Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1890-07-25
THE NATION ArD rHE SOLDIER.


diana COmmandery Of the Military Order
OF the Loyal Legion Of the United States
at Indianapolis.
INDIANAPOLIS, July 4-The great event
in the city to-day is the celebration
of the Fourth by the ex
ercises of the military order of the Loyal
Legion through the Indiana command
cry of which Gen. Lew Wallace is
commander and of which President
Harrison is member. The feature of
the program is the grafton of Hon. Geo.
r. Peck, of Kansas. who is the orator of
the occasion and who delivered the fol-
lowing eloquent address:
THE NATION AND THE SOLDIER.
COMPANIONS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
From the distant west, the historic, fruit
full and now peaceful fields of our civic
strife, l bring you a salutatiOn and a
greeting. The day and the occasion are
happily mated. From immemOrial times,
men who have borne arms have enjoyed
a certain distinction; the tribute that hui
man nature yields to those who have
played the big stakes of life and death.
Responsive to, or perhaps created by, this
sentiment, is the tendency of those who
have been in the stress and rigOr of the
game, to look back with feeling which is
partly love, and partly pride, on the old
days-and the old cause
1t matters little that many seasons have
passed since arms were stacked; nor that
we who were young and gay, have felt
the frost in our joints and on youthful
forms the rust of the implacable years.
The soldier must not question fate. This
much is ours: to know, that if eyes
beam somewhat less brightly and heads
reveal the gray autumnal touch, the
things that once were dear are
precious yet, and the faith of other days
has not departed.
This Is a holy DAY; but surely we may
be pardOned if while we remember that
it means q nations birth, some of us shall
recall that it means also Vicksburg's
famous victory, and the river that flowed
unVeXed to the sea. Nor can a union
soldier be blamed if he remembers that
once he kept the day on the field of Get
tysburg, knowing at last that the Fourth
of July was not a dream, but a living and
majestic reality. Such memories as
these, lingering fOndly in the soldiers
heart, are the true sanctions of this order
to which we belong, and of every Organi-
ZatiOn in which the veterans of the war
have gathered themselves. In the due
adjustment Of rights and interest; the
establishment of those great equities that
mark the true relation of a citizen to his
government, the soldier of the Union has
no right to claim that the Nation belongs
to him. But he has a right to think that
in a peculiar sense he belongs to the
Nation. Whatever weakness may dwell
in his heart, whatever sorrows may dark
en- his life, whatever temptations have
been too strong for his will to resist, new
ertheless nothing can rob him of the dig
nifty that belongs to every man who can
say, 81 helped to save the United States
of America, one and indivisible'
The Loyal Legion signifies, to us at
least, that loyalty is a virtue which should
never go out of fashion. Love of COun-
try is not, and should not be, sentiment
that responds only to the bugle and the
drum. 1t is indeed true that the finest
impulses may lie dormant, waiting the
call that shall transmute them into vital
convictions. But yet it is also true that
a nation is best endowed when it has the
common everyday affection of its people,
in peace as we'll as in war.
The people of the United States call them
selves Americans, claiming the name of the
continent to mark their aspirations and
their destiny. But what is that ideal feel
ing we sometimes call +the American
spirit?' Surely it is not a selfish lust of
possession; the vulgar satisfaction of
knowing that we inhabit an imperial do
main, and that no one must trespass on
what we call our own. Some better
feeling must inspire our lives, before we
can rightly know what patriotism is.
Even the brute loves its own jungle. The
tiger will fl ght to the death for the green
sward on which it has played, or the
spring at which it has quenched its thirst
Only men fight for sentiment; only men
give up their lives for the things they
have not seen. Fields of cotton and fields
of corn will grow under any sun that
yields its compelling rays. The harvest
cares not what sickle shall reap
it. Nature is calmly Indifferent; dealing
out the rude justice of the seasons, and
needing not the losses nor the gains.
But men think; they alone have that
large discourse looking before and after
which is the real basis of moral response
bility. The true American loves not sim
ply the United States, but that for which
the United States stands. The American
flag is something more than a harmoui-
Gus blending of cOlOrs. Who has not
felt the awe and mystery that dwell in
holy emblems? What faith has not been
quickened by signs and symbols that
represent those invisible and eternal
things of which human lips can never
rightly speak? The United States is
greater IN what it means than in what it
is. When the war was upon US, if terri
tory had been all that was involved we
could have settled the dispute, and ought
to have settled II, by an agreed division.
The household gods could have been
parted; the fields and herds appOrtioned
There was room for Abraham and for
Lot; but there was not room for two
ideas that never could be one. The Sar-
aeon and the Frank never blended. be-
cause they worshipped at different
shrines; and North and South could only
make a mOckery Of union while one was
for freedom and the other against it.
WI 81
with men than with ideas; less with the
boundaries of empire than with customs
traditions. aud faiths. We said we
vera fphtinr for the ITniOn