s of all
kinds, the whole mind and heart of the country is absorbed in the great
contest, and all its energies are applied in every conceivable way to
the work of war. The man who carries the gun and uses it on the battle
field is not more earnestly engaged in this work than he who racks his
brain and sifts his teeming ideas for the purpose of making the
instrument more destructive. Even the victims who fall in the deadly
strife and give their mangled bodies to their country, are not more
truly martyrs to a glorious cause than the inventors who sometimes
sacrifice themselves in the course of their perilous experiments, or by
the slower process of mental and physical exhaustion during the long
years of 'hope deferred,' while vainly seeking to make known the value
of their devices. A great power is at work, operating on the character
and capacity of each individual, and affecting each according to the
infinite diversity which prevails among men. A common enthusiasm, or,
at least, a common excitement pervades the whole community to its
profoundest depths, and arouses all its energy and all its intellect,
whatever that energy and intellect may be capable of doing. It carries
multitudes into the army full of patriotic ardor; it inspires others
with grand ideas, which they seek to embody in combinations of power,
useful and effective in the great work which is the task of the nation,
and for the accomplishment of which all noble hearts are laboring
earnestly and incessantly.

But in this tempestuous hour, as in more peaceful times, good and bad
ideas, valuable and worthless devices, noble and generous as well as
sinister and mercenary purposes are mingled in the vast multitude of
projects which are presented for acceptance and adoption. The power of
the nation is magnified by the impulse which arouses it; but in its
exaltation it still retains its errors and defects. It is the same
people, with all their characteristic faults and virtues, stimulated to
mighty exertions in a sacred cause, who have been so often engaged in
petty partisan contests, swayed by dishonest leaders, and carried astray
by the base intrigues of ambition and selfishness. Yet, as the masses,
at all times, have had no interest but that of the nation which they
chiefly constitute, and have sought nothing but what they at least
considered to be the public good, so even now, in these mad and perilous
times, the predominating sentiment and purpose of the peopl