Heroes in Peace / The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920

by John Haynes Holmes

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

Now heroism, which is performed under circumstances such as these, is heroism still. But I want to lay down the principle that such heroism is of a type inferior to that performed under the drab, uninspiring, familiar circumstances of daily life. The soldier who goes marching into battle with the flag before his eyes and wild music in his ears, is a brave man—but the sailor who leaps into the foaming sea, the miner who descends into the flaming pit, the locomotive engineer who dies at his post of duty, without so much as a single human voice, perhaps, to give him cheer, is a braver man. I always recall in this connection, as a type and symbol of what we may term the heroism of common life, a story which I read some years ago in the newspapers. It concerned two laborers, William Phelps and James Stansbury, who were one day cleaning out the inside of a large boiler at the Cerealine mills in Indianapolis. By the error of another workman, live steam was turned into the boiler before the cleaners had left it. Instantly, by a common impulse, the two men jumped for the single ladder which led to safety. Phelps got there first, but no sooner had his foot touched the rounds than he stepped aside, seized his companion and boosted him up. "You first, Jim," was his gasping cry, "you first." Pushed and thrust by his friend, Stansbury escaped, but Phelps was rescued only to die two hours later in dreadful agony. And when told, just before he died, that Jim was all right, he said, "That's good—nobody'll miss me, but Jim had the wife and the kids." It was a wise reporter who put the story on the wire, for he closed it with the words, "No soldier in the siege of Pekin or the battle of Santiago ever proved himself a greater hero."

Stories of this kind might be multiplied indefinitely, but I can sum up all that I would say upon this point by describing a strange little building which I chanced to discover in an out-of-the-way corner of London some years ago. For many weeks I had been looking upon cathedrals and public buildings and city squares, where monuments to soldiers were as common as daisies in a summer field. Suddenly, on a certain morning, I came upon a little plot of grass and trees, near the great postoffice in St. Botolph's, Aldergate, which is called the "Postman's Park," and at one end of it saw the little open gallery, erected in 1887 by the great painter, George F. Watts, with its forty-eight tablets placed in commemoration of certain heroes and heroines who died unknown in the endeavor to save the lives of others. Here was name after name which meant nothing, but story after story which meant everything. Tablet 1 was in memory of Tom Griffin, aged 21, a steamfitter, who on April 12, 1899, was scalded to death while trying to save his "mate" from an exploded boiler; Tablet 3, in memory of Mary Rogers, stewardess of the steamship Stella, who on March 30, 1899, went down with her ship after embarking into life boats all the women passengers committed to her care; Tablet 5, in memory of Elizabeth Boxall, aged 17, who on January 20, 1888, died from injuries received in trying to rescue a little child from being run over; Tablet 8, in memory of Dr. Samuel Rabbath, officer of the Royal Free Hospital, who died on October 20, 1884, from diphtheria contracted by sucking through a glass tube into his mouth the infected membrane from the throat of a strangling child; Tablet 10, in memory of William Goodrum, aged 60, a railway flagman, who on February 28, 1880, stepped in front of a flying train to rescue a fellow-laborer, and was instantly killed; Tablet 16, in memory of Ella Donovan, a woman of the slums, who on July 28, 1873, entered a burning tenement to rescue little children, not her own; Tablet 23, in memory of Henry Bristow, a boy of 8, who on January 5, 1891, died from injuries received in trying to save his little sister, aged 3, from being burned to death. And so the tablets tell their pathetic tales! You read one after another until your eyes are dimmed with tears and you can read no more. And then you seat yourself for a moment in the quiet park, with all London roaring in your ears, and you think of these humble men and obscure women who, without the blare of any music or the flashing colors of any flag or the thrilling excitement of charge and countercharge, "laid down their lives for their friends." "Is my face cut?" said William Peart, a locomotive driver commemorated on Tablet 2, as he was pulled from out the wreckage of his exploded engine. He was told that it was. "Never mind," he replied, with his last breath, "I stopped the train." Here is heroism of a new type—dull, commonplace, everyday, without one trace of color or romance. But for this very reason do I believe it to be heroism of a higher type than that of the soldier.

But there is a second circumstance peculiar to the life of the soldier, which makes martial heroism to be of an easier and therefore inferior type. I refer to the fact that the soldier performs his deeds of valor not only under the stimulus of "pomp and circumstance," but also under the sweet influences of companionship. The soldier is always one of a company or regiment. Except on occasional scout or sentry duty, he is always moving with the collective motion of a great host of his fellowmen. He is never working, fighting, suffering alone, and is therefore never left to the heart-breaking task of bearing his burden in solitude. On the contrary, as he walks, he keeps step with thousands of marching feet; as he advances into battle, he rubs shoulders with his "mates"; as he falls headlong in the trenches, he is picked up and ministered to by the hands of those he loves. And out of this solace of companionship, out of this inspiration of collective life, there comes creeping into his heart a sense of uplift, a contagion of spirit, which makes heroism inevitable. I have never seen this aspect of military experience more wonderfully expressed than by Prof. Perry, of Harvard, in an article in the New Republic, in which he describes his impressions as a Plattsburgh "rookie." "Soldierly experiences," he says, "are common experiences, and are hallowed by that fact. You are asked to do no more than hundreds of others * * * do with you. If you rinse your greasy mess-kit in a tub of greasier water, you are one of many gathered like thirsty birds about a road-side puddle. If you fill your lungs and the pores of your sweaty skin with dust, fellows in adversity are all about you, looking grimier than you feel; and your very complaints uttered in chorus partake of the quality of defiant song. To walk is one thing, to march albeit with sore feet and aching back is another and more triumphant. It is 'Hail! Hail! the gang's all here'—it matters not what the words signify, provided they have a rhythmic swing, and impart a choral sense of collective unity. * * * Every late afternoon," he continues, "the flag is lowered, and the band plays 'The Star Spangled Banner.' Men in ranks are ordered to attention. Men and officers out of ranks stand at attention where they are, facing a flag, and saluting as the music ceases. Thus to stand at attention toward sundown, listening to solemn music sounding faintly in the distance, to see and to feel that every fellow-soldier is standing also rigid and intent, to experience this reverent and collective silence * * * is at once to understand and to dedicate that day's work."

Now all this is very beautiful. But its very beauty is what makes the heroism of the soldier as easy as the heroism of others is oftentimes difficult. Compare, for example, the courage of even the most gallant soldier with the courage of the pioneer, who goes alone into vast and unfamiliar solitudes, and there amid killing labors and strange perils, hews out a path to life, with never the face of a comrade or the voice of a woman to give him cheer. I think that I never knew the meaning of loneliness, and never understood therefore the sublime heroism of the pioneer until I journeyed through the prairies of Kansas, the deserts of Arizona and the pasture lands of Idaho and Montana. Those of you who have traveled through the great west will recognize the sensation that came over me as, hour after hour, I gazed upon those uninhabited wastes and saw only at rarest intervals the traces of human beings. I remember looking out upon the prairies late one afternoon and watching the slow fading of the day. For three hours, from four until seven o'clock, I saw on the passing landscape one horseman, as lonely as a solitary sail at sea, one prairie wagon with three men gathered about the evening camp fire, and two houses on the far horizon. From seven to eight o'clock came on the darkness, and soon we were riding through impenetrable night; and twice, perhaps three times, at intervals of an hour or more, I saw a single light twinkling in the distance, marking where some man or perhaps some family, was living in the solitudes. And I dreamed that night of the men, and the women, too, who first came out into these vast spaces, leaving home, friends, companionship behind to make a trail, build a home, prepare the way for the coming of civilization. The very road over which my train was moving was the old trail of the Santa Fe, which had been trod by the feet of thousands of lonely and intrepid souls, who dared the wilderness and the desert as the forerunners of the nation's life. These men, and the women also who were with them, to rear their homes and bear their children, were heroes of a type sublime—heroes who never knew the joy of comradeship, the consolation of co-operation, but lived and toiled and died alone, with only a dream of the future in their hearts to give them courage. It was fitting, and yet how sadly belated recognition which was given them in the noble monuments at the World's Fair in Chicago, which bore these inscriptions from the pen of President Eliot:

"To the	"To the
Brave Settlers	Brave Women
Who Leveled	Who in
Forests	Solitudes
Cleared Fields	Amid Strange
Made Paths by	Dangers and
Land and Water	Heavy Toils
And Planted	Reared Families
Commonwealths."	And Made Homes.

Such is the heroism of solitude! But not yet have we reached its purest and noblest form. These men and women were lonely, it is true; but they were sustained, after all, by a great hope of the future, by dreams of prosperity and happiness to come as the fruit of toil, by ambitions for the children who would survive to better and fuller days. Braver even than these are the men who have faced loneliness without hope—who have looked not merely on solitude, but on solitude ending in defeat and death—and still have lived as those who had no fear. The classic example of this great heroism has been given to the world by our own age, in the story of Captain Scott. Whenever my own faint heart begins to fail under the strain of burdens absurdly light, I take up a copy of Captain Scott's Journals, as I would take up a copy of holy scripture, and I read as long as my tear-filled eyes can see the page the items that he jotted down in his diary on those last terrible days before he died. Here he is in the midst of the vast solitudes of the arctic wastes, struggling along with his two half-dead companions, his feet frozen, food gone, fuel gone, and a hurricane beating him helpless to the ground. He knows he cannot get through to his goal, he knows there is no living soul within hundreds of miles to bring him succor. On March 19th he speaks of their "forlorn hope"; on the 22nd he confesses that "he must be near the end"; on the 29th he speaks of death and says flatly, "I do not think we can hope for any better things now. * * * We are getting weaker, and the end cannot be far." But never once, for all his anguish and solitude, does he give way. "We shall stick it out to the end," is his word. He can even joke at one time in a grim and terrible sort of way. "No human being could face (this) storm," he writes on March 18th, "and we are nearly worn out. My right foot is gone—two days ago I was the proud possessor of the best feet. These are the steps of my downfall." And then there come the last hours. His two companions lie dead, one on either side of him. Outside of his little snow hut is the raging storm. He is alone with death. And as calmly as though he were writing a report in the naval offices in London, he scrawls with frozen fingers those immortal letters, first to Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Bowers, the mothers of the two men whose bodies are beside him, then to his own mother and his wife, then to his friends, Sir James M. Barrie and Vice-Admiral Egerton, then the statement to the public with its closing words, "I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another and meet death with as great fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last. But had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman." Eight months later his body was found, sitting erect, his arms extended to his dead companions on either side as though his lonely soul sought at the end the comfort of even their frozen bodies, and on his face a smile as beautiful as that of a child just fallen into slumber.

Heroism! my friends! What is the heroism of even the bravest soldier compared to heroism such as this? I would not disparage the men who have suffered and died on the fields of Flanders and Galicia. But is it not true, after all, that we can do much if only we have the dear friends to bear us company, and that the real test comes when we stand "alone, alone, all, all alone," with the universe and God. To work alone, like the pioneer, with never a hand to clasp and help his own; to die alone, like Captain Scott, with wife, child, mother, friends thousands of miles away, all ignorant of his fate, and "still to do the best to the last"—this is heroism. The soldier as a soldier for all his courage cannot match it.

But there is still a third aspect of the soldier's life which touches very vitally upon this question of heroism. I refer to the fact that the soldier, in the vast majority of cases, is engaged in a business which has the enthusiastic endorsement of his fellowmen. He is distinctly on the right side. He is doing the popular thing. The eyes of the people are upon him. He marches away to the waving of flags and the applause of multitudes. Children cheer him, women embrace him, old men bless him. If he is wounded, he is tenderly cared for by the nation. If he performs some gallant deed, he is rewarded by orders of merit, and perhaps by the gift of the Victoria Cross. If he dies, he is buried amid sounding eulogies and commemorated by statues and inscriptions. "Victory, or Westminster Abbey," cried Lord Nelson as he sailed into the battle of Trafalgar. And similar, to the degree of humble deserts, is the cry of every soldier or sailor who takes up arms for his country. For the moment he is the symbol of the nation. He embodies within his own single person the hopes and praises of an entire people. He lives, and, if he dies, he dies in the good opinion of mankind. And I can tell you that nothing makes life so smooth and death so comparatively simple as this good opinion of which I speak. The hardest suffering seems easy, and the most untimely death not altogether unwelcome, if only we can know that all men are our friends, and we live or die with their blessings upon our heads. "A good name," says the preacher, "is better than precious ointment"; and again he declares, "A good name is better than riches." By which he means, I take it, that there is nothing in the outer world, however desirable in itself, which can give us compensation for the loss of favor of mankind.