They declare that, after all, war is a means of moral training, that 'Carnage' may be, as the gentlest of poets wrote, 'God's daughter,' that battles may be blessings to be thankful for in the long march of time. They bring to our consciousness, once more, the fact that a Great Battle, amid all its horror, wrath, and blood, is something sacred still, an earthly shadow of that Unseen Battle which has stormed through time, between the hosts of Light and Darkness. They declare again, to the nation, that old truth, without which the nation perishes and man rots, that to die in some good cause is the noblest thing a man can do on earth. They bid us bend in hope beneath the awful hand of the God of Battles, and do our appointed work patiently, bravely, loyally, till He brings the end. They tell us that not work only, but heroic fighting, also, is a worship accepted at His seat. They bid us be thankful, as for the most sacred of all gifts, that thousands, in this loyal land of ours, have had the high grace, given from above,
'To search through all they felt and saw,
The springs of life, the depths of awe,
And reach the law within the law:
'To pass, when Life her light withdraws,
Not void of righteous self-applause,
Nor in a merely selfish cause—
'In some good cause, not in their own,
To perish, wept for, honored, known,
And like a warrior overthrown.'
PROVERBS.
Violets and lilies-of-the-valley are seen in a vale.
Family jars should be filled with honey.
All are not lambs that gambol on the green.