Lincoln noticed that the boy was saying something to me, and encouraged him to speak without reserve. Roland repeated his question quietly but earnestly. You, who have helped me to awaken this young spirit, will sympathize in my pleasure.
And now I will tell you about your nephew.
Oh, our blessed German life! In old times travellers took with them into foreign countries the images of their saints. We Germans carry our poets, our philosophers and musicians over the face of the whole globe; and your nephew's pleasant, comfortable, free home is the abode of true culture. Here, in the midst of the tumult of political and private life, reign immortal spirits, who bring a devotion, a serenity, a holy quiet, of a peculiar sort.
Your nephew has done well in always telling me not to believe, with most people here, that this war will be over in a few months. I now think not of the end, but only of the next day.
And, in the midst of this growth and change of historic movement, I feel that the individual is like the single cell in a tree, or else that we are like boys on the school-bench. We do not know the entire educational plan. We do not know the end to which all this leads. We must learn our lessons; and cell is built upon cell, knowledge is added to knowledge, until—who knows the end?
In the first great struggle, in the New World's war of independence, there were Germans sold by German princes, to fight for the English against the Americans, and but few of our countrymen, towering up among them like Steuben and Kalb, did battle for the Republic. At that period the French—Lafayette's name rings out clear among them—stood foremost among the New World's champions of freedom. To-day the Union army contains thousands of Germans, witnesses who have emigrated or been exiled. Why are there no Frenchmen? I know the reason, and so do you.
I see the poet of the future draw near. The great drama of our epoch, the strife between Cæsarism and self-government, is presented to his gaze in dimensions such as no past age could know; he will compress the struggle within narrow limits.
The Republic of the United States has not yet existed a century. Oh, how different is the aspect of things here from what we had pictured to ourselves! I have found many who doubt the continuance of the Union; cultivated clergymen even told me that there was certainly more power of endurance in the monarchical form of government. That is the feeling of dejection and despair: but it is, I believe, only to be met with in single instances.
How often I am obliged to hear myself called a philosophical idealist! And they tell me I shall soon be converted. Your nephew, whose comprehensive glance sees all sides of a subject, has solved this enigma for me. The people here have lived so long for their own ease alone, feeling their claims of the State only occasionally, as voters. They must now pass through the school of military discipline, of staking their lives for the life of the nation—only as an education, of course, to be free again afterwards.
The so-called slavery question is not so nearly decided, by a great deal, as we supposed.