New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-08-08
War Songs and atriotic
Hymns of Many Nations
American War Songs Called Forth by Recent Con-
flict Are Few When Compared to Output
During Civil War

believe that the proposition is false.
The war between Prussia and Aus
tria, or North and South Germany in
1866, if my memory is not recreant,
brought forth one incident which
showed that the minds of simple peoples
of the nineteenth century could create
myths as readily as those of the simple
people of the Middle Ages. The Aus
TRANS and their allies could only ac-
count for their defeat by inventing a
story about compact between Bis
marck and the devil by which the
former bartered his immortal soul for
the mysteriously effective needle gun
with which the Prussian soldiers could
fire away without taking the trouble to
reload. Anteriorly to this, as De
Quincy's landlady remarked to him, the
Bavaran peasantry, when they saw the
first railway train rushing through their
peaceful fields, belching smoke and fire,
imagined that the engineer was the
DEVILS agent or the devil himself, and,
dimly feeling the old superstition about
the perplexed architects of bridges and
churches, recreated superstition which
we may see told in carved stone at the
door of the Cathedral at AiXla- Cha
pelle. If you don't want the devil to
get you don't be the last out Of church
or railway car.
Many Patriotic Songs Created in Times
of Peace
1t NAV be for the best that songs
called out by wars should be transient
i do not know; some of the best
national anthems in the world, and
many of the best patriotic songs, were
created in times Of profound peace.
1t is singular, too, that some of the
best of them were written to order.
One, indeed, the national anthem of
Rumania, was the fruit of a compe-
tition, with a prize reward offered by
the government, in 1861. But "Tras
casea Regile' can only be set down as
not much of a national hymn. 1t re-
minds me of Mark Twain's reply to an
artist friend after she had upbraided
him for what she considered irreverent
remarks about Botticelli. "You can't
think so meanly of Botticelli, Mr.
Clemens; you know you named one of
your cats after him"
eyes" drawled Mark, "but he amt
much of a cat"
The rule ought to be that patriotic
songs, especially those which grow to
the dignity of national anthems, ought
to be folksongs in the strictly scien-
tifc sense-spontaneous utterances;
songs of the people-born, not made.
Some of them are, but the ajority
that 1 know are not--they have their
histories and are tagged with the
names of their authors. These are art
songs, though they are frequently in
the spirit of the true folksong. 1t Is
a noteworthy fact that for the largest
and best output Of these patriotic
pseudo -folksongs, SO far as our coun-
try is concerned, we must go to our
Civil War Of nearly sixty years ago.
Foster gave US nothing lasting, though
he should have given us most; but the
songs which survive are fine illustra-
tons Of the song-creative spirit stirred
by passionate feeling. l shall say
, nothing about the fact that no original
Southern song has survived the period
of fratricdal strife (for a comparative
study of the war songs of the rebellion
might become insidous), except
"Dixie," which was a Northern song
adapted to political uses by the fine
poem Of General Pike, and Maryland,
My Maryland" whose tune is that Of
an old German folksong GO Tannen-
baum, o Tannenbaum") and a feeting
memory of "The Bonny Blue Flag;
but several of the patriotic songs
which I sang as schoolboy more than
ffty-five years ago the people of the
United States are singing to-day. We
still have "The StarSpangled Ban
uer," columbia, the Gem of the
Ocean," "Rally Round the Flag"
John Browns Body" (Which we can
sing to the ingenious old words if
the magnificent hymn of Julia Ward
Howe taxes US too much), when
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