273. The Sword: Its Mission and Its Doom
The Sword: Its Mission and Its Doom
Isa_34:5 : ’93My sword shall be bathed in heaven.’94
Three hundred and fifty-one times does the Bible speak of that sharp, keen, curved, inexorable weapon, which flashes upon us from the text’97the sword. Sometimes the mention is laudatory and sometimes damnatory, sometimes as drawn, sometimes as sheathed. In the Bible, and in much secular literature, the sword represents all javelins, all muskets, all carbines, all guns, all police clubs, all battle-axes, all weaponry for physical defense or attack.
It would be an interesting thing to give the history of the plow, and follow its furrow all down through the ages, from the first crop in Chaldea to the last crop in Minnesota. It would be interesting to follow the pen as it has tracked its way on down through the literature of nations, from its first word in the first book to the last word which some author last night wrote as he closed his manuscript. It would be an interesting thing to count the echoes of the hammer from the first nail driven, down through all the mechanism of centuries to the last stroke in the carpenter’92s shop yesterday. But in this my annual sermon, as chaplain of the Thirteenth Regiment, I propose taking up a weapon that has done a work that neither plow nor pen nor hammer ever accomplished. My theme is the sword’97its mission and its doom.
The sword of the text was bathed in heaven; that is, it was a sword of righteousness, as another sword may be bathed in hell, and the sword of cruelty and wrong. There is a great difference between the sword of Winkelreid and the sword of Catiline, between the sword of Leonidas and the sword of Benedict Arnold. In our effort to hasten the end of war, we have covered the sword with abuses and execrations, when it has had a divine mission, and when in many crises of the world’92s history it has swung for liberty and justice, civilization and righteousness and God. At the very opening of the Bible and on the east side of the Garden of Eden, God placed a flaming sword to defend the tree of life. Of the officer of the law, St. Paul declares: ’93He heareth not the sword in vain.’94 Through Moses God commanded: ’93Put every man his sword by his side.’94 David in his prayer, says: ’93Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most Mighty.’94 One of the old battle shouts of the Old Testament was, ’93The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.’94 Christ, in a great exigency said, that such a weapon was more important than a coat, for he declared: ’93He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.’94 Again he declared: ’93I come not to send peace but a sword.’94 Of Christ’92s second coming it is said: ’93Out of his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword.’94 Thus, sometimes figuratively, but oftener literally, the divine mission of the sword is announced.
What more consecrated thing in the world than Joshua’92s sword or Caleb’92s sword or Gideon’92s sword or David’92s sword or Washington’92s sword or Marion’92s sword or Lafayette’92s sword or Wellington’92s sword or Kosciusko’92s sword or Garibaldi’92s sword or hundreds of thousands of American swords that have again and again been bathed in heaven? Swords of that kind have been the best friends of the human race. They have slain tyrannies, pried open dungeons, and cleared the way for nations in their march upward. It was better for them to take the sword and be free, than lie under the oppressor’92s heel and suffer. There is something worse than death, and that is life if it must cringe and crouch before wrong. Turn over the leaves of the world’92s history, and find that there has never been a tyranny stopped or a nation liberated except by the sword. I am not talking to you about the way things ought to be, but about the way they have been. What force drove back the Saracens at Tours, and kept Europe from being overwhelmed by Mohammedanism, and, subsequently, all America given over to Mohammedanism? The sword of Charles Martel and his men. Who can deal enough in infinities to tell what was accomplished for the world’92s good by the sword of Joan of Arc? One December day, I looked off and saw in the distance the battlefield of Marathon, and I asked myself what was it that, on that most tremendous day in history, stopped the Persian hosts, representing not only Persia, but Egypt and Tripoli, and Afghanistan and Baluchistan and Armenia’97a host that had Asia under foot and proposed to put Europe under foot, and, if successful in that battle, would have submerged by Asiatic barbarism, European civilization, and, as a consequence in after-times, American civilization? The swords of Miltiades and Themistocles and Aristides. At the waving of these swords, the eleven thousand lancers of Athens on the run dashed against the one hundred thousand insolent Persians, and trampled them down or pushed them back into the sea. The sword of that day saved the best part of the hemispheres, a trinity of keen steel flashing in the two lights’97the light of the setting sun of barbarism, the light of the rising sun of civilization. Hail to these three great swords bathed in heaven!
What put an end to infamous Louis XVI’92s plan of universal conquest by which England would have been made to kneel on the steps of the Tuileries and the Anglo-Saxon race would have been halted and all Europe paralyzed? The sword of Marlborough at Blenheim. Time came when the Roman war eagles, whose beaks had been driven into the heart of nations, must be brought down from their eyries. All other attempts had disgracefully failed, but the Germans, the mightiest nation for brawn and brain, undertook the work, and, under God, succeeded. What drove back the Roman cavalry till the horses, wounded, flung their riders and the last rider perished, and a gloomy forest became the scene of Rome’92s humiliation? The brave sword, the triumphant sword of Arminius. While passing through France my nerves tingled with excitement and I rose in the car, the better to see the battlefield of Chalons, the mounds and breastworks still visible, though nearly five hundred years ago they were shoveled up. Here, Attila, the heathen monster, called by himself the ’93Scourge of God, for the punishment of Christians,’94 his life a massacre of nations, came to ignominious defeat, and he put into one great pile the wooden saddles of his cavalry, and the spoils of the cities and kingdoms he had sacked, and placed on top of this holocaust the women who had accompanied him in his devastating march, ordering that the torch be put to the pile. What power broke that sword, and stayed that red scourge of cruelty that was rolling over Europe? The sword of Theodoric and Actius.
To come down to later ages, all intelligent Englishmen unite with all intelligent Americans in saying that it was the best thing that the American colonies swung off from the government of Great Britain. It would have been the worst absurdity of four thousand years if this continent should have continued in loyalty to a throne on the other side of the sea. No one would propose a Governor-General for the United States as there is a Governor-General for Canada. We have had splendid queens in our American Capitol, but we could hardly be brought to support a queen on the other side of the Atlantic, lovely and good as Victoria is. The only use we have for earls and lords and dukes in this country is to treat them well when they pass through to their hunting grounds in the far West, or when their fortunes have failed, re-enforce them by wealthy matrimonial alliance. Imagine this nation yet a part of English possessions! The trouble the mother-country has with Ireland would be a paradisaic condition compared with the trouble she would have with us. England and the United States make excellent neighbors, but the two families are too large to live in the same house. What a blessing to both that we should have parted, and parted long ago! But I can think of no other way in which we could have possibly achieved American independence. George the Third, the half-crazy king, would not have let us go. Lord North, his prime minister, would not have let us go. General Lord Cornwallis would not have let us go, although after Yorktown he was glad enough to have us let him go. Lexington and Bunker Hill and Monmouth and Trenton and Valley Forge were proofs positive that they were not willing to let us go. Any committee of Americans going across the ocean to see what could have been done would have found no better accommodations than London Tower. The only way it could have been done was by the sword, your great-grandfather’92s sword. Jefferson’92s pen could write the Declaration of Independence, but only Washington’92s sword could have achieved it, and other swords bathed in heaven.
Ay! the sword has its uses even when it is a sheathed sword. There is not an armory in Brooklyn or New York or Philadelphia or Chicago or Charleston or New Orleans or any American city that could be spared. We have in all our American cities a ruffian population who, though they are small in number compared with the good population, would again and again make rough and stormy times if, back of our mayors and common councils and police, there were not in the armories and arsenals some keen steel which, if brought into play, would make quick work with mobocracy. There are in every great community unprincipled men who like a row on a large scale, and they heat themselves with sour mash and old rye and other decoctions, enriched with blue vitriol, potash, turpentine, sugar of lead, sulphuric acid, logwood, strychnine, nightshade, and other precious ingredients, and take down a whole glass with a resounding ’93Ah!’94 of satisfaction. When they get that stuff in them, and the blue vitriol collides with the potash, and the turpentine with the sulphuric acid, the victims are ready for anything but order and decency and good government.
Again and again, in our American cities, has the necessity of home guards been demonstrated. Some of you may remember, how, when the soldiers were all away to the war in 1863-1864, what conflagrations were kindled in the streets of New York, and what negroes were hung. Some of you remember the great riots in Philadelphia at fires, sometimes kindled just for the opportunity of uproar and despoliation. In 1849 a hiss at a theater would have resulted in New York city demolished had it not been for the citizen soldiery. Because of an insult which the famous American actor, Edwin Forrest, had received in England from the friends of Mr. Macready, the English actor, when the latter appeared in New York, in Macbeth, the distinguished Englishman was hissed and mobbed, the walls of the city having been placarded with the announcement: ’93Shall Americans or English rule in this city?’94 Streets were filled with a crowd, insane with passion. The riot act was read, but it only evoked louder yells and heavier volleys of stones, and the whole city was threatened with violence and assassination. But the Seventh Regiment, under General Duryea, marched through Broadway, preceded by mounted troops, and at the command: ’93Fire! Guards! Fire!’94 the mob scattered, and New York was saved. What would have become of Chicago, several years ago, when the police lay dead in the streets, had not the sharp command of military officers been given? Do not charge such scenes upon American institutions. They are as old as the Ephesian mob that howled for two hours in Paul’92s time about the doors of their theater. They were witnessed in 1675 in London, when the weavers paraded the streets and entered buildings to destroy the machinery of those who, because of their new inventions, could undersell the rest. They were witnessed in 1781 at the trial of Lord George Gordon, when there was a religious riot. Again, in 1719, when the rabble cried, ’93Down with the Presbyterians! Down with the meeting-houses!’94 There always have been, and always will be, in great communities, a class of people that cannot govern themselves and which ordinary means cannot govern, and there are exigencies which nothing but the sword can meet. Ay, the militia are the very last regiments that it will be safe to disband.
Arbitrament will take the place of war between nation and nation, and national armies will disband as a consequence, and the time will come’97God hasten it!’97when there will be no need of an American army or navy, or a Russian army or navy. But for some time after that, cities will have to keep their armories and arsenals and well-drilled militia, because until the millennial day there will be populations with whom arbitrament will be as impossible as treaty with a cavern of hyenas or a jungle of snakes. Those men who rob stores and give garroters’92 hug, and prowl about the wharves at midnight, and rattle the dice in gambling-hells, and go armed with pistol or dirk, will refrain from disturbance of the public peace just in proportion as they realize that the militia of a city, instead of being an awkward squad and in danger of shooting each other by mistake or losing their own life by looking down into the gun-barrel to see if it is loaded, are prompt as the sunrise, keen as the north wind, potent as a thunderbolt, and accurate and regular and disciplined in their movements as the planetary system. Well done, then, I say to legislatures and governors and all city officials who decide upon larger armories and better places for drill and more generous equipment for the militia. The sooner the sword can safely go back to the scabbard to stay there, the better; but until the hilt clangs against the case in that final lodgment, let the sword be kept free from rust; sharp all along the edge, and its point like a needle and the handle polished, not only by the chamois of the regimental servant, but by the hand of brave and patriotic officers, always ready to do their full duty. Such swords are not bathed in impetuosity or bathed in cruelty or bathed in oppression or bathed in outrage, but bathed in heaven.
Before I speak of the doom of the sword, let me also say that it has developed the grandest natures that the world ever saw. It has developed courage’97that sublime energy of the soul which defies the universe, when it feels itself to be in the right. It has developed a self-sacrifice which repudiates the idea that our life is worth more than anything else, when for a principle it throws that life away, as much as to say, ’93It is not necessary that I live, but it is necessary that righteousness triumph.’94 There are thousands among the Northern and Southern veterans of our civil war who are ninety-five per cent, larger and mightier in soul than they would have been had they not, during the four years of national agony, turned their back on home and fortune and at the front sacrificed all for a principle. It was the sword which on the Northern side developed a Grant, a McClellan, a Hooker, a Hancock, a Sherman, a Sheridan, and Admirals Farragut and Porter; and on the Southern side a Lee, a Jackson, a Hill, a Gordon and the Johnstons, Albert Sydney and Joseph E., and Admiral Semmes, and many Federals and Confederates whose graves in national cemeteries are marked ’93Unknown,’94 yet who were just as self-sacrificing and brave as any of their major-generals, and whose resting places all up and down the banks of the Androscoggin, the Hudson, the Potomac, the Mississippi and the Alabama, are every year, on Memorial Day, snowed under with white flowers typical of resurrection, and strewn with red flowers commemorative of the carnage through which they passed, and the blue flowers illustrative of the skies through which they ascended.
But the sword is doomed. There is one word that needs to be written in every throne-room, in every war-office, in every navy-yard, in every national council. That word is Disarmament. But no government can afford to throw its sword away until all the great governments have agreed to do the same. Through the influence of the convention of North and South American governments at Washington years ago, and through the Peace Congress held in London, and through other great movements, all civilized nations will come to disarmament; and if a few barbarian races decline to quit war, then all the decent nations will send out a force of continental police to wipe out the miscreants from the face of the earth. But until disarmament and consequent arbitration shall be agreed to by all the great governments, any single government that dismantles its fortresses and spikes its guns and breaks its sword would simply invite its own destruction. Suppose before such general agreement England should throw away her sword; think you France has forgotten Waterloo? Suppose before such general agreement Germany should throw away her sword; how long would Alsace and Lorraine stay as they are? Suppose the Czar of Russia before any such general agreement should throw away his sword; all the eagles and vultures and lions of European power would gather for a piece of the Russian bear. Suppose the United States without any such general agreement of disarmament should throw away her sword; it would not be long before the Narrows of New York harbor would be ablaze with the bunting of foreign navies coming here to show the folly of the ’93Monroe Doctrine.’94
Side by side the two movements must go. Complete armament until all agree to disarmament. At the same command of ’93Halt!’94 all nations halting. At the same command of ’93Ground arms!’94 all muskets thumping. At the same command of ’93Break ranks!’94 all armies disbanding. That may be nearer than you think. The standing army is the nightmare of nations. England wants to get rid of it, Germany is being eaten up by it, Russia is almost taxed to death with it. Suppose that the millions of men belonging to the standing armies of the world, and in absolute idleness for the most part of their lives, should become producers instead of consumers. Would not the world’92s prosperities improve, and the world’92s morals be better? Or have you the heathenish idea that war is necessary to kill off the surplus populations of the earth, and that without it the world would be so crowded there would soon be no reserved seats and even the standing-room would be exhausted? Ah! I think we can trust to the pneumonias and the consumptions and the fevers and the Russian grips to kill the people fast enough. Besides, when the world gets too full, God will blow up the whole concern and start another world and a better one. Besides that, war kills the people who can least be spared. It takes the pick of the nations. Those whom we could easily spare are in the penitentiary, and their duties detain them in that limited sphere. No; it is the public-spirited and the valorous who go out to die. Mostly are they young men. If they were aged, and had only five or ten years at the most to live, the sacrifice would not be so great. But it is those who have forty or fifty years to live who step into the jaws of battle. In our war Colonel Ellsworth fell while yet a mere lad. Renowned McPherson was only thirty-five. Magnificent Reynolds was only forty-three. Hundreds of thousands fell between twenty and thirty years of age. I looked into the faces of the French and German troops as they went out to fight at Sedan, and they were for the most part armies of splendid boys. So in all ages war has preferred to sacrifice the young. Alexander the Great died at thirty-two. When war slays the young it not only takes down that which they are, but that which they might have been.
So we are glad at the Isaiahic prophecy, that the time is coming when nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Indeed, both swords shall go back into the scabbard’97the sword bathed in heaven and the sword bathed in hell. In a war in Spain, many years ago, a soldier went on a skirmishing expedition, and, secluded in a bush, he had the opportunity of shooting a soldier of the other army, who had strolled away from his tent. He took aim and dropped him. Running up to the fallen man he took his knapsack for spoil, and a letter dropped out of it, and it turned out to be a letter signed by his own father; from that letter and the contour of the dead face he discovered he had shot his brother. If the brotherhood of man be a true doctrine, then he who shoots another man always shoots his own brother. What a horror is war and its cruelties, was well illustrated when the Tartars, after sweeping through Russia and Poland, displayed with pride nine great sacks filled with the right ears of the fallen; and when a correspondent of the London Times, writing of the wounded after the battle of Sedan, said: ’93Every moan that the human voice can utter rose from that heap of agony, and the cries of ’91Water! for the love of God, water!’97a doctor, a doctor!’92 never ceased.’94 After war has wrought such cruelties, how glad we will be to have the Old Monster himself die. Let his dying couch be spread in some dismantled fortress, through which the stormy winds howl. Give him for a pillow a battered shield, and let his bed be hard with the rusted bayonets of the slain. Cover him with the coarsest blanket that picket ever wore, and let his only cup be the bleached bone of one of his war-chargers, and the last taper by his bedside expire as the midnight blast sighs into his ear: ’93The candle of the wicked shall be put out.’94
And now against the sky of the glorious future I see a great blaze. It is a foundry in full blast. The workmen have stirred the fires until the furnaces are seven times heated. The last wagon-load of the world’92s swords has been hauled into the foundry, and they are tumbled into the furnace, and they begin to glow and redden and melt, and in hissing and sparkling liquid they roll on down through the crevice of rock until they fall into a mold shaped like the iron foot of a plow. Then the liquid cools off into a hard metal, and, brought out on an anvil, it is beaten and pounded and fashioned, stroke after stroke, until that which was a weapon to reap harvests of men becomes an implement turning the soil for harvests of corn, the sword having become the plowshare.
Officers and comrades of the Thirteenth Regiment of State militia: After another year of pleasant acquaintance I hail you with a salutation all made up of good wishes and prayers. Honored with residence in the best city of the best land under the sun, let us dedicate ourselves anew to God and country and home! In the English conflict, called ’93The War of the Roses,’94 a white rose was the badge of the House of York, and a red rose the badge of the House of Lancaster, and with these two colors they opposed each other in battle. To enlist you in the Holy War for all that is good against all that is wrong, I pin over your heart two badges, the one suggestive of the blood shed for our redemption and the other symbolic of a soul made white and clean, the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. Be these henceforth our regimental symbols’97Rose and Lily, Lily and Rose!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage