d,
to fling fortune, limb, and life on the altar of an unselfish cause. The
dead manhood of the nation sprang to life at the call. We proved the
redness of the old faithful, manly blood, to be as bright as ever.

I know we hear men talk of the demoralization produced by war. There is
a great deal they can say eloquently on that side. Drunkenness,
licentiousness, lawlessness, they say are produced by it, already to an
extent fearful to consider. And scoundrels are using the land's
necessities for their own selfish purposes, and fattening on its blood.
These things are all true, and a great deal more of the same sort
beside. And it may be well at times, with good purpose, to consider
them. But it is not well to consider them alone, and speak of them as
the only moral results of the war. No! by the ten thousands who have
died for the grand idea of National Unity, by the unselfish heroes who
have thrown themselves, a living wall, before the parricidal hands of
traitors, who have perished that the land they loved beyond life might
not perish, by the example and the memory they have left in ten thousand
homes, which their death has consecrated for the nation's reverence by
_their_ lives and deaths, we protest against the one-sided view that
looks only on the moral _evil_ of the struggle!

The truth is, there are war vices and war virtues. There are peace vices
and there are peace virtues. Decorous quiet, orderly habits, sober
conduct, attention to business, these are the good things demanded by
society in peace. And they may consist with meanness, selfishness,
cowardice, and utter unmanliness. The round-stomached, prosperous man,
with his ships, shops, and factories, is very anxious for the
cultivation of these virtues. He does not like to be disturbed o'
nights. He wants his street to be quiet and orderly. He wants to be left
undisturbed to prosecute his prosperous business. He measures virtue by
the aid it offers for that end. Peace vices, the cankers that gnaw a
nation's heart, greed, self-seeking luxury, epicurean self-indulgence,
hardness to growing ignorance, want, and suffering, indifference to all
high purposes, spiritual _coma_ and deadness, these do not disturb him.
They are rotting the nation to its marrow, but they do not stand in the
way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be
sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh
expressions, from those stern old Heb