H. Percy Silver

As religious leader, Dr. Horace Percy Silver lived through a varied career. Beginning his work with Protestant Episcopalian churches in the middle West, he subsequently refused the office of Bishop Coadjutor of Kansas, then of Texas, and the bishopric of Wyoming, the tender of which posts of ecclesiastical responsibility abundantly proved the impression he had made upon the West. During nine years he served as chaplain at Western army posts; in the four war years he was chaplain at West Point; his life service ended at the Church of the Incarnation in New York. Dr. Silver, who in spirit was as thorough-going an army man as religious teacher, came into the open in scornful opposition to the soldiers’ bonus propaganda. Recognizing that the readiness of American citizens to serve their country at the battlefront, their courage in face of the enemy, were traditional qualities of which our people should be justly proud, he pointed out also the bad side of those episodes—the furious subsequent attack on the resources of a generous government by organized veterans of the Civil War and the great European war, who relied on their voting power to extort money payment in the billions for past services. Sometimes Doctor Silver reluctantly concluded that all this meant present-day decay of patriotism. But people used to say the same thing when the G. A. R., pounding on the door of Congress in the Eighties, foreshadowed the American Legion’s political activities of half a century afterward. Yet the test of patriotic response to the call of duty was sustained in 1917 as in 1861.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1935 Century Association Yearbook