Keep him posted in all the village-gossip, the lectures,
the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing-schools. Bring out the
good points of the world in strong relief. Tell every sweet and brave
and pleasant and funny story you can think of. Show him that you clearly
apprehend that all this warfare means peace, and that a dastardly peace
would pave the way for speedy, incessant, and more appalling warfare.
Help him to bear his burdens by showing him how elastic you are under
yours. Hearten him, enliven him, tone him up to the true hero-pitch.
Hush your plaintive _Miserere_, accept the nation's pain for penance,
and commission every Northern breeze to bear a _Te Deum laudamus_.
Under God, the only question, as to whether this war shall be conducted
to a shameful or an honorable close, is not of men or money or material
resource. In these our superiority is unquestioned. As Wellington
phrased it, there is hard pounding; but we shall pound the longest, if
only our hearts do not fail us. Women need not beat their pewter spoons
into bullets, for there are plenty of bullets without them. It is not
whether our soldiers shall fight a good fight; they have played the man
on a hundred battle-fields. It is not whether officers are or are not
competent; generals have blundered nations into victory since the world
began. It is whether this people shall have virtue to endure to the
end,--to endure, not starving, not cold, but the pangs of hope deferred,
of disappointment and uncertainty, of commerce deranged and outward
prosperity cheeked.
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