The Rising of the Tide: The Story of Sabinsport

by Ida M. Tarbell

Ralph, so they learned one day, had lost his life in the full tide of battle. His company had been ordered to secure a foothold on the high northern bank of a river to which the army had fought its way. They had been led with extraordinary skill and courage, but in crossing one after another of the officers had been killed until Ralph was left alone in command. He took his men through the last cruel shelling to the desired objective, but in the final push he was fatally wounded. Even then he had refused to give up and for hours continued to direct his men as they literally clawed their way into the side of the bluff. “He would not die,” wrote home one grieving young soldier, “until he knew we were safe.”

And Patsy made her fight as bravely. She held her head high. Had she not little Ralph, who, so they had both agreed, was one day to carry on his father’s work for justice and peace among men? If there were times when it seemed as if her brave heart must break with pain, no one ever saw her shed a tear or say other than, “I would not have held him back, no, not even to have him here to-day.”

It was to the honor and the sanctification of Sabinsport that the bereaved took their sorrow as they did. It was more. Out of their loss there seemed to come to the town a mysterious illumination, the enlarged sense of what it was all about, which Dick had so desired for her, which he had felt so keenly she should have, to sustain her. Wounded and hurt as she was, the town had to find a reason, a great reason, to justify it all. Defending laws on sea or land that had grown out of past struggles between nations was not enough; vengeance was not enough, not even avenging wrongs as great as Belgium and the Lusitania. Sabinsport needed to feel that out of this sacrifice there should come some new conception of life, some greater guarantee of more joy and freedom to more people, some pledge that in future times there was hope of less sorrow, less hunger, less pain everywhere on the earth. This, she finally saw, was what it was all about; and in groping toward this realization there came to Sabinsport something that was akin to a new faith, and with this she was for the first time fully and unalterably reconciled to the Great War.

It was no longer grim determination, no longer hatred of an enemy that she despised, that held her to the undertaking. It was a large and luminous faith that out of it all a long step had been taken toward realizing that new world to which, since the beginning of time, men have lifted their eyes.

It was amazing how the town softened under the touch of its sorrow, how many old feuds sank out of sight, how much warmer grew everybody’s heart. “It’s doing something to us, Dick,” Reuben Cowder said to him one day. “Why, I even heard Captain Billy speak approvingly of Wilson to-day.”

It did something to Dick. It made easier his renunciation of Nancy which he still believed was his duty. That was his part, his sacrifice, he told himself. He must give himself now to keeping alive, feeding this new sense that had come to the town; and he threw himself with enthusiasm into the work of explaining to Sabinsport the national aspirations and hopes that began to take form in the unfamiliar countries of Europe. At the camp, at the Boys’ Club, in his church, and at the War Board, Dick made himself the advocate of Serbian and Bohemian, Czecho-Slav and Pole. For the first time in all Sabinsport’s life, she began really to sense that these strange men who filled her mines and her factories carried in their hearts loves for their lands like hers for America; that they, too, had dreams—some of them coming down from hundreds of years of struggle—of freedom and equal opportunity in their own nations. And her chivalry, her sense of protection, her determination to help them see it through, grew with her knowledge.

It was perhaps quite natural that, as the days went on, Dick should come to feel that Sabinsport had had a change of heart so profound that it had softened even her bitterness against Germany, itself. It was this feeling that he might even talk mercifulness to Sabinsport now that led him into what afterwards was known as “the Parson’s Big Break.”

It was not until October that Dick was able to bring himself to believe that at last the Allies had the upper hand. From the start he had seen the war as long—long—long. It was that that made him suffer so. Cantigny, Château-Thierry, the falling back to the Vesle—none of these things had really convinced him. But when the Americans captured St. Mihiel, following on the break in the North, he suddenly realized the splendid scheme on which the great French general was working. “She’s beaten,” he said, “she’s beaten. It will take time, but we’ve got her.” No longer was it, as the French had said it in that unquenchable faith of theirs—On les aura; it was no On les a.

And as the days went on and he became more and more certain, his imagination flew ahead to the time when the Allies would reach the borders of enemy territory. He had his theory about this: Germany would unconditionally surrender before she would allow the Allies to fight on her territory.

But he could not give up the idea that the Allies should enter Berlin—not as destroyers but as world peacemakers. He meditated much on this, and at last one October Sunday morning preached a sermon on the text: “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”