THE BLESSINGS OF WAR.

BY CAPTAIN EUGENE M. WILSON,

FIRST MINNESOTA MOUNTED RANGERS, U. S. VOLUNTEERS.

THIS may appear an incongruous subject. It may seem strangely out of place to look for blessings amid disasters. It is customary to picture the white-winged angel of peace as the great monopolist of all that is good or pleasant on earth: to portray the horrors of war as surpassing all other imaginable calamities. But the millennium has not yet arrived, and until it does, we must look with practical eyes upon many unpleasant necessities resulting from the disordered condition of mind and matter. The history of the world, in its religious, political, and physical characteristics, shows that from when the sons of God sang together in the morning of time to our own age of boasted civilization, strange modes have been essential to accomplish great and beneficial results. The destructive forces have been incomprehensibly allied to the continued and effective operation of the productive powers. The tornado sweeps over the land, carrying ruin to the few, but staying the pestilence that would bring death to the many. The fire-fiend rages with irresistible terror through a city, and the desolation of its track seems to present naught but hopeless despair. Yet a few years

show new streets, splendidly and comfortably built, in place of the miserable rows of unsightly and unhealthy houses destroyed. Except for the calamity of fire, a century would not have produced the improvement. And, as in medicine, diseases and injuries require painful treatment and severe surgery, so there occur at intervals certain conditions of national life, certain political diseases, that can only be cured by the remedy of war. Why it should be so ordered is indeed strange, but not more so than many other incontestable facts; not more so than that the world cannot grow without decay, and that the whole state of nature is but feeding the process of life by the process of death.

I, of course, do not contend that war, in general or in the aggregate, is beneficial, but only claim it is not an unmixed evil; that, as in the language of Tupper, "There is nothing so false that a sparkle of truth is not in it," so many wars are a blessed necessity, and productive of results cheap at all their cost.

By war have religions been propagated more than by any other agent. The victories of Constantine did more for the firm foundation of Christianity than the preaching of the apostles. Mohammedanism spread Unitarianism over Asia and Africa by the sword and the spear, and for the time was practically better than the religions it supplanted. The extension of Christianity of to-day must look for success more to the arms than the missionaries of the nations professing its tenets.

By war has the spirit of liberty been kept alive. We never value that which costs us nothing. Intrinsic value has less to do with an estimate than the labor and trial of achievement. National independence obtained

through revolution is generally more enduring than when it is the mere result of quiet consent.

There is no more precious portion of a nation's heritage than the remembrance of its warrior heroes. No people can become or remain great without the animation of that enthusiastic patriotism that admires and emulates noble deeds. The wealth and strength of a government is not in its large revenues and overloaded coffers. It is not in large standing armies and powerful navies, eating up the people's substance and menacing their liberties. It is in the common love of a contented citizenship, ever ready to devote person and property to its protection.

The human mind is so constituted that the greatest results cannot be achieved by the mere operation of cold intellectual direction. The affections, the imagination, must join the combination to give force and power. In the spring-time of youth, when impulses are warmest, there must be planted, watered, and reared the ennobling sentiments which make the patriot endure through manhood and old age. Thus do the recollections of patriotic wars come down through long years of passing time, moulding and ennobling national character.

While some wars have been destructive of learning, others have restored arts and science, and carried knowledge from people to people. The Crusades brought back the light of Asia into the darkness of Europe. They were the most senseless of enterprises. Millions went to a purposeless death. Peter the Hermit, with his crazy mob of strangely commingled fanatics and outlaws; the bands of children, pitiable in ignorance and innocence; and the mailed ranks of Europe's princes,

alike pursued a chimerical idea. They alike perished from starvation, disease, and battle. It would seem the saddest exhibition of unmixed calamity, and yet it led to the political and intellectual regeneration of Europe.

It was at the commencement of the Crusades overshadowed by dense ignorance. The barbaric had overrun the enlightened portion. Like an avalanche from the mountains, desolating the peaceful valleys, the strange hordes of the northern hive spread ruin over the civilization and refinement of the south. The gathered lore of ages perished from the torch of the ignorant invader. Brute force usurped the place of science. The sword swept away the achievements of the pen. Arts fled affrighted from the realms of Christianity and took refuge in the halls of the infidel but elegant Mohammedan. All of learning that remained lay hidden in the cloisters of the monk. Even royalty delighted in ignorance, and England's powerful king, when about to sign the treaty, dipped his brawny hand in the ink, and, smiting the parchment, declared such to be the signature of Cœur de Lion. But the returning Crusaders brought back new ideas, and their communication with the more learned East enabled them to sow again in Western Europe the seeds of a mental revival that has continued unchecked to our own period.

At the commencement of the Crusades Europe was likewise in the worst of political situations. Feudalism had broken the nations into a thousand petty tyrannies. A system once necessary as the first advance from the savage tribal relation, it was antagonistic to the consolidated governments demanded by advancing civilization, but it had become so thoroughly intrenched that sover

eignty could not control it. The great nobles were too powerful for the kings, and the petty ones were little better than common highwaymen. They were unwilling to surrender any of their lawless and iniquitous power; but as the Lord sent Pharaoh into the Red Sea, so he impelled these local tyrants by the power of fanaticism to the plains of Asia, there to waste their health, wealth, and power, until over their weakness general governments could be firmly established.

The first French Revolution was marked with excesses of the most horrible kind Thousands who ranged themselves under the banner of liberty did nothing but commit crimes and demonstrate their utter incapacity for self-government. The popular excesses led by natural reflex sequence to the empire. But after all is added up and compared, the balance of result must be struck in favor of good. The hold of a tyrannical sovereignty and a wicked nobility was loosened, never again to be grasped with a firm hand. Ideas entered the popular mind which, though then, from the ill-ordered condition of the soil, producing a rank and noxious growth, were yet never rooted out, and under the mellowing sunshine of time and experience grew into "trees for the healing of the nations." Monarchy was never again easy in France, and after various unsuccessful attempts it presents a republican government, with fair promise of beneficent permanency.

No people have ever extracted more blessings from war than the United States. The early conflicts of the Colonies with the Indians, though attended with much injustice and cruelty, yet opened a continent to the progress of civilization. They took from barbarism that