The God of Battles

FROM the “ vowe to God made he ” of the Ballad of Chevy Chase down to the " Jehovah of the Thunders ” in Kipling’s hymn, the Anglo-Saxon, or more properly the AngloNorman, whenever he has felt the stir of coming battle has felt at the same time the call of a very stern, a very simple, and a very primitive religious sentiment. Satirists of alien nationality have not been slow to observe this. They have depicted the Englishman overrunning the wilderness, with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, and they have maligned the American as a hypocrite who lifted to heaven a hand dripping with the slaughter of less powerful races. The Anglo-Norman conscience itself has proved tender at times, and the God of Battles has been invoked from within against the manifest tendencies of the race as well as in their behalf. This conscience is never at ease unless it finds a case made out for it of battling for right and humanity, if not for the God of Battles himself.

But we are told in these latter days that the Anglo-Norman has undergone a revolution. He has cast aside the traditions of a thousand years, it is said, and has new words to express his convictions as to the truths of life and death. Accordingly, he has found, or must find, new cries to animate him in his devotion to what he deems the cause of progress and humanity.

There have been varied suggestions as to what might take the place of Him whom Kipling calls Jehovah of the Thunders, provided we satisfied ourselves that He no longer existed. The difficulty with most of these suggestions is that they do not adapt themselves to poetry. The Unknowable, Abstract Humanity, and so forth, — none of these seems to work well in metre, either long, short, or peculiar. That is no argument against the use in prose of these substitutes for an historic tradition. It shows only that when the cloud of war rose, the United States were unready in other respects besides those indicated in appropriation bills and proclamations.

The curious thing in that American war verse which found its way in trickling stanzas down the columns of newspapers was the apparent self-consciousness with which it evaded all the difficulties that real poetry would have faced with deadly resolution. The real poet would have said to himself, “ There is a way to say these thoughts which I have in my heart, if they are true ; ” and he would have broken his heart rather than fail to find the new manner of utterance. But the verse-makers did nothing in this earnest spirit. They ignored the God of Battles to a degree positively startling in the history of English literature, and they put nothing in his place. If there were exceptions to this rule in current literature, they were few ; though it must be acknowledged that a republication of The Battle Hymn of the Republic awoke languid echoes. The only fervent reminiscence of the poets — and this was shared by the populace — showed itself in lurid allusions to the place which Falstaff said he always thought on when he looked at Bardolph’s nose.

Thus it remained a question whether the actual roar of cannon would arouse in the bards the old Anglo-Norman sentiment, or bring new thoughts to their lips. Later evidence goes to show that the time-honored phrases are the final resort. The other day, a few stanzas, not otherwise remarkable, flashed forth with that stern and ancient name, the God of Battles. They were apparently a woman’s verses, and there was more in them of the sacrifice and misery than the triumph and glory of war. But God was there, compassionate to the stricken, unpitying to the stubborn foe,— the same God whom the Anglo-Norman has always called upon when he felt a need beyond the powers of his own selfreliance. Since then we have seen a number of hymns and apostrophes in the old fashion. But we await the poet who thinks himself capable of putting modern beliefs into stirring verse.