Battle of the Alma

“ Do we realize, when the conflict comes, that our heart is but the arena of a struggle between the omnipotence of God and the weakness of Satan, and that we are called to fight along with Him "Who is the Author of unconquerable might, the King of the Empire that cannot be overthrown?" If so, then there can be no fear or repining because of the battle, but with the glad war-cry, "Emmanuel,—God with us!" can we plunge into the glorious strife, knowing that with His own right hand and with His holy arm will He get Himself the victory. ”

“ But blood is blood and hate is hate and war is war, whether waged by Macedonian Alexander B. C. 331, or by the Balkan forces A. D. 1912. Shades of the fallen upon that age-long battle ground! wouldn’t you feel strangely at home in the fray if by any chance you should come to life today?
International courts of justice, arbitration, disarmament, World-Peace—will they ever prevail? Knowing the past, knowing the heart of man, we answer No: dreaming of the future, dreaming of the godlike in the heart of man, we answer Yes.
So all day long the tide of battle rolled—from early day till dark. ”

“ The heroes on the battlefield are calm in death,
Their fighting o'er;
They feel no more the fevered breath
Of battle's war;
They hear at last the voice that saith
"Fight on no more."
But oh, the heroes on the grander field of peace,
Who know no rest!
Whose hearts ne'er feel the full release
From mortal quest,
Nor breathe the air where struggles cease
The soul to test.
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For such we mourn, O purifying soul of life,
For such we pray.
Let Nature free them from the strife
Of falsehood's way,
And Love through every struggle rife
Have free, full play. ”

“ O FOR a voice like thunder, and a tongue
To drown the throat of war! When the senses
Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,
Who can stand? When the soul of the oppress'd
Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the
Throne of God, when the frowns of His countenance
Drive the nations together, who can stand?
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,
And sails rejoicing in the flood of death ”

“ Then battle is in the blood of man, and the heroic part falls to him by right, but it is not in the blood of woman, who shrinks from it and loathes it, and yet such is her nature, the fine and subtle mystery of it, that she flies to the scene of suffering with a bravery which far out-strips that of the man-at-arms. ”

“ Should it unfold the same sad story of patient, passive' suffering, or grow bright with the burnished armor and glad with the hopeful songs of women gathering to the battle, filed against the fell destroyer of their hopes? As the Spirit of God brooded over the primeval void and brought therefrom order, light, beauty and life, so the spirit of suffering brooded above the torn and saddened heart of womanhood, till at last the angel of awakening appeared, and the heart that had dumbly, patiently endured, stirred to the impulse of defence, and opened to the thought of freedom. ”

“ As it is in temptation that we learn to know the greatness of our courage and of our fidelity to God, so it is by suffering temptation that we make progress in strength of heart, and that we learn to wield the weapons of our warfare, which are spiritual against the spiritual malice of our invisible enemies. Then it is that our soul, clothed in the panoply of grace, appears terrible to them as an army in battle array, and as the hosts of the Lord. ”

“ And he flies to the onset, he charges the foe,
Where the bayonets gleam and the red tides flow;
And he bears his part in that conflict dire,
With an arm all nerve, and a heart all fire.
What though he fall! at the battle’s close,
In the flush of the victory won, he goes,
With martial music and waving plume,
From a field of fame to a laurelled tomb.
But the hero that wars in the Battle of Life,
Must stand alone in the fearful strife;
Alone in his weakness or strength must go,
Hero or craven to meet the foe;
He may not fly,—on that fated field,
He must win or lose, he must conquer or yield. ”

“ This struggle between an old world and a new it is that determines our mood; and the state of combat, the victory of these, the weakness of those, we call at any moment our state of mind, our Stimmung.... Often when I play the spy on my thoughts and feelings, and study them in religious silence, I am impressed as with the hum and ferment of savage factions, the air shudders and is torn across as if a thought or an eagle had shot up towards the sun.
"Combat is the food which gives strength to the soul. The soul has skill to pluck out of battle sweet and glorious fruits. ”

“ Ambition, cruelty, and callous hardness, trampled under foot all the finer feelings of the heart and mind,—hypocrisy and treachery invaded the most sacred ties of home and blood-relationship, the desire of worldly power, and holding their neighbours in the yoke of bondage, was the prevalent feeling, to which all others were sacrificed, and the opposing factions met each other on the field of battle, and fought for the governing power at the sword's point, with the sacrifice of myriads of human lives. ”

“ Blood for her blood we’ll give,
Fighting, but not to kill,
Save that the best shall live.
But, when the cannon’s roar
Dies in a hymn of peace,
Justice and truth must reign,
Power of the brute must cease. ”

“ As long as our country shall prosper, as long as our banner shall wave,
Sever the bonds of oppression as they severed the bonds of the slave.
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ARISE, MY SOUL!
Arise, my soul! forsake the shadows dreary,
Where dark and dread battalions line the way;
The grandest heights refuse to make us weary
When we can struggle upward day by day.
Arise, my soul! do swift and valiant battle,
Tread down the foe beneath thy steadfast feet;
Fear not the stern assault, the cannon's rattle,
A moment's failure makes the end more sweet. ”

“ Here is an admission from Satan himself which proves without a doubt where he dwells; and it is here that the mighty angel will capture him and bind him with a great chain and lock him up in the center of this earth for a thousand years. It is comforting to know that Job won in the second battle, after Satan had afflicted him with boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, and so will Satan be defeated at the closing up of this age, when judgments shall fall upon the wicked, as upon Korah's company, and great demonstrations of God's power be seen and felt. ”

“ At length I felt a wish that I might find a snug and secure dwelling-place in the bosom, at least, of some one man. But here also I failed. One and the same man is at war with himself. Reason wages war with the passions; one passion with another passion. Duty calls one way, and inclination another. Lust, anger, avarice, ambition, are all up in arms, each pursuing its own purposes, and warmly engaged in the battle. ”

“ She saw women's struggle for freedom from legal restrictions as an important phase in the development of American democracy. To her this struggle was never a battle of the sexes, but a battle such as any freedom-loving people would wage for civil and political rights. ”

“ If I had been born and bred to arms, if my breast were accustomed to the coat of mail, if my hand could wield the battle-axe, I might anxiously crave, or coldly behold the murder of a foe confiding in our generosity and in our plighted faith to the Church; but I have never worn the gauntlet, or drawn the sword; my heart has never exulted at the gladsome sight of an enemy's blood, and I scorn to ascribe the interest I may have shown, to a wish of having the sweet assurance that a scion of Hers would perish like a dog, when in reality I hoped to find the weapon venomless. ”

“ I feel my soul thrilled with an heroic spirit that would do battle even with the fierce enemy—Death! Give me a fair field and a good cause—a band of warlike brothers moved by the same mighty impulse as that by which I am now excited—and let us have fit weapons and enough of them, and we would sweep the oppressors of the world from the earth, like rotten reeds before a whirlwind. Wisely did the ancients honour their bards above all human greatness. ”

“ Only some great vision of Duty seen along the track of the eternally right will kindle the heart of a people; the faith that goes with that vision will alone sustain courage. Without it, armies and battle-ships are but a temporary and flimsy defence, the pretext of a self-confidence, while the heart is clouded with despair. ”

“ EVERY other passion is overcome by being faced and resisted, even though we receive a wound in the attack, and by challenging it anew to the battle, till we master every movement of it, both great and small. ”

“ Their faith, their professing faith, is—“Love one another”; their practice is to—cut throats; and more, to bribe and hoodwink men to the wickedness, the trade of blood is magnified into a virtue. We pray against battle, and glorify the deeds of death. We say beautiful are the ways of peace, and then cocker ourselves upon our perfect doings in the art of man-slaying. Let us then cease to pay the sacrifice of admiration to the demon—War; let us not acknowledge him as a mighty and majestic principle, but, at the very best, a grim and melancholy necessity. ”

“ The battle lies wholly between minds, and not bodies, to break down the beliefs of personal sense, or pain in matter, and stop its supposed utterances, so that the voice of Soul, the immortality of man, is heard. ”

“ Who can tell them all perfectly, who can display the struggle, and the mingling, and the strife, wherein a thousand opposing thoughts, and hopes, and fears, bright sympathies, noble aspirations, lofty purposes, and mighty inspirations, together with woman's shrinking modesty, intense love, and tender nature, contended like hostile nations bent on mutual destruction within the narrow battle-field of that fair, beautiful bosom? ”

“ And the heart of a people beat with one desire;
For the peace, that I deem’d no peace, is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire. 395
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Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind
It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill ”

“ But if they have set their fortunes on other than such ground, then the war must be owing to some deep conviction or passion in their own hearts,—a conviction which, in resistless flow, or reckless ebb, or consistent stay, is the ultimate arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest. ”

“ Is not this most truly religion, whatever else it may be? Yet human war is unchristian, devilish, loathsome. How can these things be? Why is the appeal of battle so universal, so deep in the human heart, that nations riven by dissension become as one man, and men the most diverse agree in the one cause? ”

“ Let us not merely come in for the rewards of life's conflicts in which the few battle for the rights of the many. Let us be in the forefront of the battle array; even if only as standard-bearers, or buglers, or drummer boys in the forefront of the advance army, and though our hearts are often shaken by human cowardice, let our souls triumph and keep our faces towards the foe, courage at fighting pitch, resolution indomitable, purpose invincible, so that, if fall we must, we shall fall with eyes heavenward, and breast fearlessly exposed to the fire of the enemy. ”

“ In a word, the War has proved a revival of appreciation of the place of the human will in life. Marshal Foch, the greatest character of the War, did not hesitate even to declare that "A battle is the struggle of two wills. It is never lost until defeat is accepted. They only are vanquished who confess themselves to be."
Our generation has been intent on the development of the intellect. We have been neglecting the will. ”

“ This war which has been declared against souls as well as bodies! This war on women, as well as on fighting-men who had less need of courage than some of us! What did our Lord say to a woman who was taken by the mob? ”

“ After all, one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite of the appalling facts of wounds, and death, and violence in which the human world is now steeped, is it yet possible, is it yet true, that the ultimate thing, the final power behind the veil—to which at least this vast linked spectacle of suffering and tenderness, here in this great camp, testifies—is not Force, but Love? ”

“ How steadily the avenging angel follows in the footsteps of the wretch who makes war upon humanity or does continual violence to the divine spark which, in a greater or less degree, illumes the breast of every human being born into the world. ”

“ The impression, the deep impression, made upon the human heart by four years of unexampled slaughter will disappear with the hearts upon which it has been marked by the terrible sword of the Great War. ”

“ Yet over the armies which fall, there flies the vision of their love, and of la Patrie, to which they sacrifice themselves—over these lives which are passing away passes the holy Ark of the art and thought of centuries, borne on their shoulders. ”

“ Such a course might be the most beneficent possible, even though it involved destruction of the comfort, peace, and lives of many innocent and most estimable inhabitants at the place and vicinity where the battle should be waged, and that, too, whether the war itself should be the ostensible offspring of revenge and malice, or a brave conflict for preservation of one’s altars and fireside in peace. ”