lled with sinister gleams. He goes his way
without enthusiasm, but without hesitation, without boasting, but
without fear, knowing by long experience what peril he runs, but
offering himself calmly to his formidable destiny, ready to answer:
"Present!" if God and his country demand his life.

[Sidenote: There are no heroes in past history so grand.]

What hero in all the centuries of history attains to the grandeur of our
hero? Who ever defended, in a war so terrible, a cause so important to
the future of the world? Who has striven so hard, suffered so much, so
often passed through death? To prove himself equal to his high mission,
he has had to rid himself of all egoism, renounce lucre and vain honors,
sacrifice family joys; many times he has known the worst extremes of
weariness, thirst, hunger and cold; he equals and surpasses in
austerity the severest of monks; he practices an obedience and humility
that monasteries and Thebaides know nothing of, constantly ready to
expose himself, as soon as he receives the order, to a terrible and
invisible death. No one ever more completely obeyed the counsels of
Christ: "If you will be perfect, leave your father and mother, your
wife, forsake your possessions, renounce yourself, take up your cross
and follow Me."

[Sidenote: Humanity has never shown such moral grandeur.]

Those among these brave men who have faith, are conscious of such
supernatural life and their letters--admirable collections have been
published--reflect a light of authentic saintliness. The others, too,
without knowing it, walk in the footsteps of Christ; at the moment of
supreme sacrifice He will enlighten them with the brightness of His
grace and will admit them, like their believing brothers, into the
heaven promised to those who suffer for righteousness. Humanity which
has never known horrors like those it is enduring now, has also never
shown such moral grandeur, and it is not astonishing that in face of
such great crimes and such great virtues, our soul should pause,
breathless, incapable of expressing the excess of its emotion.

[Sidenote: The devoted war of the American public for the wounded.]

I cannot speak to the great American public about our wounded, without
saying how much we appreciate the fact that it has followed them, with
admirable solicitude, all the length of their hard Calvary. Its
stretcher-bearers have helped us rescue them at the front, its
ambulances have carried them to our