The Shield of Faith

by FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES

1

NO THOUGHTFUL and informed person would attempt to deny that we are living in dangerous times. However, I am constantly astonished because so many thoughtful and informed persons talk and act as if this were something new. I am not especially learned in either sacred or secular history. Hut, at the age of four, I was taught to read out of the Bible; and it was very early impressed on my infantile mind that Adam and Eve, the refugees from Sodom, and the travelers in Noah’s Ark not only survived the destruction of the whole world as they knew it, but through exile, calamity, and danger went on to new worlds, hitherto beyond their ken, and flourished there. My grandmother, who was my teacher at this stage, likewise called my attention to the prowess of such ill-equipped but resourceful individuals as David with his sling and Samson with the jawbone of an ass, and their triumph over the mighty and great. She did not fail to add that anyone who feared the Lord and had gumption could perform correlative feats nowadays, if driven to it.

A little later, when I went to school, other examples of extraordinary survival and victory in the face of difficulties were set before me and I was invited to draw similar conclusions from the heroism of Horatius at the Bridge and the Minute Men of Concord, from the defeat of the Spanish Armada and from the creation of five republics under the inspired leadership of Bolivar. Possibly military victories were overstressed, because the schoolroom of that period, like the whole world today, was keyed to a consciousness of war rather than to a consciousness of progress. I think now that too little stress was placed on the courage and endurance it required for Columbus to keep giving the single order “Sail on!” to his men, for Pasteur to persevere with the experiments in his modest laboratory, for Lister to introduce antiseptics to the operating room, for Fulton to make a profitable steamboat, and for Bell to make a workable telephone. But sooner or later we also heard about these achievements and others which came to pass against great odds.

The fact that from girlhood I have frequently been ill or disabled, that 1 have spent months in bed, that I have often been obliged to take and leave trains and ships in ambulances or wheelchairs, has not prevented me from leading a full and active life, as a housekeeper and a hostess, as a mother and eventually as a matriarch, as a writer and as a traveler. Meanwhile, over and over again, I have seen about me men and women who were surmounting far greater difficulties than those with which I had to cope. I saw Sarah Bernhardt act when an amputation had made it impossible for her to stand, but when her art had lost none of its magic; and 1 was present when Franklin Roosevelt rose with the help of four strong men and, supporting himself with t he lectern, made the “Happy Warrior” speech in Madison Square Garden. It has been my great privilege to know the discoverers of both the North and South Poles and of radium, several of the foremost pioneers in aviation, and naval and military commanders who came through war with victory. Every one of these men and women triumphed over tremendous odds.

I am old enough to remember when people said our prostrated South could never recover from the devastation of the War Between the States and the humiliation of the Carpetbag Era; and I have lived to see Atlanta rise from its ashes and become a great metropolis, while at the same time New Orleans was resuming her proud position as the second port in the country. In Europe, I have seen even swifter revivals after both the First and Second World Wars — churches and homes and gardens rising in the midst of ruins, thanks to the inspired toil of people who were willing to work from dawn to dark and even far into the night and whose faith in the future gave them strength and courage to do so.

Since all those different types of triumph have come within the range of my own study, obscrvation, and experience, and since they cover the period from the earliest Biblical days to the present time,

I find it hard to believe that human nalure will so suddenly change that it will cease to struggle against difficulties, or that tins struggle will necessarily bo vain. I also find it hard to believe that the world itself — that is, the world we know — will change so completely through widespread destruction as automat ically to cause the futility of such struggles,

I have faith that, what ever happens, the remnants of mankind will gather themselves together and, out of the wreckage of the world they knew, create another.

2

THERE are several reasons for this faith. “The first and most practical is based almost wholly upon geography. This may appear, at first glance, too material for logical or suitable connection with faith, but it does not seem that way to me. We have an immense coastline, not only along the Allantic and Pacific Oceans, but along the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes; and within the territory bounded by this coastline are innumerable mountains and prairies, rivers and swamps, forests and mines and quarries. Though it contains some arid regions, it is, on the whole, productive or capable of production; throughout much of the southern part, fruits and vegetables can be raised almost if not quite twelve months in the year and cattle can graze both summer and winter. And, being interpreted in terms of justified confidence, these geographical advantages mean a great deal.

They mean that, if one or two or three or four great ports were suddenly annihilated, we have many other ports with which to replace them, for oven the most pessimistic prophet has never predicted that it would be possible to destroy every mile of our coastline simultaneously. (Supposing that it were, such destruction would probably create new harbors where none were before, by changing the topography of the land.) Some of these ports have already had periods of activity and prosperity, of which changing times have deprived them; a further whirligig might well restore it to them. Without the slightest mental effort, I can think of a dozen such ports — and with no further effort, I can think of a dozen more whose potentialities have never yet been realized. It would, indeed, be a horrible catastrophe if one or more of our major coastal cities were demolished; but it would by no means represent the end of our national life or even of our international trade relations.

What is true of the coastal cities is correspondingly true of our great industrial centers and of our Capital. Because certain places are now identified with the production of motorcars, or steel, or farm machinery, this does not mean that other places could not also produce them — indeed, in some instances, others are already producing them, though their output is not as well known as that which has been longer on the market. (A year or so ago, I visited a factory, of which I had never heard before, which specializes in farm machinery. It is located in a very small town and it is not even on a main railroad; but its products are already eagerly sought in Madagascar!) And Washington has not always been our Capital. (In fact, it has already been demolished once during a war, though most people have forgotten that now, which is not strange, considering what a beautiful and mighty city it is today.)

Leaving aside the question of the cities, let us turn to the countryside. This could feed itself — and the cities — for a long, long time. No blockade could even threaten us with starvation; no deadly missiles hurled from the air could destroy all the vegetable gardens and all the grazing land and all the wheat fields, or kill all the fish in the streams and lakes and all the wild fowl in the air. During World War I, the then Governor of New Hampshire, who was also a farmer and who, as it happens, was my husband, used as his slogan, “I’m planting wheat. Are you?” There bad not been much wheat planted in New England during recent years, because the West had become a much more profitable, and therefore a much more logical, place for its production; but the early settlers of the Connecticut Valley raised it successfully, and the presenl inhabitants can, too, whenever there is any special reason why they should — as there was in 1917. My small garden in this same region — where the climate is rigorous, where planting cannot begin before May and harvesting takes place in September — provided enough vegetables for six families during World War II; if there should be a World War III which heaven forbid!—my large garden in Louisiana could feed dozens of families, for ihc good earth of that state can be made productive at all times. And if my garden should be destroyed, there would still be left hundreds and thousands of others where the work could go on.

Many of them are on the fringes of swamps, many others on remote bayous. The most determined foe, with the most powerful weapons, would never find them all simultaneously; they are too cunningly hidden by nature. For this reason, men who are not accustomed to their pitfalls would find them a hard place in which to fight. Though I am not acquainted with every stale in the Union, and therefore cannot speak with authority for all, I honestly believe that there is not one which either does not possess or could not contrive some special means of defense against an invader and hold him almost indefinitely at bay.

The natural advantages we possess might well be wasted if the caliber of our people were different; but, from the very earliest days, the word “American” has been considered almost synonymous with resourcefulness, industry, vitality, intelligence, progress, endurance, and courage. If we consent, for one moment, to admit that it might become synonymous with helplessness, indolence, desuetude, stupidity, backwardness, frailty, and cowardice, we are as false to our heritage as if we were selling our birthright for a mess of red pottage. John Paul Jones, standing on the deck of a sinking ship and shouting, “I have not yet begun to fight!” is still quoted not because he was an isolated figure, but because he was so typical of his era.

My own grandmother, as I have already remarked, firmly believed that if we had enough gumption and feared the Lord we could emulate the most heroic Biblical characters. The question as to whether we could emulate our forefathers was not even raised; it was taken for granted that we could. I still believe that we can. Indeed, I would consider it an insult to my sons and to their sons and daughters if I feared that the breed of which we come, and of which we are — I hope justly — proud, had so far deteriorated that it could not survive, whatever the odds against such survival.

What is true of my family is, I am sure, true of countless other American families. Some of these have been American for more than three centuries; others have not been American for more than three years. That is beyond the point. The point is that they are American by choice, that they have recognized the great opportunities and advantages of the American way of life, of American thought and American freedom. I do not believe that they can fail to recognize, for long, the obligations which are so closely allied to these or fail to develop, if they do not already possess, the characteristics which make it possible to fulfill the obligations. In the swamps and in the cities, in the mountains and on the plains, beside the sea and in the deserts, American men and women have remained undaunted and indomitable. From a few straggling settlements along the shore they have spread over a continent; out of thirteen insignificant colonies has come a great nation. As Anne O’Hare McCormick has observed, though we have stumbled sometimes in going forward, we have gone forward just the same.

I believe that we can continue to do so. It is only where there is no vision that the people perish; and though our vision is sometimes obscured, so that we not only stumble but fall as we grope our way along, thus far it has never failed us. As long as we have vision, I do not think that any earthly power will ever be strong enough to stop that forward march of ours, and I see no reason to suppose that it would be part of the Divine Will to do so. We may be sorely tried, we may be called upon to undergo great tests and make great sacrifices, to accept temporary humiliation and temporary defeat. But there would be nothing new in any of that. It is likewise all part of our heritage. Only lately has the theory gained ground that everything should be comfortable and secure and effortless; this theory would be well lost. So would the habit of assuming that our many past national triumphs and personal successes have now given us the prerogative of unearned invincibility in the future; this habit, in my opinion, is more dangerous than any peril that threatens us from without, for no such invincibility exists or ever did or ever will. If we are to keep our freedom and our safety we must continue to deserve them. And we will not deserve them if we are false to any part of our heritage.

This brings me to the third reason why I have faith in our future. Another part of our heritage is our feeling about religion, and the way we put this feeling into practice. As far as I know, ours is the only nation which came into being because men and women were willing to leave the lands where they lived and voyage over dangerous seas to parts unknown — in order that they might have freedom to worship God in what seemed to each different group the true spirit of holiness. And they exercised this freedom. They prayed while they worked and fought. The Puritans who landed on Plymouth Rock, the Quakers who founded the City of Brotherly Love, the Catholics who knelt at the first Mass in Maryland, all did so with one supreme guiding purpose which safeguarded all their other guiding purposes, and it was this which gave them the strength to persevere.

Within the last decade, history has, in a sense, repealed itself, as thousands of Jews have sought and found in our country the unquestioned right to interpret and follow the Torah as their fathers did. Their prayers are now mingled with many others rising in our land. And the power of prayer is so great that no one has ever been able to estimate its limitations, if indeed there are any.

It was the apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, who first spoke of faith as a shield. “Stand therefore . . . having on the breastplate of righteousness and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace; above all, taking the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” He pictured his ideal soldier as wearing a breastplate of righteousness, and as being shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace — not, it is worth observing, as wearing a breastplate of malignancy, or as being shod with the preparation of the Gospel of War. But this ideal soldier was well armed just the same; he was able at need to withstand the fiery darts of the wicked; and the weapon which enabled him to do so was the shield of faith.

I believe that, with this shield and all that it represents, we too can withstand and survive the forces of evil. My faith in my country and in my people is unlimited. So is my faith in God,