And as I speak of the times and the men, it is not my purpose to sound the praises of war, that dread dispenser of wrath and death and woe. I hate it in every throb of my heart and fibre of my being-hate it because I have tried it, as have you, and therefore apprehend it. Its forefront is bright and fair and gay.
The plumed troop, the neighing steed,
The shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum,
The ear-piercing fife, the royal banner.
Ah, these make up its “quality and pride and pomp and circumstance.”
But behind all this, back of “battle's magnificently stern array,” are wounds and groans and blood and death. And away from the fatal field are homes in wreck and eyes that weep and hearts that break. Ah! only for truth and right and land and home dare true men war, and for all these did our true men war.
I say true, because true men formed the staple of our armies. Of the ones just toasted, I can “speak that I do know and testify that I have seen.” From New Orleans to Shiloh, from Vicksburg to Chattanooga, from Dalton to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Nashville, from Nashville to Carolina I knew these men. Aye! I knew them well. The office in which I served brought me near to them. I was not their commissary, to be grumbed at about rations; nor their quartermaster, to be chafed about slazy clothes and shoddy shoes; nor their doctor, to drug them; nor their surgeon, to cut their quivering flesh and saw their grating bones; nor their officer, to bid them come and go; but, as their chaplain, I was their companion and friend, their teacher and counsellor, their helper and comforter.
Beside them in battle I saw their courage put to the proof; with them in marches by day and night, in rain and mud and snow and ice, the bare ground their bivouac, the sky their tent, the earth their bed, I witnessed their endurance; sitting or kneeling beside their cots of pain, I marked their patience; hearing, reading and answering their letters from home and kin I learned their hearts; by their camp-fires and at their slender meals I learned their views and feelings, their hopes and fears.
