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Captain Holmes
IN his old age, when he was America's Grand Old Man and not unconscious of it, justice Holmes was vigorously attacked (as a lawyer) by an ornament of a great law school who had risen to the rank of colonel in the first World War in the Provost-Marshal- General's Department—what would now be called a " chairborne " warrior. Holmes listened, so the story ran, to the report of the colonel's criticism and then, with the authority of a thrice-wounded infantry officer, remarked, "He may be a better lawyer than I am, but I was a damned sight better soldier." And Justice Holmes never forgot his four years in the army in the Civil War. In the Memorial Day address, from which Professor Howe takes his title, Holmes rejoiced that "through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire." His soldier past came out in more than his bearing or the magnificent military moustache that he adopted long after he left the army. When he admonished his brethren on the Supreme Court, in a famous dissent, that time had dealt hardly and finally with many fighting creeds he had in mind less (We may suspect) ideological systems like the "Social Statics of Mr. Herbert Spencer," mere paper systems than great passionate causes like that for which so many tens of thousands of men had died under his eyes on the Rappahannbck and in the Wilderness. " Fighting " was, for him, no political metaphor, but a basic, human reality that his optimistic friends, believers in progress and in the march of mind, ignored—but ignored at their peril and at the peril of the societies that they misled.
Yet, as these letters and the diary make plain' Holmes was no natural soldier' no happy warrior either of the high Wordsworthian type, nor was he one of the not uncommon type who are at home in war at least as much as in any other activity—or more. ("I care for only two things," said an American friend to me once, "horses and war," and he had seen a lot of both.) In a real sense Holmes "turned his necessity to glorious gain" at the. time and all through his life but he didn't like doing it. What he says in these letters of another gallant New Englander, that he chose always the more difficult, unpleasant path, was true of himself—and he was not sparing of criticism of friend; and acquaintances who, like William Everett, thought their war-time duty was adequately performed by studying in England. Holmes was not one of those who "don't know what fear is " ; he knew very well, and had plenty of occasion, even in the brief period at the end of the war when he was a staff officer, to renew his knowledge, and his praise of the heroism of Henry L. Abbott in the shambles of Fredericksburg, . the mass Balaklava of the Army of the Potomac, came from one who knew what such perfectly disciplined courage cost. And it is evident that Holmes, never in the social sense much of a democrat, didn't like the com- pany he was often forced to keep. "While I'm living en aristocrat I'm an out-and-outer of a democrat in theory, but for contact, except at the polls, I loathe the thick-fingered clowns we call the people—. especially as the beasts are represented at political centres—vulgar, selfish and base." Holmes would have accepted the "century of the common man," but it is hard to believe that he would have welcomed it without serious reservations.
Of course, one cause of the outburst quoted above was the resent- ment felt by Holmes and by most officers and men of the Army of the Potomac at the treatment of that luckless force by the politicians, beginning with President Lincoln. Armchair critics, newspaper generals, ardent politicians who rated political orthodoxy far above mere military competence, were in the ascendant, and the price of their pride, ignorance, self-satisfaction and self-interest was the need- less and pointless butchery of Fredericksburg. There is visible in the letters a good deal of the front-line soldier's impatience with optimistic civilian views, especially when those views were expressed by his too optimistic; exuberant, notoriety-loving father. To be a greater and more famous man than his father was one of the younger Holmes's life-long ambitions ; it was behind his admirable snub to Andrew Lang, behind his choice of a profession, and some justifica-
tion for his resentmettt of thc. elder Holmes's attitude can be seen here. Captain Holmes found it harder than did Professor Holmes to discount the passionate faith of the South in the justice of its cause ; he was very far from being certain that the North (though right was on its side) was bound to win ; and he was not even sure that military' victory ,I.vould prove an answer to the questions that had perplexed and finally wrecked the Union. Despite his pessimism and scepticism, Holmes held on, stirred to new faith, or new effort,
by an article on Joirtville by Charles Eliot Norton. "I am thankful
to read of the great dead who have 'stood in the evil day.' No—it will not do to leave Palestine yet." But when his old regiment, the 20th Massachusetts Infantry, was disbanded, Holmes decided to leave the army, a few months before the end of the war. "I started in this thing a boy. I am now a man, and I have been coming to the conclusion for the last six months that my duty has changed." So Captain (Brevet-Colonel) Holmes left the army to become a lawyer
and a greater man than the Autocrat. s D. W. BROGAN.
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