Let us take a few well-known instances of courageous deeds and examine
them; because, if we can find out any common quality in them we shall
have lighted on something which is of the essence of, or inseparable
from, that manliness which includes courage—that manliness of which we
are in search.
I will take two or three at hazard from a book in which they abound,
and which was a great favorite some years ago, as I hope it is still, I
mean Napier’s _Peninsular War_. At the end of the storming of Badajos,
after speaking of the officers, Napier goes on: “Who shall describe
the springing valor of that Portuguese grenadier who was killed the
foremost man at Santa Maria? or the martial fury of that desperate
rifleman, who, in his resolution to win, thrust himself beneath the
chained sword-blades, and then suffered the enemy to dash his head in
pieces with the end of their muskets.”
Again, at the Coa: “A north-of-Ireland man, named Stewart, but
jocularly called ‘the boy,’ because of his youth, nineteen, and of his
gigantic stature and strength, who had fought bravely and displayed
great intelligence beyond the river, was one of the last men who came
down to the bridge, but he would not pass. Turning round he regarded
the French with a grim look, and spoke aloud as follows, ‘So this is
the end of our brag. This is our first battle, and we retreat! The boy
Stewart will not live to hear that said.’ Then striding forward in his
giant might he fell furiously on the nearest enemies with the bayonet,
refused the quarter they seemed desirous of granting, and died fighting
in the midst of them.”
“Still more touching, more noble, more heroic, was the death of
Sergeant Robert McQuade. During McLeod’s rush, this man, also from the
north of Ireland, saw two men level their muskets on rests against
a high gap in a bank, awaiting the uprise of an enemy. The present
Adjutant-general Brown, then a lad of sixteen, attempted to ascend
at the fatal spot. McQuade, himself only twenty-four years of age,
pulled him back, saying in a calm, decided tone, ‘You are too young,
sir, to be killed,’ and then offering his own person to the fire, fell
dead pierced with both balls.” And, speaking of the British soldier
generally, he says in his preface, “What they were their successors now
are. Witness the wreck of the _Birkenhead_, where four hundred men, at
the call of their heroic officers, Captains Wright and Girardot, calmly
and without a murmur accepted death in a horrible form rather than
endanger the women and children saved in the boats. The records of the
world furnish no parallel to this self-devotion.”
Let us add to these two very recent examples: the poor colliers who
worked day and night at Pont-y-pridd with their lives in their hands,
to rescue their buried comrades; and the gambler in St. Louis who went
straight from the gaming-table into the fire, to the rescue of women
and children, and died of the hurts after his third return from the
flames.
Looking, then, at these several cases, we find in each that resolution
in the actors to have their way, contempt for ease, and readiness to
risk pain or death, which we noted as the special characteristics of
animal courage, which we share with the bulldog and weasel.
So far all of them are alike. Can we get any further? Not much,
if we take the case of the rifleman who thrust his head under the
sword-blades and allowed his brains to be knocked out sooner than draw
it back, or that of “the boy Stewart.” These are intense assertions
of individual will and force—avowals of the rough hard-handed man
that he has that in him which enables him to defy pain and danger and
death—this and little or nothing more; and no doubt a very valuable and
admirable thing as it stands.
But we feel, I think, at once, that there is something more in the act
of Sergeant McQuade, and of the miners in Pont-y-pridd—something higher
and more admirable. And it is not a mere question of degree, of more
or less, in the quality of animal courage. The rifleman and “the boy
Stewart” were each of them persistent to death, and no man can be more.
The acts were, then, equally courageous, so far as persistency and
scorn of danger and death are concerned. We must look elsewhere for
the difference, for that which touches us more deeply in the case of
Sergeant McQuade than in that of “the boy Stewart,” and can only find
it in the motive. At least, it seems to me that the worth of the last
lies mainly in the sublimity of self-assertion, of the other in the
sublimity of self-sacrifice.
And this holds good again in the case of the _Birkenhead_. Captain
Wright gave the word for the men to fall in on deck by companies,
knowing that the sea below them was full of sharks, and that the ship
could not possibly float till the boats came back; and the men fell
in, knowing this also, and stood at attention without uttering a word,
till she heeled over and went down under them. And Napier, with all his
delight in physical force and prowess, and his intense appreciation
of the qualities which shine most brightly in the fiery action of
battle, gives the palm to these when he writes, “The records of the
world furnish no parallel to this self-devotion.” He was no mean judge
in such a case; and, if he is right, as I think he is, do we not get
another side-light on our inquiry, and find that the highest temper of
physical courage is not to be found, or perfected, in action but in
repose. All physical effort relieves the strain and makes it easier to
persist unto death under the stimulus and excitement of the shock of
battle, or of violent exertion of any kind, than when the effort has
to be made with grounded arms. In other words, may we not say that
in the face of danger self-restraint is after all the highest form of
self-assertion, and a characteristic of manliness as distinguished from
courage.