He regarded the Civil War as a sort of fever in the body politic, caused by anterior conditions of congestion. War had become necessary for the life of that body, and only after a war could health re-assert itself. To compromise continually, as we boast in England that we do, may sustain a sort of social peace, but it is almost certain to drive the disease deeper into the very heart of our national life, and there to sap the sheer ability for any kind of noble enthusiasm. You may purchase a sort of peace with the price of a life more sacred than even that of individual citizens. Whitman demanded national health, without which he could see no real peace. He did not suppose, indeed, that war could of itself effect a cure. Health could only return in so far as the aroused conscience of the nation--which had lived in its soldiers and in the wives and families who had shared in their devotion--was carried forward into the civil life. Peace itself must be rendered sentient of that heroic national purpose which had for a moment flashed across the fields of battle.[429] Peace, indeed, is only priceless when it has become more truly and wisely heroical than war; when it has become affirmative where war is cruelly negative; when it creates where war destroys, quickening the heart of each citizen to fulfil a sacred duty. Whitman well knew that in order to have such a peace we must set before the peoples a mission, a sublime national task. What party is there to-day, either in England or America, which dares to hold up for achievement any programme of heroism? Read in this light, and only so, I believe, will _Drum-taps_ yield up its essential meaning. It is a Song of the Broad-axe, not a scream of the war-eagle.[430] * * * * * In alluding to _Drum-taps_, I have somewhat anticipated the natural course of the story, to which we must now return. Even at home on furlough, Whitman could not wholly relinquish the occupation which he had assumed, and became a frequent visitor at the hospitals of Brooklyn and New York. Early in December, 1864, he was back again at his post, suffering from the added anxiety for his brother's welfare; for George was a prisoner in the hands of the Confederates, enduring the almost inconceivable horrors of a winter imprisonment at Dannville. At the beginning of February Walt made an application to General Grant, through a friend in the office of the _New York Times_,[431] for the release of his brother, together with another officer of the 51st New York Volunteers; alleging, as an urgent reason, the deep distress of his aged mother whose health was breaking. The application appears to have been successful, and George, who had been captured early in the preceding summer, and upon whom fever, starvation, exposure and cold had wreaked their worst for many months, returned alive to Brooklyn, his excellent constitution triumphant over all hardships.