The Soldier’s Faith

I do not know what is true.  I do not know the meaning of the universe.  But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.
—   Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
An address on Memorial Day,
May 30, 1895,
at a Meeting Called by the Graduating Class of Harvard University.
The speech is generally known as “The Soldier’s Faith“
.