The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-05-30
THE DAYS SERVICE.

reCOlleCtlOnS OIL the scenes winch Will De re-
called all over the land to-day by the hun
dreds and thousands of brave men who can
say with pride, "all of which 1 saw and
part of which 1 was" 1t is we'll, therefore,
that Decoration Day returns with the sea-
sons, and that the story of what is at once
the darkest and brightest page of American
history is listened to once again from the lips
of those who wrote it with sword and
bayonet and whose number shall annually
grow less, until, not long hence, the last sur
vivor will take his place IN song and story
with Goldsmith's Veteran.
The history of the war its relations to the
past, present and future and the lessons to be
gathered from its sacrifices, its defeats and its
final triumph, will be told with myriad
tongues; but it may not be out of place to
lay an additional emphasis upon one or two
thoughts which lie so near the surface of the
occasion as to be in peril of comparative
neglect, The victory celebrated to-day is the
victory of Law; and if there be one lesson
more than another needful to be inculcated
just now, it is that of respect for law, with
the certainty that, somehow or other, viola
ton of law brings memorable and dire pun
ishment, Under whatever form it may be
considered, however its varying phases may
be regarded, from whatever point of view the
great conflict may be studied, the CEN
trail truth still dominates, that the thing
which the soldiers of the Union fought was
rebellion against Law, and the triumph
which they aided by sacrifice and by death
the more in harmony with law which
had been persistently violated throughout
the entire history of the government crime
in which the South was, possibly, the great
est sinner, but in which the North had its
share, and, therefore, both suffered in the
reparation. The honor to be paid the dead
heroes of the war to-day is not, in its first
significance, a personal tribute; that were
well left to personal affection. Flowers will
be scattered by strange hands upon graves
beneath which sleeps strange and even alien
dust, and in some instances, it may be i'm
agined, the sleeper was not such character
as to provoke the tribute. But we look
through and beyond the act to its moral and
spiritual significance, and as the altar sancti-
fies the gift so every one who laid down his
life for law is enshrned in the pantheon of
Laws immortality.
Sweet are the uses of adversely" Twenty
years ago, with the land battlefield, in
every home shadow, and In many hearts
grave, how the nation regarded as holy the
thing which, in the rushing tide of business
and of prosperous pleasure, has come to be
regarded more or less lightly. 1t is idle to
talk to the contrary, for it is matter of COM
mon consciousness that respect for law,
written and unwritten, is neither SO lively
nor universal as it was then, or as it should
be now. Specifications are not needed; but
the current of justice does not flow I'M
checked and neither private nor national
life is upon so high a plane, on the average,
as it was when. in the heat of war, the baser
thoughts and more sordid dispositions of
men were purified. License of all kinds has
usurped the place of law, and to-day, by
altogether too many people, only SO much of
any kind of moral or legal restriction is re-
garded as may not interfere with the am
bilious plans and purposes of Self This is
not pessimistic, but it is the statement of
what every one who thinks knows to be true
1t is the tendency of human nature, to arrest
which cataclysms come into individual life,
and national life as well, by the operation of
law divinely appointed, and which can never
be humanity withstood. The only safe individ-
ual life is that which is in harmony with the
environment of law, and the only safe and
sound national life is in a strict regard of the
alteth a nation. This is not moralizing nor
sermonizing; it is the teaching of experience
and history, and 1t is the lesson tied up in
every bouquet of flowers that shall be scat.
tered upon the graves of the Defenders of
Law.
This being true, there never has been, and
there can never be- any just sentiment of
personal hatred toward individuals against
whom the arm of the law was lifted during
the war as a mass In his speech at the Iro.
quois Club banquet, Colonel Villas who hon
ored the Federal uniform, SO far bemeaned
himself and the cause OF the Union as to
talk of hate" on the part of the North to-
ward the people of the South, and there has
been an assiduous effort by some to create
the Northern people against their fellow
citizens OF the South. The statement
that there is or was Is foul false