[From an
address delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. for Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, at Keene, NH, before John
Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic.]
Not
long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it
set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to
each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will
make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth--but an
answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories,
and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in
perfect accord.
So
far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers
who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility,
I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors.
I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished
officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know
that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it was most
desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the
Union is indissoluable; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the
conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we
equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction
that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart
must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon
taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed.
You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where
overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought
when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the
enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south--each working in an
opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As
it was then , it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can
join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind,
whether he fell toward them or by their side.
But
Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share
our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary,
it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too
large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for
instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of
rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although
we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it
far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join
in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary
associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common
consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it,
to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what
we can do for the country in return.
So
to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may
answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act
of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief
that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To
fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might.
So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that,
you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhpas a long and hard
one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is
required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The
rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top
of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.
When
it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in
the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it
impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that
their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was
right-in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and
passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of
his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
If
this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a
man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek to know the secrets of
philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven
upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that
is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of
speculation or of practical affairs? I cannot answer him; or at least my answer
is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he
asked why I should eat this, or drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But
although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling
begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the
emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody
them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who
come after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls
and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the
Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and
inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could
be.
But
even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we
hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet
unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.
.
. . Not of the sunlight,
Not
of the moonlight,
Not
of the starlight!
O
young Mariner,
Down
to the haven,
Call
your companions,
Launch
your vessel,
And
crowd your canvas,
And,
ere it vanishes
Over
the margin,
After
it, follow it,
Follow
The Gleam.
- Lord Alfred Tennyson
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