Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1893-05-30
AT GRACELAND G.
Rev. e. Olin Eldridge Speaks Of the Debt
Due the Soldier.

Rev. e. DIN Eldridge Speaks Of the Debt
Due the Soldier.
At Graceland cemetery the address was de-
livered by Rev. E. Olin Eldridge OF the
Douglass Memorial NJ. E. Church. In the
course of his remarks the orator said:
The time Of recruiting has gone by; the
bloody battles are over. and soon the genera
ton of heroic men who saved their govern
ment will have passed away. As look at the
remnant of old soldiers ask myself the ques-
ton, is this all that remains of that mightiest
and most valorous army? see in imagination
the faces Of the living and the dead. The shades
of the boys who never came back are here.
They come here from rice swamp and sugar
plantation. from prison pen and hospital bed,
and ,as the congregating assembly passes before
me, ask myself the question, what does it
mean, what is the gain, and what are the
lessons taught? One is, that their great and
glorious country that has cost SO much is
worth the sacrifice. God has given to no other
people such domain as He has given to us.
Great races of other times have had insignif-
cant homes; but look at the home
God has given to the American
people. Our fathers, only few years ago.
were accustomed to look at the Missouri river
as the western hem Of our national garment,
Take, if you please, the state Of Connecticut as
a unit of measure. This state could be laid
down twenty-five times in Colorado, and great
as is Colorado, it is smaller than Dakota by
46, 900 square miles. California is larger than
Dakota 1000 square miles. Texas is larger
than California 10000 square miles, and yet
Texas is only half as large as Alaska II we
were asked where in the world is the brightest
outlook for the human racer" we should unhesi-
tatingly say, America. Here are to be found
the most religious. intellectual and aggressive
people on the earth, and here it is that God
has undertaken the most gigantic experiment
in individual liberty the sun ever shone on.
The land you fought for was worth saving.
Another lesson to be learned is that this
great country is not mere federation Of states,
and that the cause of the Union Is the cause Of
right. have no sympathy with the sentiment
we sometimes hear that the Union soldier was
half right and half wrong; the cause OF the
Union was entirely right, and the cause Of
treason was entirely wrong. No! my dear
friends, our fathers thought, when they framed
the Union and the Constitution, that the Union
and the Constitution should be the custodian
OF the priceless jewels of civil and religious
liberty, and you veterans fought through the
war on precisely the same principles; you did
not believe it safe to trust these precious
jewels to the broken fragments of scattered
Union. You saved the only nation that offers
today TO the down-trodden and oppressed of
the world an asylum and a home.
One other lesson that we must never forget,
and that is the welfare of those who made the
chief sacrifices in the conflict. Those who have
shared in the fullest measure of prosperity that
has come to our country the result of the
war ought to be the very last to complain
when the question Of pensions is to be consid-
cred. Two classes of debts were incurred by
the war. Debts to the men who rsked their
money and debts to the men who risked their
lives. Both had the plighted faith of the ma
ton. The money obligation has been met.
Deprecated paper has been repaid, dollar for
dollar. The pledge to the soldier Is no less
sacred. Let us see that every farthing is paid,
and in the language of the immortal Lincoln.
see that we ''care for him that hath borne the
battle and for his widow and for his orphans"
Shame on him who probably during the war
was dodger ana a stay-at-home who would
now lift his voice against what, to my mind, Is
the purest and best paid money that has ever
been expended by the United States treasury,
namely. the pensions paid to the widows, or
phans and brave survivors Of that glorious host
who, rather than see their nation divided
marched down into the very jaws of death and
ruin.