Go where one may, on land or sea, he will come upon activities of one sort and another. Were Timon of Athens living, he might be awakened from his misanthrophy and Jacques, the forest cynic, stirred to something like enthusiasm. Is the world enduring the pangs of a second birth which shall recreate all things anew, supplementing the miracles of modern invention with a corresponding development of spiritual life; or has it reached the top of the hill, and, mortal, like the human atoms that compose it, is it starting downward on the other side into an abyss which the historians of the future will once again call “the dark ages?”
We know not, and there is none to tell us. That which is actually happening were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day. Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted our sensibilities. Not only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity of the slaughter and the sorrow, but patriotism itself is chilled by the selfish thought that, having thus far measurably escaped, we may pull through without paying our share. This will account for a certain indifferentism we now and again encounter.
At the moment we are felicitating ourselves—or, is it merely confusing ourselves?—over the revolution in Russia. It seems of good augury. To begin with, for Russia. Then the murder war fairly won for the Allies, we are promised by the optimists a wise and lasting peace.
The bells that rang out in Petrograd and Moscow sounded, we are told, the death knell of autocracy in Berlin and Vienna. The clarion tones that echoed through the Crimea and Siberia, albeit to the ear of the masses muffled in the Schwarzwald and along the shores of the North Sea, and up and down the Danube and the Rhine, yet conveyed a whispered message which may presently break into song; the glad song of freedom with it glorious refrain: “The Romanoffs gone! Perdition having reached the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, all will be well!”
Anyhow, freedom; self-government; for whilst a scrutinizing and solicitous pessimism, observing and considering many abuses, administrative and political, federal and local, in our republican system—abuses which being very visible are most lamentable—may sometimes move us to lose heart of hope in democracy, we know of none better. So, let us stand by it; pray for it; fight for it. Let us by our example show the Russians how to attain it. Let us by the same token show the Germans how to attain it when they come to see, if they ever do, the havoc autocracy has made for Germany. That should constitute the bed rock of our politics and our religion. It is the true religion. Love of country is love of God. Patriotism is religion.
It is also Christianity. The pacifist, let me parenthetically observe, is scarcely a Christian. There be technical Christians and there be Christians. The technical Christian sees nothing but the blurred letter of the law, which he misconstrues. The Christian, animated by its holy spirit and led by its rightful interpretation, serves the Lord alike of heaven and hosts when he flies the flag of his country and smites its enemies hip and thigh!
Chapter the Eleventh
Andrew Johnson—The Liberal Convention in 1872—Carl Schurz—The “Quadrilateral”—Sam Bowles, Horace White and Murat Halstead—A Queer Composite of Incongruities
I
Among the many misconceptions and mischances that befell the slavery agitation in the United States and finally led a kindred people into actual war the idea that got afloat after this war that every Confederate was a Secessionist best served the ends of the radicalism which sought to reduce the South to a conquered province, and as such to reconstruct it by hostile legislation supported wherever needed by force.