The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-04-28
AS ONE MAN.
Col. Henry Watterson Speaks
at a Banquet
In Honor of Grants Birthday
in New York City.
REUNITED SECTIONS
was the Text For Patriotic
Utterances.
mistakes of the Past Are OBJ
liberated He Says.

New York, April 2S.-The 10Th ami
Versary of the birthday of General
ulysses ). Grant was celebrated last
night at banquet at the Waldorf
Astoria, under the auspices of the Grant
monument association. Two hundred
and forty-six guests were present
Inc principal speaker was Henry
Watterson, whose subject was 1.-THE
Reunited Sections" He said:
II the illustrious soldier, whose mem
Dry we celebrate, were with US here to-
nlghS mas heart would glow with sat
lsted pride in the answer which time
mas made to his prayer for peace be-
tween the once warning sections of the
Union and in the spectacle which the
present unfolds of a whole people rally
ing as single man under the stars and
stripes.
cannot help thinking that, when
the history of our nation comes finally
to be made up, it will be related that
two mistakes of the first order were
perpetrated by the people of the United
states the latter half of the nineteenth
century. 1t was a mistake of the south,
Tor any cause whatever, to precipitate
a war of sections, and it was a mistake
of the north, after the overthrow of the
Confederacy, to undertake a recon-
StructiOn of the Union by force of arms.
That the country has survived errors
of such magnitude is proof of amaz-
ing vitality; of a vitality that draws it's
sustenance from the adaptability and
the heXibility of free institutions and
from a popular character equal to all
emergencies, military and civil. Man
proposes and God disposes, and often
we build wiser than we know. Perhaps
the very mischances of these forty
years of domestic controversy were
needful to make US the nation we are
today.
ct was General Grant, himself, who
issued the order finally withdrawing the
troops from the southern states, and,
when we remember that it was none
other than Grant who stood between
the Confederate soldier and a surrender
that might have been diShOnoring to
American manhood, the debt we owe
our great Captain becomes incalcula-
BILE.
There is just now, I regret to OBJ
serve, a disposition manifested IN GER
tain quarters to magnify the arts of
peace and to belfttle the arts of war.
Most of us know something about both;
and, whilst do confess that even this
frugal repast and these homely provIS-
ions-done in Grants honor and in our
honor-are preferable to a banquet of
hard tack and a blazing brush heap
upon a Georgia hillside, I shall not be
the man to say that any of US is the
worse for knowing from personal eX-
perience the actual difference 1 have
respect for the principle of information
al adjustment through moral suasion
and mutual concession. 1 have respect
for the principle of approved capabil-
ity and fitness in the matter of ap-
pointments to office. But when a gentle
man in gold-rimmed specs and a swal-
low-tailed coat, standing with one foot
on Arbitration and the other upon
Civil Service Reform, solemnly assures
me that he has discovered perfectibility
in government I take leave to have my
doubts about it. I am grown so pessi-
mistic, indeed, as to think that the one
thing that we do want, the one thing
which would certainly disappoint US
in case we got it, is the dreamer's idea
of the ideal. Ideals, which exist for
reformers, lovers and poets, exist not
for,me and women. Those whose bus
mess is to deal with life as it is, and
who can afford to waste no time on self