The Great Falls leader. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1888-1900, 1889-07-03
NATIONAL BIRTH AND LIFE
IMPORTANCE OF MEMORIAL DAYS AND
COMMEMORATIVE INSTITUTIONS.

IMPORTANCE OF MEMORIAL DAYS AND
COMMEMORATIVE INSTITUTIONS.
Analogy Between . Nation and an lndi-
vidual - Nations Cannot he Made bv
Statesmen; They Arc Born Of Circum-
stances-vaiue Of = Vigorous Parentare.
The birthday Of a nation is not merely
fgl1rative expression. Nations are
born as well as men. The very etymol-
ogy Of the word nation implies as much.
Social compacts may be declarative of
their independence, or definitive of their
existence, but do not create them. In
truth, all such compacts and conventions
do in themselves imply previous nat
ural growth or organization lying nec-
essarily still farther back as the ground
Of any legitimacy they may possess.
There can no more be an artificial nation
than an artificial language. Aside from
other influences, all attempts of the kind
must be as abortive in politics as they
have eever been in philology Nations are
not mapufactured, either to order or
otherwise. but born-born of other ma
tions. and nllrtured in those peculiar ar
rangements Of Gods providence which
are especially adapted to such result.
The analogy between them and indi-
viduals may be traced to almost any ex-
tent. They have, in general. some one
event in which there may he discovered
the conceptive principle, or principium,
Of their national life. They have their
formative periods. They have their
birth. or the time of their complete sep
aration from the maternal nation to
which they were most nearly and de-
pendent)y united. They have their strug-
Cling infancy, their youth, their growth,
their heroic period, their iron age of
hardship and utility, their manhood,
their silver age Of luxury and refine
ment, their golden age of art and sci.
encc and literature and their acme; then
come their decline, their decay, their
final extinction, or else their dissolution
into those fragmentary organizations
from which spring up again the elements
or seeds Of future nationality.
We need not trace our own history
through each of these periods. The in
cipient stages have all been ours, al
though, in consequence of u more healthy
and vigorous maternity, we have passed
through them with Il rapidity of which
the previous annals OF the world present
no examples. Little more than cen
tury has elapsed since that birth whose
festive natal day is presented in the cal
endar of the present month, and yet we
are already nearing the season of man.
hood. We have had our heroic age, and
we may justly boast of it as one equaling
in interest and grandeur any similar pc
riod in the annals of any older nation.
1t is a period which seems dci~ned by
Providence not for itself OF. J. tie
great effect of which it is The l.44uuedi..te
cause, but for it's influence upon the
whole after current OF national existence.
The strong remembrance of it becomes
a part of the national life; it enters into
its most common and constant thinking;
it gives peculiar direction to its feel
ing; it imparts peculiar character to it's
subsequent action; it makes its whole
historical being very different from
what it would have been had there been
no epic commencement, no such heroic
age. It furnishes treasury Of glorious
"reminiscences wherewith to invigorate
from time to time the national virtue
when impaired, as it ever is, by the fac
tious and selfish and unheroic temper
produced by subsequent days Of merely
economical or utilitarian prosperity.
lis heroic age must pass away. 1t is
sustained, while it lasts, by special in
flueuces which cannot have place in the
common life and ordinary work Of
humanity. Its continuance, therefore,
would be inconsistent with other bene-
fits and other improvements OF more
sober or less exciting time, but which,
nevertheless, belong to the proper devel-
op,nent of the state. The deep effects,
however, still remain. 1t inspires the
poet and the orator. It furnishes the his
torian with his richest page. 1t tinges
the whole current Of the national litera-
ture. In fact, there can be no such thing
as a national literature, in its truest
sense; there can be no national poetry,
no true national art, no national music,
except as more or less intimately con-
nected with the spirit of such u period.
If, therefore, we would be truly a ma
ton. wo must have ''the honored fa-
thers." and the revered Golden time" It
is in some such generation fora common
glorious ancestry that a political or
ganization finds its deepest root. Me-
mortal days and commemorative institu-
tions are an essential element in the life
Of the republic. 1t is a good and holy
thought to thus regard the dead as still
present with us, still justly claiming
some voice in the administration OF that
inheritance which they have transmitted
to lis. Hence the beauty of the classical
name for ones country-patria patri-
bus-the Father Land. We love it, not
simply for it's present enjoyment and
present associations, but for its past
recollections.
Land of the pilgrims pride,
Land where our fathers died.
A FRENCH s7ATEsMAN's TRIBUTE.