Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/149

Rh  But died ere the end he saw. With years and battles outworn; There was Harmon of Kennesaw, And Ulric Dahlgren, and Shaw That slept with his Hope Forlorn. Lytle, soldier and bard, And the Ellets, sire and son. Ransom, all grandly scarred. And Redfield, no more on guard; But Alatoona is won!

So runs the record, page after page:

 All such, and many another, Ah, list, how long to name!"

And these were the names of the officers only. Not less worthy were the men in the ranks. It is the paradox of democracy that its greatness is chiefly in the ranks. "Are all the common men so grand, and all the titled ones so mean?"

XLIII. North or South, it was the same. 'Send forth the best ye breed' was the call on both sides alike, and to this call both sides alike responded. As it will take 'centuries of peace and prosperity to make good the tall statures mowed down in the Napoleonic wars,' so like centuries of wisdom and virtue are needed to restore to our nation its lost inheritance of patriotism. Not the capacity for patriotic talk, for of that there has been no abatement, but of that faith and truth which 'on war's red touchstone rang true metal.' With all this we can never know how great is our real misfortune, nor see how much the men that are fall short of the men that ought to have been.

It will be said that all this is exaggeration, that war is but one influence among many, and that each and all of these forms of destructive selection may find its antidote. This is very true. The antidote is found in the spirit of democracy, and the spirit of democracy is the spirit of peace. Doubtless these pages constitute an exaggeration. They were written for that purpose. I would show the 'ugly, old and wrinkled truth stripped clean of all the vesture that beguiles.' To see anything clearly and separately is to exaggerate it. The naked truth is always a caricature unless clothed in conventions, fragments taken from lesser truths. The moral law is an exaggeration, 'The soul that sinneth it shall die.' Doubtless one war will not ruin a nation; doubtless it will not destroy its virility or impair its blood. Doubtless a dozen wars may do all this. The difference is one of degree alone; I wish only to point out the tendency. That the death of the strong is a true cause of the decline of nations is a fact beyond cavil or question. The 'man who is left' holds always the future in his grasp. One of the great books of our new century will be some day written on the selection of men, the screening of human life through the actions of man and the operation