University of Virginia Library

ADDRESS BY JOHN STEWART BRYAN, RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY, ACCEPTING
THE TABLET

On this porch, a little more than half a century ago, were gathered
students in whose ears still sounded the drums and tramplings of the War
Between the States.

There, in graven bronze, are five hundred and fifty names of those who
marched forth under the flag of Virginia, and died in the defense of their
homes. Here are the memorials to their fourscore younger brothers who in
their day and generation heard the shrill bugle, and gladly followed the call
of duty.

The sad sagacity of age has taught us that nothing built with hands
can "hold out against the wreckful siege of battering days," and yet we
place this tablet on the walls of this century-old Rotunda in response to a
wish that lies deep in the heart of humanity. That desire to enshrine beloved
memory beyond the changes and chances of time is one that has come to all
men everywhere. Every heart has its inner shrine. To the university's
great altar we bring to-day this frail barrier against the engulfing tides of
oblivion. Size is not the measure of our memorial. The Pyramids of the
Nile have no such spiritual import as the most obscure cross in Flanders
field. And who can compute the power that gave this tablet its long roll of
the Knights of the University, the champions of pure liberty, the Galahads
of pure manhood?

When those boys were born, the possibility of international conflict
belonged to the limbo of

and war seemed as far removed from the peaceful course of their lives as
volcanoes are from the calm Blue Ridge. As those young men grew up, they
saw nearly one half of our revenue being spent for works of peace, and now
95% is poured out for war, past, present and to come.

What was it in those boys that throbbed in response to the drumming
guns? Why was it then that those boys heard in these quiet shades the
blare of the war trumpet, when older and wiser heads still dreamt of peace?
What was it that called into instant action their aptitude for command and
their instinct for war? It was the glorious atavism in the blood of men
whose fathers and forefathers endured pain, darkness and cold at Valley
Forge, or stormed the heights of Chapultepec, or set new standards for military
genius and personal bravery at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. The
blood that gave that type is coursing in the veins of Virginia. The inspiration
that controlled those lives is still potent.

Experience could have seen that those great spirits needed but the
revealing touch of death's finger to show that like their elder brothers of
Virginia blood they, too, when

Heredity alone will not explain the achievements of these sons of the
University. It was blood, yes, but it was training; it was heredity, but
heredity developed by environment; it was the soul of the South and the
traditions of the University of Virginia that made perfect those gentlemen
unafraid. It was not the Prussian drill master, but the Virginia school
master, that inspired those students and fortified their souls and liberated
their intellect. Those boys lived in the last unpoliced institution on earth.
No guardian was set over them here at the University, except the guardian
of conscience; they were tried and tested by the unwritten code of gentlemen;
they were electrified by the powerful spiritual currents that flow unimpeded
through the halls and arcades of this great school. No law bound them
except the law of honor, and by their lives, as by their death, they proved
again that an ideal is not only the most noble, but also the most useful
possession that an institution may give or a nation receive. They had
eaten the bread of Virginia in which lived transubstantiated the soul and
body of the whole nation. They found that to be a gentleman was at once
the crown and the sanction of life, and they showed by their willingness to
die that the certainty of sacrifice is the guerdon of greatness.

The glory that radiates from that tablet is the glory of the spirit of the
University of Virginia. The shining faces of those sacred dead have caught
the light of honor, and that flame will never perish from the earth while the
memory of their deeds endures.

Nor is the radiance theirs alone. Its light is upon us, too, for we who
stand here this afternoon are in a very real sense members of that mystical
body of Virginians who, living and dead, have fashioned the soul of this
Commonwealth. By ties of blood, by the unifying influence of race and

The Unveiling of the Tablet Memorial to World War Alumni

tradition, by the welding force of a common ideal, by the impress of the
same youthful enthusiasm awakened and amplified at the University, our
hearts are one with theirs. We grasp with an appreciation that far transcends
any power of reason what it was that made their lives luminous and
their deaths not in vain.

We dedicate this tablet, and with swelling throats and uplifted hearts
we turn again to the common tasks of daily life. That bronze memorial
stands immobile and silent; of itself it can do nothing; it is we alone, and our
lives alone, that can make it a vitalizing force. It is we, and we alone,
professors, alumni, students and citizens, who can surcharge that noble
scroll with an ever renewing energy. And this we can do by so living that
the spirit of those youths shall never be a stranger in these halls. For only
the souls of the living can make and keep the University a congenial home
for the souls of the dead.

This is no easy task. Our right to claim companionship with those
shining exemplars must be won in conflict with the hosts of darkness, even
as theirs was won. In the reeking trenches of France, in sweating camps,
and silent hospitals, across barbed-wire, and under the whirlwind of shrapnel
or the thunderclap of T. N. T., the sons of the University won their right to
be brothers in arms with the mighty men of all ages, who, from Thermopylæ
to Château-Thierry

Many of us were not in uniform. Oh, never mind the reason, for each
heart knew its own bitterness when the angel with the flaming sword passed
by; but all of us can be brothers in spirit with those whose virtues we revere,
and whose names we commemorate to-day. Like them, we can face our
duty without flinching; like them we know what high adventure America
sought in entering the war, and for them, as for ourselves, we can repel the
base slander that America made her stupendous effort not to save her soul,
but to save her skin!

It is not the expenditure of Forty Billions; it is not the long rows of
75,640 silent dead that sleep in Belleau Woods and elsewhere in France,
that mark the full extent of the price we paid. Ah, no! America's contribution
is not in shot-torn troops, but in shattered ideals; our loss is not in men
and money, but in morale and faith. And the mere fact that such a calumny
on the ideals of a great nation could be uttered by an ambassador who has
continued unrebuked at his post is evidence enough that what America is
suffering from is not poverty of goods, but destitution of spirit.

And this tablet we dedicate to-day—if we ourselves do not keep faith
with those who died for the soul of America—will not be a memorial, but a

mockery and if we are not baptized with the baptism of those we commemorate,
we will stand not as brothers, but as blasphemers before

The souls of those men are here, radiant with imperishable glory, leading
the way with strong exulting wing where we, with slow tread, must follow.

How shall we name them all, and how shall we discriminate among
those equals in valor of purpose and fortitude of execution? We cannot
choose or pick among that chivalry—when all are calling to us to "Be true
to the nation, be true to Virginia, be true to the spirit of the University,"—
and by God's good grace, we will!