ysing and criticising deeds
which I could not do myself: but--to give an instance or two of what I
mean--

To defend a post as long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is simple
duty. To defend it after it has become untenable, and even to die in so
doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an advantage is to be
gained thereby for one's own side. Then, indeed, it rises towards, if
not into, the heroism of self-sacrifice.

Who, for example, will not endorse the verdict of all ages on the conduct
of those Spartans at Thermopylae, when they sat "combing their yellow
hair for death" on the sea-shore? They devoted themselves to hopeless
destruction: but why? They felt--I must believe that, for they behaved
as if they felt--that on them the destinies of the Western World might
hang; that they were in the forefront of the battle between civilisation
and barbarism, between freedom and despotism; and that they must teach
that vast mob of Persian slaves, whom the officers of the Great King were
driving with whips up to their lance-points, that the spirit of the old
heroes was not dead; and that the Greek, even in defeat and death, was a
mightier and a nobler man than they. And they did their work. They
produced, if you will, a "moral" effect, which has lasted even to this
very day. They struck terror into the heart, not only of the Persian
host, but of the whole Persian empire. They made the event of that war
certain, and the victories of Salamis and Plataea comparatively easy.
They made Alexander's conquest of the East, 150 years afterwards, not
only possible at all, but permanent when it came; and thus helped to
determine the future civilisation of the whole world.

They did not, of course, foresee all this. No great or inspired man can
foresee all the consequences of his deeds: but these men were, as I hold,
inspired to see somewhat at least of the mighty stake for which they
played; and to count their lives worthless, if Sparta had sent them
thither to help in that great game.

Or shall we refuse the name of heroic to those three German cavalry
regiments who, in the battle of Mars La Tour, were bidden to hurl
themselves upon the chassepots and mitrailleuses of the unbroken French
infantry, and went to almost certain death, over the corpses of their
comrades, on and in and through, reeling man over horse, horse over man,
and clung like bull-dogs to their work, and would hardly leave, even at
the bugle-call