XVI

HARVARD COMMEMORATION

SPEECH

JULY 21, 1865

... Old classmate, say

Do you remember our Commencement Day?
Were we such boys as these at twenty?' Nay,
God called them to a nobler task than ours,
And gave them holier thoughts and manlier powers,
This is the day of fruits and not of flowers!
These boys' we talk about like ancient sages
Are the same men we read of in old pages -
The bronze recast of dead heroic ages!

We grudge them not, our dearest, bravest, best,
Let but the quarrel's issue stand confest:
'Tis Earth's old slave-God battling for his crown
And Freedom fighting with her visor down."

HOLMES

“ Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil

Amid the dust of books to find her,

Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,

With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,

Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:

Their higher instinct knew

Those love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,

Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,

But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.

Where faith made whole with deed

Breathes its awakening breath

Into the lifeless creed,

SIA

And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death."

LOWELL, Commemoration Ode

HARVARD

COMMEMORATION SPEECH

MRA

R. CHAIRMAN, AND Gentlemen: With whatever opinion we come here, I think it is not in man to see, without a feeling of pride and pleasure, a tried soldier, the armed defender of the right. I think that in these last years all opinions have been affected by the magnificent and stupendous spectacle which Divine Providence has offered us of the energies that slept in the children of this country, that slept and have awakened. I see thankfully those that are here, but dim eyes in vain explore for some who are not.

The old Greek Heraclitus said, " War is the Father of all things." He said it, no doubt, as science, but we of this day can repeat it as political and social truth. War passes the power of all chemical solvents, breaking up the old adhesions, and allowing the atoms of society to take a new order. It is not the Government, but the War, that has appointed the good generals, sifted out the pedants, put in the new and vigorous blood. The War has lifted many other people besides Grant and Sherman into

their true places. Even Divine Providence, we may say, always seems to work after a certain military necessity. Every nation punishes the General who is not victorious. It is a rule in games of chance that the cards beat all the players, and revolutions disconcert and outwit all the insurgents.

The revolutions carry their own points, sometimes to the ruin of those who set them on foot. The proof that war also is within the highest right, is a marked benefactor in the hands of the Divine Providence, is its morale. The war gave back integrity to this erring and immoral nation. It charged with power, peaceful, amiable men, to whose life war and discord were abhorrent. What an infusion of character went out from this and other colleges! What an infusion of character down to the ranks! The experience has been uniform that it is the gentle soul that makes the firm hero after all. It is easy to recall the mood in which our young men, snatched from every peaceful pursuit, went to the war. Many of them had never handled a gun. They said, "It is not in me to resist. I go because I must. It is a duty which I shall never forgive myself if I decline. I do not know that I can make a soldier. I may be

very clumsy. Perhaps I shall be timid; but you can rely on me. Only one thing is certain, I can well die, but I cannot afford to misbehave."

--

In fact the infusion of culture and tender humanity from these scholars and idealists who went to the war in their own despite - God knows they had no fury for killing their old friends and countrymen had its signal and lasting effect. It was found that enthusiasm was a more potent ally than science and munitions of war without it." It is a principle of war," said Napoleon, " that when you can use the thunderbolt you must prefer it to the cannon." Enthusiasm was the thunderbolt. Here in this little Massachusetts, in smaller Rhode Island, in this little nest of New England republics it flamed out when the guilty gun was aimed at Sumter.

Mr. Chairman, standing here in Harvard. College, the parent of all the colleges; in Massachusetts, the parent of all the North; when I consider her influence on the country as a principal planter of the Western States, and now, by her teachers, preachers, journalists and books, as well as by traffic and production, the diffuser of religious, literary and political opinion; and when I see how irresistible

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