VISION OF WAR.


                            ________


      The past rises before me, as it were, like a dream. again we
are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of
preparation -- the music of boisterous drums -- the silver voices
of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the
appeals of orators. We see the pale cheek. of women, and the
flushed faces of men; and in those assemblages we see all the dead
whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no
more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army of
freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are walking
for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they
adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love
as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles,
kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of
old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them
to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears,
tears and kisses -- divine mingling of agony and love! And some are
talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the
old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them
part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her
arms -- standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road
a hand waves -- she answers by holding high in her loving arms the
child. He is gone, and forever. 

     We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting
flags, keeping time to the grand, wild music of war -- marching
down the streets of the great cities -- through the towns and
across the prairies -- down to the fields of glory, to do and to
die for the eternal right.

      We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the
gory fields -- in all the hospitals of pain -- on all the weary
marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the
quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood -- in
the furrows of old fields. We are with them between contending
hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly
away among the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and
torn with shells. in the trenches, by forts, and in the whirlwind
of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of steel.

      We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but
human speech can never tell what they endured. 

     We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see
the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered
head of the old man bowed with the last grief.

      The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human
beings governed by the lash -- we see them bound hand and foot --
we hear the strokes of cruel whips -- we see the hounds tracking
women through tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts
of mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Outrage infinite!



                 Bank of Wisdom, Inc.   (C) 1988
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201

                                1

                         VISION OF WAR.


      Four million bodies in chains -- four million souls in 
fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child
trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this was done
under our own beautiful banner of the free. 

     The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the
bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. We
look. Instead of slaves we see men and women and children. The wand
of progress touches the auction-block, the slave-pen, the whipping-
post, and we see homes and fire-sides and schoolhouses and books,
and where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we see the
faces of the free.

      These heroes are dead. They died for liberty -- they died
for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free,
under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the
sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They
sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine
or of storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest. The Earth may
run red with other wars -- they are at peace. In the midst of
battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death!
I have one sentiment for all soldiers living and dead: cheers for
the living; tears for the dead.


                          ****    ****



   The Bank of Wisdom Inc. is a collection of the most thoughtful,
scholarly and factual books. These books cover American and world
history, the Biographies and writings of famous persons, and
especially of our nations Founding Fathers. They include philosophy
and religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available
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so that America can again become what its Founders intended -- The
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   The Bank of Wisdom, Inc. is always looking for more of these
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good use please contact us, we need to give them back to America.















                 Bank of Wisdom, Inc.   (C) 1988
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201