f tokens of kindness and good-will going
forth, every one of them a message from the home to the camp: what is
all this but weaving a strong network of alliance between civil and
military life, between the citizen at home and the citizen soldier? If
our army is a remarkable body, more pure, more clement, more patriotic
than other armies,--if our soldier is everywhere and always a
true-hearted citizen,--it is because the army and soldier have not been
cast off from public sympathy, but cherished and bound to every free
institution and every peaceful association by golden cords of love. The
good our Commissions have done in this respect cannot be exaggerated; it
is incalculable.

Nor should we forget the influence they have had on ourselves,--the
reflex influence which they have been pouring back into the hearts of
our people at home, to quicken their patriotism, We often say that the
sons and brothers are what the mothers and sisters make them. Can you
estimate the electric force which runs like an irresistible moral
contagion from heart to heart in a community all of whose mothers and
daughters are sparing that they may spend, and learning the value of
liberty and country by laboring for them? It does not seem possible,
that, amid the divers interests and selfish schemes of men, we ever
could have sustained this war, and carried it to a successful issue, had
it not been for the moral cement which these wide-spread philanthropic
enterprises have supplied. Every man who has given liberally to support
the Commission has become a missionary of patriotism; every woman who
has cut and made the garments and rolled the bandages and knit the socks
has become a missionary. And so the country has been full of
missionaries, true-hearted and loyal, pleading, "Be patient, put up with
inconveniences, suffer exactions, bear anything, rather than sacrifice
the nationality our fathers bequeathed to us!" And if our country is
saved, it will be in no small degree because so many have been prompted
by their benevolent activity to take a deep personal interest in the
struggle and in the men who are carrying on the struggle.

These national and patriotic influences are the crowning blessings which
come in the train of the charities of the war; and they constitute one
of their highest claims to our affection and respect. The unpatriotic
utterances which in these latter days so often pain our ears, the
weariness of burdens which tempt so many