House on the anniversary of Waterloo. To most people 'hero' means
simply 'soldier,' and implies a human soul greatly daring and greatly
enduring."

What Prof. MacMechan here tells us about the Englishman of 1840 is
equally true of the Englishman of today--is true, indeed, of all
peoples in all ages of history. Heroism has nearly always been taken to
imply physical courage; physical courage has always found its most
terrible and dramatic expression in warfare; and, therefore, by a
natural association of ideas, the hero has come to be identified with
the soldier. When we think of heroes, we almost instinctively find
ourselves thinking of armored champions of Greece and Rome, who were
helped to immortality by Plutarch, whom Emerson calls "the doctor and
historian of heroism"; of King Arthur, and his knights of the Round
Table; of Harold and his men of iron on the field of Hastings; of the
Crusaders, who marched to the East with the sword in the one hand and
the crucifix in the other, to wrest the holy city from the profaning
clutch of the hated Moslem. Or, coming down to the more modern times,
if we speak of heroism to the Frenchman, he thinks of the first Emperor
and the old guard which "dies but never surrenders"; to the Italian, he
hails the names of Garibaldi and the Thousand; to the Englishman, he
acclaims the "thin red line of heroes" who held the field of Waterloo,
conquered India and Egypt, and recently defended the Empire from the
onslaughts of the Germans. And the same thing holds true of the
American! To you and to me, the word "hero" means George Washington and
the ragged Continentals who starved and froze amid the snowdrifts of
Valley Forge; Commodore Perry and the sailors who shattered the British
fleet upon the waters of Lake Erie; General Grant and the boys in blue
who fought and conquered General Lee and the equally heroic boys in
gray. The national heroes of all countries are soldiers. Walk the
streets of any city in any land, and everywhere you will see statues of
military chieftains, as though these were the only heroes the world had
ever produced who were worthy of commemorative monuments. "To most
people," as Prof. MacMechan has well said, "'hero' means simply
soldier"; or, if we be enlightened enough now and then to extend this
title to men who have achieved fame in other walks of life, it is
because we see in them some analogy to the warrior. "It is to the
military attitude of the soul," says Emerso