Strategy is an artifice of war that is considered honorable, and is practiced by all the nations, yet it is seldom, if ever, applied without resorting to deceit and treachery. Therefore a Spy may be as honorable as the General, who profits by his work. Often the victories of the Generals are made possible by the preliminary information obtained of the enemy's force and movements, yet the official reports of the victorious Generals give the despised Spy no credit.
It is the motive which should give character to any service. With me there was no mercenary consideration, and, as will be seen, the service became in a manner almost involuntary.
I was simply willing to sacrifice myself that I might accomplish some good for the cause.
After the lapse of so many years, there has recently been unveiled in Hartford, Connecticut, a monument to the memory of Nathan Hale, who was a Spy of the Revolutionary War, captured and executed on his first attempt to work in the enemy's lines. Upon this tablet are these words:
Stranger, beneath this stone
Lies the dust of a
A Spy
Who perished upon the gibbet;
Yet
The storied marbles of the great,
The shrines of heroes,
Entombed not one more worthy of
Honor
Than him who here
Sleeps his last sleep.
Nations
Bow with reverence before the dust
Of him who dies
A glorious death,
Urged on by the sound of the
Trumpet
And the shouts of
Admiring thousands.
But what reverence, what honor,
Is not due to one
Who for his country encountered
Even an infamous death,
Soothed by no sympathy,
Animated by no praise!
I would, as a last word, again say that my efforts as a Spy during the Rebellion were prompted solely by a disinterested patriotism and a single desire to do some good for the country.
When my time is up, and I am mustered out, I ask of my comrades, of the Grand Army of the Republic, not a monument, but a simple head-stone to a "Low green tent" with the bivouac of unknown at Arlington, marked—
