The following is a transcription of Oskar Hansen’s speech at the Memorial Building dedication, November 11, 1928.

THE VICTORY OF HINSDALE
By the Sculptor
Oskar J. W. Hansen

Man has always sought to express and preserve the magnitude of his exploits in symbols. The written words are symbols arranged so as to preserve in objectified form the thought of man and to record his variant states, both mental and physical. All other arts are similar as to their symbolic significance. They take their place among the category of human endeavor simply as the interpreter of life to itself. They serve as an outer object typifying the inner process. They form the connecting link between the spiritual and the material world. They are the shadows cast by the realities of the soul.

The war was but an outward expression of the inner conflict of a struggling humanity. It was a sudden conflict by which the constructive and spiritual forces of the world advanced upon the path of their destiny. Truth is not always a builder; it must sometimes be the destroyer. It must rectify, it must purify, it must always preserve for itself the bedrock of its own eternal premises. Only in this way may the structure of humanity reach upward; a noble structure representing the truly abiding nature of man. Out of these conflicts heroes are born. We call them heroes because they represent to us a symbol of what we all wish to be. Upon the eternal battlefield of Truth they form the vanguard. With them new epochs are formed upon the path of progress. They solidify and give body to those thoughts which decide the destinies of nations.

It is then inevitable that any thinking community should wish to perpetuate the memory of such men as an inspiration to posterity. From time immemorial the symbol best suited to such a purpose has been sculpture. From all the distant places on the earth, from the Babylonian collossae carved on the sheer walls of the naked desert rocks, from the Palladian Athena and the flying Victory of Samothrace, from the conquering Augustii elevated from the emperors seat to the allegorical position of gods, from Saint Louis in his tomb with the superscription of battlements of Acre, from the great mailed knights of the gothic cathedrals, and Liberty holding aloft her torch at the gateways of a new world; from all these symbols in sculpture we read the story of man’s aspirations. This then the reason why the form of Hinsdale’s sacred symbol to its war dead should be in sculpture, and the temper and nature of the subject to be comemorated appropriately dictated that it should be named a Victory.

With the thought of the great heroic traditions of our race there came the visualization of what this Victory should look like. There came the thought of not only the momentary and present conquest which the giving of these lives in war might typify. There came the vision of the great caravan of heroes marching down the unending pathway of the years and into which august company also our generation has been so gloriously represented through those who gave their lives for our sake. There came the picture of the pillars of the temple torn down, and out of the ruin the spiritual Victory arising, always present in calm majesty celebrating the eternal conquest of the spirit, maintaining itself above the sordid fallacy of man. Hence the solid outline, the figure mounting upward, the wish to represent the ultimate reserve and chastity.

There are three elements or ideas represented in this Victory. They are coexistent in the whole composition or idea and carried out consistently in every gesture and detail of the symbolism. To me they are of the essence of the idea of Victory and they may be expressed in words as Justice, Mercy, and Beauty.

I had in mind Justice when I cut into this stone. In the sight of the Divine Consciousness, humanity exists as a whole. To Him there is no adversary nor friends. To Him both our animosities and our so-called justice must seem but weak and faulty things. Only one thing remains to us intact; our humanity. These boys fought in war and took life. They were animated by the emotion of love for country and kindred but they did not slay their souls for this sake. There was in America’s effort in the war a consciousness of it as a sort of surgical operation upon the livid tissues of the social body. There was no hate for any part of humanity as such. There was only a burning desire to make possible a healthy issue into a new Liberty. So the Victory guards the sword of Justice. It rather guards than clasps this sword; for Justice watches with dispassionate calm. It is always ready but never strikes except when necessary. Its sword is like a living oame [SIC], three-edged; representing the full power of The Trinity.

Then I had in mind Mercy. There came to me the picture of a lad who crawled out into no-mans-land and brought in a German lad, wounded, from the wire. The German was mortally wounded and when he opened his eyes and saw the American uniforms he cried and moaned: “Will you kill me now? Will you kill me now?” And then the lad who had brought him in put his arms under his head and reassured him: “You are in an American trench now. For you the war is over.” Wherever there is true strength there is also mercy. So I pictured Victory with the wings folded, embracing both friends and foe.

Besides this, I had a wish to create beauty. There is Justice needed for the governance of the world, but beauty is needed for its very existence. There is a golden thread of beauty running through every gesture of that great conflict. The beauty of mounting above the sordid consideration of self into the conscious effort for a better humanity.

The guard of the sword is in the shape of a cross. That is a symbol carried down to us from the Crusades. To me the Great War was the greatest crusade of all times. The hilt is fashioned reeded, symbolic of the rods by which the heads of ancient states made known their power to chastise. It is surmounted by the helmet of a Greek Hoplite, (infantry man) reminiscent of the great Phalanx which defeated the Persians at Marathon.

Upon the guard and the central shield there is the coat of arms of the United States of America. Associated with this is the very birth of our freedom and all the heroic incidents belonging thereto. In this all of us have a definite part. The dead for us; and we to realize for them humanity’s great dream. So I have graven upon the guard the motto of our country, symbolic of the very essence of democracy: “E Pluribus Unum.” Out of Many One.