Peggy Noonan: Semper Fi

[This is part of an essay that appears in today's Wall Street Journal]

On Monday, National Review's editor, Rich Lowry, wrote this on The Corner, his magazine's blog: "I've been talking to Bush folks about how they pulled off this victory over the last couple of days, and the grass roots activism is something to behold. It was driven largely by volunteers who gave of their time and effort because they believed in something--in the president and in conservative ideas. This was a marvelous exercise in democratic citizenship and if it had happened on behalf of Howard Dean or some other liberal, we would never hear the end in the media of how members of this grassroots army vindicated their ideals on election day. But that's exactly what these Bush volunteers did."

Mr. Lowry had it exactly right. I witnessed it from the bottom up, going door to door with volunteers in Florida, meeting with the troops collating and delivering pro-Bush literature in Ohio, meeting with the phone callers who were getting out the vote in Pennsylvania, and hearing everyone's stories on the national battle of the Bush lawn signs. They were always being removed in the dark of night. (One Ohio man got so fed up he wired his Bush sign with some kind of cattle prodder thing; in the morning, proof through the night that his sign was still there.) I saw mothers leave their kids to work at various headquarters for a few hours whenever they could, and husbands stay out late to put up banners. I saw the young man in an Ohio headquarters who kept a baseball bat in his office because they had been menaced, and he meant to menace back if he had to.

Which gets me to last week's column, in which I wrote about Agincourt. I got a lot of mail about my reference to the fact that the bloggers and Internetters of 2004 were like the yeomen of England who pierced the old armor of the French aristocracy at that great battle. Some people wrote to me parts of the famous speech Harry the king gave minutes before the battle in Shakespeare's "King Henry V." Young Harry's troops are outnumbered, and for all he knows outgeneraled. But they had their guts and their weapons and an unkillable desire to win.

One reader wrote and mentioned St Crispin's Day, the day of the battle, which inspired me to open my Shakespeare. You know the speech well, but let's enjoy it again, in tribute to Bush's yeomen and -women.

The King speaks to his men in Act IV, Scene III, in the English camp:

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors.
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forget,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

St. Crispin Crispian--or St. Crispin and St. Crispian, there might have been two; quick research indicates no one knows--were apparently shoemakers and evangelists who tried to convert Britain in the third century. Their feast day--the day of Agincourt--was Oct. 25. This year, Oct. 25 was exactly eight days before the election, when all Mr. Bush's yeomen had gathered in their separate fields, and were shooting their best arrows, and working their hearts out, and ensuring what would become their great victory. Here's to them.

But of course none of this is anything to what is being done today, and tomorrow, in another battle, called Fallujah. It was launched on what might be called the Feast Day of the United States Marines, their 200th birthday as an American fighting force. As Shakespeare might have said, Semper fi.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.