From the moment war was declared and I realized that all I held dear and sacred was in danger of being wiped out, I was haunted by those words. If our civilization is to survive, the two main factors of its salvation must be religion and art. Those of us who worked for the young Art Association were a small band, holding an outpost of civilization against the forces of anarchy and materialism. Because the garrison was small and hard pressed, the fight was worth while. In the great cities were thousands far better equipped to carry on the forlorn hope; here in the small community, where for so long my people had lived and labored, I saw my chance to “hold fast.”
In the midst of the chaos that seemed to threaten the civilization I knew and loved, I had the feeling that, like the coral insect, my duty was to sit tight in my own little cell and work at it for all I was worth. The impulse to toil at the building of this particular cell—the Newport Art Association—was more like a blind instinct than a conscious exercise of will power.
It was borne in upon me from the first that I could do my best war work in my own country. Though often tempted to depart from this decision, I managed to resist the ever-returning impulse to go overseas. The lure of active adventure was ever present and I constantly felt the urge of it, but my better judgment told me that my task was to “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” Some of my contemporaries accomplished great things by “going across”; more of them were sadly in the way of the younger people and gave endless trouble by falling ill and having to be taken care of. Only great wealth or very exceptional qualifications excused a woman of sixty for trying to throw in her lot with the field workers. There was enough to do at home between transforming my own particular charge, the Art Association, into a nerve center of patriotic activity, raising money for the war sufferers, and holding meetings to rouse public opinion and combat the enemy propaganda so insidiously spread in our community!
In the spring of 1915, one of the earliest of these meetings was held with the double purpose of raising money for the British War Relief, and of rousing the public to a better understanding of the great struggle overseas. It was part of our policy to bring speakers from the larger cities on all such occasions, as well as to give our own people the opportunity of expressing their convictions. In the last days of 1916, my husband and I called together an influential group of persons and with their help organized a citizens’ meeting to protest against the deportations of the Belgians by Germany. This meeting followed close upon the great gathering in Carnegie Hall, and was the second of the kind to be held in the United States. Mr. Daniel Fearing, the genial and popular president of the Historical Society, presided at the meeting, which took place December 22 in the Auditorium of the Historical Society, a beautiful ancient hall piously preserved by the society and formerly the old Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House, where my ancestor, Governor Ward, worshipped. After the long series of patriotic functions I attended during the war, this gathering still remains as clear to me as if it had happened yesterday. Our fellow citizens made a good showing, and two distinguished speakers from out of town came to join in our protest, William Roscoe Thayer, and Major Louis Livingston Seaman. It was a glowing meeting. Major Seaman’s flaming indignation roused the audience to a white-hot heat, and Thayer’s graver, but not less ardent, appeal led the way to the final feature of the programme, the reading of a letter from Theodore Roosevelt written for the occasion to Mrs. Hamilton Fish Webster. I quote but one of his burning sentences:
This last and crowning brutality, which amounts to the imposition of a cruel form of slavery on a helpless and unoffending people, must make our people realize that they peril their own souls, that they degrade their own manhood, if they do not bear emphatic testimony against the perpetration of this iniquity.
The meeting closed with a resolution of protest to President Wilson, and a telegram of sympathy to King Albert of Belgium.
Among the other valuable experiences of the war was our work for the Italian Relief. We were charter members of the Boston society and served upon the executive committee, and when the time came to found a kindred association in New York, it so happened that this too devolved upon us. Our choice of the leader of this work was a very fortunate one, and I shall always take great pride in the fact that I, personally, not only proposed the name of Robert Underwood Johnson for chairman, but that I also was able to prevail upon him to accept the office which he filled so ably and which I like to think may have had some bearing on his subsequent interesting experiences as American Ambassador to Italy.
On April 7, 1917, the New York Times brought us the news that war was declared against Germany by the United States. On the front page under a cut of the American flag, the Times printed the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, now become one of the popular war songs not only in our country, but in England and France. The effort often before made to have it declared the national hymn would have succeeded at this time, I believe, but for one reason. While the words were acceptable to all sections of the country, the South could not forget that the music was formerly sung to other verses, and the supporters of the Confederacy and their descendants could not forget or forgive the words of the older song:
We’ll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree!
I first learned of this sentiment at a patriotic meeting at the house of Arthur Curtis James, when the “Battle Hymn” was recited by Julia Marlowe. I happened to be sitting near two Southern ladies who were much moved by the recitation and overheard one say to the other: