Excerpt from Victory!: Celebrated by Thirty-Eight American Poets

But proud, to meet a people proud, With eyes that tell o' triumph tasted!

We are humbly and profoundly grateful that now, as in the great crisis of the Civil War, America should have imposed peace with hand close gripping the sword hilt and with the flush in her face that shows her to be Victory's daughter. The nation has not been put to any such terrible trial as in the years that intervened between Sumter and Appomattox, and our service and our sacrifice have been small compared with the service and the sacrifice of France and Of England. But be fore it was too late we did find our souls; before it was too late we definitely shook ourselves free from the crass and ignoble lack of spirituality which found expression in such phrases as being too proud to fight, as wish ing peace without victory, and as having no concern with the causes and Obj ects of the war that divided the powers of the pit from the powers of light. Our help was of vital consequence and turned the scale, and with blood and tears we purchased the right to range ourselves among those peoples who dared stand on the perilous heights of greatness for the sake of a lofty ideal. I am glad that there should be an effort to commemorate the great peace of triumph which we have helped to winby collecting what our singing men and singing women have written concerning it. Their poems must not merely remind us of the victory as a matter of vain glory; but as a lesson for keeping our bodies and our souls trained to meet the new duties, and the old, old dangers that come with new faces. All experience is an arch, which does not mark the end of effort, but merely opens up new roads of trial and of adventure.

At the end we did well; our many and shameful short comings in preparation and output of material were off set by the gallant readiness with which by the million Our young men sprang forward to shed their life's blood in the quarrel for right. But we must not treat what has been done as a matter merely, or indeed pri marily, for boastfulness. On the contrary, let us learn the lesson in which long ago we should have been letter perfect. Let us never again be guilty of the sin of the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin; let us hereafter be ready in advance to defend our rights against alien foes with all our hardened might; and let us brace ourselves with steel-hearted resolution and with serene Wisdom to grapple with the vitally important problems of peace just as, if necessary, we will grapple with the problems of war.

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