The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1893-08-25


spirit Of true comradeship, the rraternaI,
charitable, devoted spirit of brothers.
The Masons have their differences and
their discipline to themselves, and the
church has the same in so far as it can
have them and not revive the odious In
QUESTION.
The Grand Army is so constituted that
discretion must be left to individual
members and posts. 1t is not an insti-
tuition emanating from a center. The
life is in the individuals who associate
themselves in a post. There in the post,
with the members gathered together, is
a little Grand Army world, there the
alpha and the omega, the beginning and
the end. The departments and national
body are the machinery maintaining a
touch of elbow between distant posts
and between the states Naturally there
is friction, but seldom collision that the
outsiders hear about. When there is a
speck of trouble that gets noised abroad.
it never amounts to the open war some
people try to make out.
The pension question has disturbed
the country for nearly 20 years. but it
didn't reach the Grand Army until less
than 10 years ago. The Grand Army ex-
listed and fourished before the question
was raised and will go on fourishing
whichever way it is settled and if it new
er is settled. An outsider who should
happen to lift the roof from post en-
campment to hear the veterans deliber-
ate on pensions would get weary over
the long order of business to be gone
through with before the question could
get the floor and go away diGgusted to
find that SO times in 100 it doesn't get
the floor at all. The department and
national encampments meet oncea year.
their sessions last from two to four days.
and the pension business fares extreme
ly well if it gets-outside of the commit
tee rooms-one hours consideration in
the department councils and two hours
hour year in department encamp-
ment and about two hours year in the
national encampment. Therefore it is
extremely improbable that the Grand
Army, which was born amid the throes
of the nations sublimest struggle and
which has been built up and fostered
with so much jealous zeal and care, will
be destroyed by clash of opinions over
subject of minor Importance.
In the early days of the order partisan
ship seriously interfered with its use
fulness and threatened to become a
stumbling block to success. The evil was
promptly met by legislating all political
discussion and action out Of encamp-
ment sessions. The Grand Army may
be put upon the defensive in pension
matters, and in that case there will be a
substantial unity of action, but comrade-
ship will never go to the wall for any
thing less noble and commendable. Ev-
cry day added to the years of the aging
veterans makes newer demands upon
comradeship. Every day proves the
wisdom of those dreamers who sounded
the army long roll amid, the peans of
peace at Indianapolis 81 years ago. Every
day finds veterans stricken down beyond
the reach Of pension relief with its tan
talizing delays. Every day adds thou
sands to the many, many millions al
ready drawn from the Grand Army
treasury to feed and shelter those whom
the nation with all the solemnity of
dying oaths promised should never come
to want. But for the Grand Army and
the fidelity Of comrades to comrades ev-
cry wayside would be thronged with
army mendicants, the worthy and the
unworthy, the genuine and theimposters
commingling, and the country scandal
lied by the spectacle.
Two evils that follow in the wake Of
war have been spared this nation by the
nobility Of the soldiery. One was the
saturnalia of disbanded armies and the
other the pest of public mendicancy. Be-
fore the last drumbeat of the volunteers
returning fl ON the southern camps was
hushed a Grand Army post was opened
in every northern city of 10000 inhabit-
ants, and the encampment halls became
new bivouacs whose fires should not
grow dim and where the floating, dis
banded soldiery were drawn into asso-
citation with their settled and provident
comrades. Committees of employment
and relief promptly took up the burden
that belonged to society. In twinkling
the old army passed out Of sight, and in
its place appeared a brotherhood of in
dustrious, self respecting, loyal veterans
living out in every community the new
pospel of comradeship.