During the American Civil War, Mrs. Bixby, a Massachusetts mother, lost five sons. President Lincoln wrote her the following letter:—
"I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."
During the World War, Frau Meter, a German mother, lost nine sons. Kaiser William wrote her the following letter:—
"His Majesty the Kaiser hears that you have sacrificed nine sons in defense of the Fatherland in the present war. His Majesty is immensely gratified at the fact, and in recognition is pleased to send you his photograph, with frame and autograph signature."
Is it necessary to add a word to make one who reads the two letters understand the difference between the two rulers and the two ideals they represent? God is man's highest ideal of good. Which represents this ideal, Lincoln or the Kaiser? The United States or Germany?
A poet says of the Kaiser's letter:—
"What bit of writing plainer tells
That neither love nor mercy dwells
Within his heart? What picture grim
Could better paint the soul of him?"
The Kaiser was reported to have said that no family in Germany had escaped loss. Perhaps he was "gratified" at this as he was at the fact that Frau Meter had lost nine sons. One family in Germany lost neither father nor any one of the six adult sons,—the family of Kaiser William II. Certainly no other family in Germany of such a size escaped loss. Would the Kaiser have felt equally "gratified" if his six sons had given up their lives in fighting Germany's war of plunder and conquest?
In the last days of the war, American soldiers found upon a German prisoner a postal card with a picture of Quentin Roosevelt lying dead beside his airplane. Below was printed in German the statement that America was so short of fliers, that she had to use her presidents' sons. Germans could not understand that in America the presidents' sons would be the first to offer their services and for work of the most dangerous kind. The sons of the Kaiser were carefully kept out of danger.