Since then you have known but
war. As I look into your faces, I see the scar of many a wound; but more
than the wounds I see are the wounds I do not see: of the body as well as of
the spirit--the lacerations of sorrow, the strokes of bereavement. So that
perhaps not one of you here but bears some brave visible or invisible sin of
this awful past and of his share in the common strife. Twenty years are a
long time to fight enemies of any kind, a long time to bold out against such
as you have faced; and had you not been a mighty people sprung from the
loins of a mighty race, no one of you would be here this day to worship the
God of your fathers in the faith of your fathers. The victory upon which you
are entering at last is never the reward of the feeble, the cowardly, the
faint-hearted. Out of your strength alone you have won your peace.
"But, O my brethren, while your land is now at peace, are you at peace? In
the name of my Master, look each of you into his heart and answer: Is it not
still a wilderness? full of the wild beasts of the appetites? the favourite
hunting-ground of the passions? And is each of you, tried and faithful and
fearless soldier that he may be on every other field, is each of you doing
anything to conquer this?"
"My cry to-day then is the war-cry of the spirit.
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