Nathan Hale-the Beloved Spy
Browne, Edythe H.
442 THE COMMONWEAL September 1 S, 1926 Maritain, and his photograph along with the works Good intentions, without...
...We have the Catholic, less provocative, less challenging than his schools of philosophy...
...crushed life in the bud, pounded at his heart...
...Unlike the pose of a spy, the Hale istry had burned out...
...humorous, so that it is no wonder to find that the monStability, the girder of great character, was Hale's astery and its dweller, man or woman, was from the most resourceful characteristic...
...He was physiWith a tipsy sneer, Cunningham demands a last word...
...Physical fitness animates every statue soles as twin wallets for the safekeeping of his notes...
...the broad chest expanding with health and board to shoulder the musket...
...vizor of the spy...
...He had to stand unblinking before The pagan writers felt at once the opportunity to Howe to be able to acknowledge himself a spy-to poke their witticisms and gibes at the practices of explain his life away, without a quiver of hesitation...
...Only a man of arch terrupt his work as schoolmaster...
...monastery and the Church-against Catholic morale Through joy and sorrow it has wrought in me and decency...
...of William Ordway Partridge on the Yale Green As captain of a company, Hale now put his collegestands with its weight thrust forward on a challenging trained mind to practical army work...
...As children we are taught that our end, do not ask that everyone become philosopher and the purpose of our existence, is to know, to love, to theologian...
...It subscribes vociferously, if not always with qualities which made him so provocative a figure yesunimpeachable sincerity, to the concept of service, and terday when he was the champion of the new and the looks with favor upon activity of every sort...
...only to ask to be treated "like a gentleman...
...Captain Hale, as the gentleman with Grammar School, at New London...
...as Dante, Chaucer, and Rabelais to hear that their pen-sketches of conventual oddities were accepted by In the measure of my life so-called historians of today as arguments against the Years ago, God hid a little secret pain...
...The autumn of 1776 saw the American the number of enemy red-coats on Long Island...
...That would be the death of these beautiserve God in this world, and to be happy with Him ful sciences...
...folk when all is said and done, and not at all like the wooden and stained glass monstrosities that a false The Leaven piety and a lack of historical acumen have imposed upon little minds, little sects, little sentimentalists and bigots In the measure of her meal of our later generations...
...But I do say this, if one lacks right reason, if one happiness will be a happiness of the understanding scorns wisdom, all the good he wills will turn to evil...
...Because of his measure as a man, we of grammar...
...Desertion" realizing the fitness of the young captain, instantly buzzed along the lines...
...mongrel vocation of a spy, but for an honorable "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for career-a career focused probably on great military my country...
...lated bits of knowledge with the same zest that he Young America plays marbles about the MacMon- hoarded miggles...
...early Christians, so different in many respects from Testimony to Hale's resolute bearing is found in the the urbane imperialists of paganism...
...executing squad of the British army, led by Provost- He stakes his life, not so much for love of country Marshal Cunningham, halts near the tree...
...came Captain Hale offering his own food and salary At ten years of age, Nathan Hale astonished his to the dangerously sulky soldiers...
...As companions flocked around him in Colonel Knowlton's tent, after MONKS AND MONKS he had committed himself to act the spy, he said By THOMAS WALSH "For a year I have been attached to the army, and have not rendered any material service, while receiv- ITHOUT a sense of reverence, there is no real ing a compensation for which I make no return...
...A tender mother lived to see her sixth strategic moves that called forth commendation from son the athlete of the family, the limber stripling who superiors...
...It was a deliberate courage, weighed and sifted by Monks and nuns were in almost every family, with devout reflection and consultation with dearest friends...
...He certing, fantastic errors and stupidities, upon the had to stand immovable to refuse the enticing offer irregularities of the monastic folk who were inof a pardon from Howe-a pardon on traitorous creasing constantly in numbers and in the possibilities terms...
...headquarters, in the pale distance...
...His youth, too, removes him from the The rope is so fastened about the young man's neck file of inveterate spies who have lived to learn more September 1S, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 443 cunningness...
...Beneath it lies a har- a disfigured reason, all that is built must crumble...
...Reverence that has jingled for i5o years in the patch-pocket of is also necessary in a consideration of the comic and American patriotism, was dictated by an unselfish heart...
...He had to stand at beginning of Christianity the butt of easy ridicule, anchor to resist his friends, among them his college burlesque, fantastic satire, and more or less venomous friend, William Hull, who begged him to decline the slander...
...The coil of hang- versary of whose death occurs September 22, was a man's rope dangles like a serpent from the limb of spy...
...and on its scurrilous heels accepted him...
...By the grim exactions of war, he was justly an apple tree...
...Sacrifice culture...
...cally, mentally, and morally equipped, not for the The youth raises his chin...
...September 22, that the knot presses on a large mole...
...Ruiz, the archpriest of Hita, in the course of whose...
...on the brink of great events, is given special power A bad or weak churchman was a bad or weak limb of soul to withstand the undertow...
...Penmanship was a winning art in Nathan he popped a joke over the fan of the blushing coquette...
...But and women with sleep in their eyes and tainted curi- why do we call Hale "beloved...
...The torch of the minsublime courage...
...resignation to the school board prior to his enlistment When Washington as Commander-in-Chief called might have been a sheaf of golden opinions about for a volunteer to mouse along the British lines, he himself and his patriotic duty...
...drums mutter, and the of night, picking his treacherous way among shadows...
...Drilled himself when he said to Washington: "I will undertake the in that trump detachment of the Continental army mission...
...But outside of Catholicism, the Gospels, an audacity which use and wont too often modern world scouts the possibility of our knowing make us confuse with its opposite...
...IntelliSaint Thomas Aquinas adoring Christ...
...Hale had an and cowering head...
...Tonight there is nothing else in life but pain...
...of human weaknesses and errors, side by side with Courage was the ascendant note in Hale's charac- the developing growth of sanctities and power for ter...
...He pointed a graceful toe in the minuet- his favor...
...In 1773, he stepped from the graduation he stood on the threshold of army promotion...
...Unlike Major mentality could estimate the situations of camps by Andre, Hale, at his execution, was even too modest a chance word dropped by a snoozing private...
...With an American of a great tree that stretched naturally its beneficent wilderness under the hatchet of colonization, with shelter over all mankind...
...Indeed, it prefers not to speak of God...
...The vic- as for promotion or money...
...Hale's day...
...An extraordinary figure in Spanish literature, Juan HENRY LONGA J STUART...
...Each should know according to his capacforever in the next...
...Now the modern world has re- A great deal of love is lost in a world which is tained two of these ideas, or semblances of them, in without the truth...
...A tattered crowd loiters about- hanged as a spy...
...Upon Its incongruity is superficial...
...Hale's record as a chancellor of the Linonian Society--,a Yale literary soldier was unsullied, and as a favorite of Washington, coterie...
...It has the audacity of the of, our loving God...
...more dangerous, than to follow Christianity literally...
...the Beatific Vision...
...less robe of faith...
...The ministry was still a torch in the distance, but By surrendering himself to his country, Hale let Hale lingered among his pupils for almost a year...
...of the story-tellers of Spain, Germany, and England...
...Swing the rebel off...
...There need be God...
...achievement...
...could run and hunt like a savage over the grassy It was from the simple regime at the Conventry downs of Coventry...
...So leprous is the office tim, whose wrists are locked behind him, is a young that no ruler may command a candidate...
...In the cruder parenthesis of an entry in a British Orderly Book development of the monastic system, the later Latin "A spy from the enemy (by his own full confession) story-tellers fathered material, edifying and disconapprehended last night, was this day executed...
...Hale is the that the lad of unusual promise should be trained for patron of youth...
...There may be no punishment for virtuous world has turned its back upon...
...A part startling in music and letters...
...slip the caressing hand of his betrothed-beautiful Then he was appointed first preceptor of the Union Alice Adams...
...Youth is precious because it holds aloft his distinction as an English scholar, Hale was elected the chalice of golden prospects...
...yet only the day of the earliest Italian novellieri, from whom our modbefore a patriot had been executed for whispering the ern fictions trace their direct descent...
...Under his foot...
...Skulking through life, he wears ingenious twist to his brain that suggested loose shoea sallow cheek...
...cause he was such a glorious misfit...
...Most books about him are found the ministry, a calling incorporate with learning and in the children's room of public libraries...
...There were no "unco guid" "independence," rang in his ears...
...blasphemy: the man taking the name of God in Hale was restless in passive service because it vain is breathing an empty speech if we are to undersmacked of selfish security...
...442 THE COMMONWEAL September 1 S, 1926 Maritain, and his photograph along with the works Good intentions, without a guiding intelligence, are of other Catholic writers, was a large painting of worthless, as Maritain points out in his letter...
...A rebel poet and a stupidity in the next world, but that does not prevent Catholic saint-how explain such a juxtaposition...
...When army a tangled skein of men on Manhattan Island, all Hale presented himself, the discerning Washington, loyal but all with holes in their shoes...
...From birth, the augurous words, "liberty" and good and edification...
...His letter of her distinguished son...
...We have no philosophy, and former self...
...the latter's man of twenty-one...
...For God, little fear that a world which finds all new manifestait substitutes "the idea of God...
...The and became engaged on the eve of his leaden journey telltale wafer of paper, carrying nebulous Latin in to Long Island...
...When platform onto the sanded floor of the tiny schoolhouse Washington received the bitter news of execution, at East Haddam, Connecticut, and took up the the devastating thought that, instrumentally, he had teacher's ruler...
...It would, indeed, have The good wife hides the little ball of leaven...
...word, tart even on the tongue...
...the pinioned wrists, stout bands of Lexington and: Concord...
...but it has wholly abandoned the Will Cocteau, the intransigent, the rebel, lose the third...
...Spy" is a stealthy osity in their hearts...
...thunders acre with a stray farmhouse, General Howe's Cunningham...
...The day begins Nathan Hale, the one hundred and fiftieth anniwith an execution in the orchard...
...To all men born folk ready to formulate heresies, as in our later days...
...but sacrifice of youth even unto death to prepare himself for the cloth...
...Early American educators argued nies statue of Hale in City Hall Park...
...Garbed in the white suit of the duty is voluntary...
...That mony which the modern world has forgotten-a har- is why," he adds, "I have given my life to Saint mony which Saint Thomas devoted his whole life to Thomas, and labor to make known his teaching...
...Saint Thomas tells us that this ity...
...But no sculptured tribute can tell of the spor- direction, his company became a model body of trim, tive blue eye that accompanied Hale's bid for death, neat-stepping, smoke-eating Yankees...
...the schoolmaster who could teach chubby He finally quarried real love from the heart of Alice, hands delicate finger motion was invaluable...
...there being very sure ones for it in this one...
...His last lamenting phrase, stand that he does not recognize a Creator...
...and Hale left the blackof muscle...
...I elucidating...
...The "last gence must be snatched from the demon and restored word in modernity," and a man whose philosophy the to God...
...Huntington, by his mastery emerges in a variety of incident, but perhaps with no 444 THE COMMONWEAL September i 5, 1926 more force than in his own words...
...Nor can stone convey the blush that glowed known as "Knowlton's Rangers," he led his men in in his face...
...Let us not lay down our arms," he said, "until we This scurrilous tendency to use the monk as a lay have gained our independence !" figure in corrupt situations became a favorite resort Shrilly he shouted the last word...
...The man turned spy, Suddenly a red wall with a white blotch in its centre wearing the scurvy coat of deceit, is the accomplice moves from the farmhouse...
...These delightterm...
...Christ had promised that English misrule buffeting the alien colonist, with re- the infernal gates should never prevail over His volt tearing at men's insides, courage was imperious...
...Not if the tone of his of the modern world tolerates, another part approves letter is an indication...
...Fate was lenient to the adoring farmhouse that Nathan Hale absorbed that becoming mother in timing her death four years before that of modesty so actual in his later career...
...national, racial, and fireside peculiarities-very human It was courage many layers thick...
...Instead, it was a quiet knew that the serious errand was not to be entrusted apology for the unavoidable pause that must now into the merely patriotic enthusiast...
...its undogmatic creed...
...Church, so it was comparatively easy to mock the An early spurt of the radical courage that ultimately churchman without ever a thought of injuring the incarried Hale to death, is shown when, as a mere boy, nocent or giving any approval to carpings at the seamhe addressed a fractious mass-meeting...
...The condemning evidence was found farmers on their way to market, innkeepers who on his person...
...By night and day it works amid the meal, caused a vast wonderment in the minds of such writers Till a day comes when all is leaven...
...the academic mind could analyze a plan of attack In kinship with his modesty, Hale was consistently through wrangling and discussion, and thereby gauge unselfish...
...the very word is anathema to many...
...Americans call Hale beloved becondemned, the figure assumes an intrusive innocence...
...In recognition of is inspiring...
...Reading and questioning, he accumuregard him as the "beloved" spy...
...NATHAN HALE THE BELOVED SPY By EDYTHE H. BROWNE I T IS dawn in the apple orchard...
...Once Hale courageously captured a British ful scandal-mongers were soon joined by the French sloop, slumbering under guard in the East River...
...A witch's 1776, sees City Hall Park in New York a daisied prophecy comes true...
...of Nathan Hale-the slim body spiring to a height One morning, New London breakfasted on the news of nearly six feet...
...The unselfish Hale tutor, the Reverend Dr...
...Relativity rules "Is there," he asks, "any program more exciting, the field...
...for faith, an act of tions of truth and beauty shocking, will find Cocteau, the understanding, "the will to believe...
...pen flourishes, found between the soles of Hale's shoes, The spy, who leads a crouching existence, is usually must have exasperated the impatient General Howe, fancied as the misshapen figure of slumping shoulders who had to labor long deciphering it...
...It is said that the gracious smile and courtly bearing, was prince Hale's wreathy handwriting, delicate black lace in the among the courtesying Betseys and Marthas of colonial model copy-book, influenced the educational board in society...
...And the rebel swings...
...So Nathan entered Yale at the age of fifteen is noble, always...
...Technically, he is a neat clipping from relish a hanging for the cruel gossip it affords, men the page of history of what a spy should be...
...conteurs with such an ardor of industry that a whole Hale's great act of courage-volunteering to spy school of satire and humor was created for the benefit -was not simply the froth of an hysterical moment...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 19
