If Archimedes had a station on which to rest his lever he could move the world. The world had been moved by a power unknown to him. Our country is the station where the lever rested.
"Turning the Bend in the Road"
Never before in all the history of our world have so many deaths occurred from war in so short a time. The very gates of death would seem to have been literally crowded by such multitudes passing through them. The soldiers have given to the world "a new death." Fresh inspiration was imparted to the French heart by the soldier at Verdun, a mere lad, who, wounded, called upon the dead to rise and fight the Germans. There is a spiritual partnership between dead heroes and living patriots. The Kaiser, in addressing his troops, made this utterance, "No mercy will be shown, no prisoners will be taken. The Huns, under King Attila, made a name for themselves which is still mighty in traditions and legends today." He omitted from his thought that part of the "traditions and legends" on which our minds are dwelling. The old chroniclers relate that Peter and Paul appeared to Attila in camp and terrified him with threats, a visit immortalized by Raphael. This factor that a governor of Judea had not reckoned with, was suggested to Pilate's wife. A woman's intuitions do not ask to have a cautionary signal repeated. She does not mean to invite tragedy and go spell-bound to destruction. An acknowledged leader in modern art, Kaulbach, so depicts character and so sees it in action and situation as to take a spectator by storm. With great power he reveals the spirits of the Huns and Romans who perished under the walls of the eternal city as renewing the combat in the air. A characteristic trait of the Germans appears by displaying the ruler of the Huns as an equal with the figure of the Teutonic "Gott." The Huns who destroyed seventy cities in Greece and barbarously murdered eleven thousand virgins, whose bones are preserved in the church of St. Ursula in Cologne, found that angel forces were against them. Those whom they had slain reappeared so that they had to encounter an immortal assemblage which had been mustered to resist them.
Presence of Our Celestial Helpers
"Alas, my master, how shall we do?" said the servant of Elisha in terror, when, his eyes being opened, he saw the mountains full of horses and chariots of fire. Our soldiers with rapturous joy testified that guardian spirits watched over them. The Scriptures abound with allusions to invisible benefactors. Shakespeare, to whom no side of human nature was unknown, with splendid genius, having to deal with the irresolute temper of Hamlet, calls to his aid a factor from the militant hosts of heaven. "Look! my lord! It comes." It was his father's spirit in arms. "Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold, list, list, oh list." It is often stated that the great Charlemagne is not dead but on occasions places himself at the head of the nation, to lead it forward again to victory and glory. The world does not fight its battles for nothing. It would be just as erroneous to speak lightly of Marathon or Waterloo or Bunker Hill, or Vicksburg, or the third Battle of Piave which ended the German war by removing Austria-Hungary from the field and creating an indefensible Bavarian front, as it would be to underrate the significance of our recent national awakening. On revisiting the earth I felt in every place a great ground swell of national feeling. War is the last thing in the world to go according to program. This keeps people guessing and wakeful and interesting to others because they are themselves so interested. The whole country had become a great university for the study of folks in their elemental character. We can get a helpful vision when we take a straight look at people, elevated in feeling so preoccupied as to be unconscious of the self-revelation they are making. Shakespeare is right when he makes love control the destinies of his heroines. They may aspire reasonably but they were never meant to trample upon their own hearts and the hearts of others. We believe there are few men whose ambition has not been at some time during their lives the very slave of their affections. The great yearning of old and young in affections as well as intellect is to be appreciated. We are sure that there is a friend or lover for us somewhere, a companion for every thought and wish.
Out of Evil Cometh Good
The mother has come to her own as a by-product of the war. Such is her elevation that you will explore the pages of history and read the annals of mankind in vain to find anything that is a parallel to it. And now comes Governor Coolidge of Massachusetts stating by proclamation that when Lincoln's mother, "a wonderful woman, faded away in his tender years from her death bed in humble poverty, she dowered her son with greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother." It has been a profoundly moving thought, when crossing the ocean, that two miles underneath there lay the live Atlantic telegraph cord stretching from one shore to the other. Vitalized with living messages of love and welfare, with the speed of lightning, on Mother's Day, the mysterious current communicated to the country the number of letters and the weight of the mail in tons that were on their way to gladden the mother who was keeping the home fires burning. Some women who are mothers started a wave of moral power which will never cease to roll until it has enveloped the earth. "Thy son liveth" is an assurance that, with a new accent, is now given when a boy makes the supreme sacrifice. His life hitherto has been but preparative. The separation of the living and the dead is less complete than formerly. The voters in Baldwin, Maine, paid tribute to the only boy that, from that town, died in the service, by standing, one hundred and fifty of them, in silence with their heads bowed. It is reported that the lips of three or four of the veterans moved as though uttering a prayer for the lad. Thus a new attitude is taken by many people toward death and towards the departed. Some say they feel as close as ever to those who, though they have turned a leaf in their biography, are characters in a story that still goes on. The feature of the war has been "the thinning of the veil between life and death." Forever living, incapable of death, seems the new verdict touching those promising young men who while they paid the price, bequeathed to those who survived, the glory and the honor.
Pushed by Unseen Hands
It is believed that we have lived to see the meting out of some divine awards. "Germany's collapse is the most dramatic judgment in the history of the world." In all the growth of Christianity, no such certitude has been so universally and emphatically expressed, touching the continuance of human personality. It is the diapason of a new literature produced by the war. It colors correspondence. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle feels that death has not robbed him of his son's companionship. The family feeling seems to continue unimpaired. "We are seven" is the sentiment, when "we are not all here," but "some are in the church-yard laid."
"All houses wherein men had lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.