Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

In this fallen world, there is no such thing as lasting victory. Yes when Our Lord Jesu returns, His ultimate victory over evil will be made manifest. Yet until then we remain in a world not yet remade and sanctified by the Logos, evil can never be wholly destroyed, only held back for a time. It may then be tempting to ask, why do we even fight? Why fight against nationalism and racialism if you are the only one who believes in supranational patriotism? Against reactionism on one hand and leftism on the other? Why continue if you stand but few together, surrounded on all sides?

These are the questions I have reflected on while attempting to revise my drafts of the novel-in-progress Tower of Ivory. As the world in which I live draws closer in its aspects to the world of the Legendarium I am chronicling, I am subjected to a certain disheartenment. And yet the very revision of my work begins, “It was at that time that the tide of darkness was first turned back…” Could not that time be our time, even in a small way? Every man (or woman) who stands for the truths of Catholic Christendom is conscious of the vast difficulties impeding the Restoration of true Civilization. And in some sense the heroes of the Legendarium face an even greater evil which may in this world yet come to pass. So why is it that I and my comrades strive, just as the heroes in Tower of Ivory, towards a goal we seemingly will never accomplish?

We strive for the Good simply because of our conviction that someone must. Someone must hold the ideological battle-line against evil or all will be overrun. Someone must fight for freedom, justice, legitimacy, and the Natural Law, that these things may not be forgotten in the hearts of men. Though our enemies are legion, we must strive to be a company of heroes. Though we or our successors may never gain back the ground lost to false ideologies and corrupted worldviews, we might yet hold the ground we have not yet lost. And in the end, is that not enough? Not that we should never seek to regain for the Right what has been taken by the unjust, and yet if we hold but a little remnant, is that not in itself worth holding?

And if we won but the smallest victory for a day, to be utterly defeated on the morrow, we would go forth to that morning unwearied, confidant in the knowledge that for one day more, the tide of evil had been turned back, and that this coming tide will be as ephemeral as the last. Our nationalist enemies exiled our commander at the end of the Great War, and his sons have returned to fulfill his sacred mission in their homeland. The National Socialists and Racialists tried to destroy us, the Communists to annihilate us, and we have survived the terrible death knell of their ideologies. The descendants of those who scorn us now shall honor our successors for their courage and integrity.

My comrades in the battle for the soul of Mankind, take heart! If we yet hold the line today, uncertain of tomorrow and what threats await us, we shall endure even the total victory of our enemies over us. Free, virtuous, and valiant, we stand to together on the cusp of defeat. God has given us the fire of Hope and of courage, let us now go forth as He commands us. Forth to defeat if that is His providence, for He shall permit us to fall that if we remain faithful He will raise us again. Forth to victory if that is His providence, that the world may know once more that Good which has decayed.

Now forward, with God!
And Christus is our battle-cry!
As He died for us on the bloody Wood,
So desire we also to die for the Right,
Whether the unjust offer us goods and even life. 
Chant we our battle-song to Maria, the purest Maid!