those in times of peace. Great crises call forth and compel great deeds.
Where is the battle-field since Sumter’s sad surprise, which cannot boast, not one, but many Sir Philip Sydney’s, with the earnest “Take it; thy need is greater than mine?” Magnanimity need no longer be confined to the field of Zütphen, and each child be taught the story as though it stood alone. Where the hospital where we may not see something of sublimity in the beautiful forgetfulness of self, the untiring devotion with which plain, poor men watch, night after night, by a dying comrade,—a stranger till those walls had made them brothers? Where the home, high or humble, which fails to show the brave-hearted wife, mother, daughter, or sister, giving for her country a life far dearer than her own, to danger and to death? Is there no moral grandeur, no moral heroism here? A sad soul, so struggling with, yet surmounting sorrow; so sending forth her sure support and stay, then turning calmly and quietly to take up her lonely cross and bear the burden of daily life, by virtue of such act reaches a spiritual elevation which times of peace could rarely, if ever, witness.
I see the laugh—I hear the cutting remark, “Such a woman’s view!” but I know these things are true, for I have witnessed them; and, be it remembered, that ridicule is not reasoning, nor satire always sound sense. Never can I listen to this statement, that “War is an unmixed evil,” without longing to combat it; and added to that, but this very morning, the same belligerent desire was excited in my mind by reading an opinion, somewhat dogmatically asserted, that, “In these days, Apollo must give place to Mars.”
“Not so,” I answered then; “not so,” I answer now. Apollo never gathers in a heavier harvest—never stores stouter sheaves, than those mowed down by the chariot wheels of the God of War, as he dashes onward in his headlong career. Ask the world, since creation’s dawn, and she will tell you that Apollo clings to Mars; and if he ever “gives place,” it is only that he may follow on the fiery track of his great leader, sure of grander opportunities in the waxing and waning of one moon, than a life-time of peace could give.
And even granting (which I never will) that Apollo pauses in his course—that his lyre “lingers o’er its lays”—are not the daily deeds of our loved land, at this moment, prouder poems than this continent has ever yet produced? Where can we find such stirring strains, such ringing rhythm, such burning ballads, such lyric lays, such sublime sonnets, such ever-during epics, as these times of ours call forth? Is not each soldier a poet in his way? And shall his verse have the less power, for that it is set to martial music? Shall it touch our hearts the less? Rather, shall not every chord vibrate ten thousand times the more, for that the pages on which it is written are the fair fields of our own dear country; its pen, the sword; its ink, the heart’s blood of our brothers?
But I have wandered wide of my mark. I seated myself to note a simple story, of one of that ever-growing army who have nobly given their young lives to their country.
I have made allusion before to my whistling friend, Robinson, who was brought to the hospital at the same time with our poor Darlington, from the same regiment, and wounded in the same battle,—that of “Fair Oaks.” His left arm was terribly shattered, just below the shoulder, and injuring the shoulder-blade; and for a long time his case was a very critical one, requiring the most close and constant watching. He was entirely confined to his bed for many tedious weeks, and yet I know not why I should apply that term to the time so passed; for they were certainly never “tedious” to us, although we felt great anxiety for him, and we never had any proof that they were so to him. Patient and uncomplaining, the only sign he gave of suffering, save the contraction of his brow, was the constant effort to whistle away the pain, and his moans in his sleep. There was always something inexpressibly sad to me in these moans; it seemed as though the body were compensating itself, during sleep, for the powerful restraint imposed upon it during waking hours.
I have rarely seen greater unselfishness in any one. During his illness, it was all-important to keep up his strength, for as the wound began to heal, one abscess followed another, and kept him much prostrated; we therefore tried to tempt his appetite in every way; and often, when I have brought him some delicacy, he has pointed me to some one near him, with the words, “Please give it to him; he cares for such things more than I do.”
His love for his mother, and anxiety to spare her all unnecessary suffering on his account, was very beautiful, and attracted me to him from the first. His weakness was so great that he was utterly unable, for a long time, even to feed himself, and of course, could not write. When I offered to do so for him, he declined, saying, that she knew, through a friend, that he was here; and that the sight of a strange hand, with the conviction that it would bring that he was too ill to write for himself, would be worse for her than to wait for a little while.