Longing for War

In 1895 Oliver Wendell Holmes, arguably America's foremost jurist, addressed the Memorial Day Graduating Class of Harvard University. His was not the usual bland entreaty to be worthy, wise and committed citizens, but an impassioned reflection on war, death and honour. One can imagine the slight discomfort of these young graduates, eager to embrace the world, as they listened to words about terror, the splat of bullets, feet slipping on dead bodies, oblivion and the ultimate silence, from the thrice wounded veteran of the American Civil War. But Holmes's reflections on war were far from melancholy. For him war may have been ‘horrible and dull’ but it also contained a ‘divine message’: soldiers ‘have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top’. Indeed it was the soldier's duty to advance against all odds, and in that moment they triumphed even in death. It was heroism that was the defining feature of the ‘soldier's faith’, and in this revelation Holmes sought to ground a system of values for a new generation to embrace. ¹