too long," for "it is not a question of keeping a stronghold, but of aggressive warfare."[94] Although the elder Moody may have tired of it, others certainly did not. When Billy Sunday, Moody's famous successor,[95] planned a day for old soldiers in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1908, he did not forget Bliss's song. It was reported that he wanted "a choir of 500 cultured voices to sing that revival song, 'Hold the Fort,' which was based on the battle of Allatoona," as well as somebody "to explain the salient points of that battle of all battles . . . the inspiration of that song."[96] Probably he was told to expect some Allatoona veterans in his audience, since men from several Illinois regiments had fought at Allatoona Pass.
In 1931 Homer A. Rodeheaver, a longtime colleague of Sunday's, published a little book containing historical notes on and suggestions for using gospel songs, one of which was "Hold the Fort" or, as he (and others) called it, "Ho! My Comrades." "Because of its appeal to the bravery of the human race," he said, "men love to sing this song. It is very effective as a challenge song, but in regular congregational singing it is good for men." It would make "for a bit of unusual use of this song," he thought, if a soloist or a choir sang the first part of the chorus and the congregation, while "waving their hands or their handkerchiefs," sang in response: "Wave the answer back to heaven. 'By Thy grace we will.'"[97]
One of the most memorable events of the author's school days was a chapel program presented by Sunday and Rodeheaver at Central High School, Evansville, Indiana, sometime between the fall of 1927 and the spring of 1931. Billy Sunday, his natty attire accented by spats, drove home an evangelical point by leaping onto a table while Rodeheaver made the rafters ring with his sliding trombone.
The 1940 edition of The Broadman Hymnal, widely used in Southern Baptist churches, carries "Hold the Fort."[98] In a biographical sketch of Bliss, Charles A. Kent calls it a "deathless song," although he does not list it among his Fifty Great Songs of the Church.[99] As recently as 1956 one or more copies of the last edition of Gospel Hymns—this being Gospel Hymns 1–6—could still be purchased from the Theodore Presser Company of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, successor to the old John Church Company. By the spring of 1959, however, that grand old book had gone "permanently out of print" and no copy was to be had.[100]
A representative of the Billy Graham Crusade remarked in 1960 that despite The Broadman Hymnal the Southern Baptist churches no longer sang "Hold the Fort" very often. He thought it was not a good
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