The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1898-06-03

arsenaIs throughout the county. We
would be in different position if our
National Guard had had their companies
recruited to full numbers, with like
system of reserves, and had been hard
ened by frequent long marches and
trained in moving camp and roughing it.
The difficulties and delay that have at
tended the mobilization of even the small
force needed for war with a second rate
power, warn us of the danger of our
neighborhood, in these days of steam. to
nations that can send one hundred thou
sand trained soldiers to our shores in less
than two weeks. with navies to support
them against which ours could not stand
for moment. Let us be prepared. We
are no longer isolated. Let us know
our faults, what we are, and abandon
the ostrich-like policy of secrecy as to our
defences, equipment, armament and am
munition, of which every other nation
knows through its military attaches bet
ter than wedo ourselves. Our strength
is in our wealth and population, in the
arts of peace, in our great united coun-
try, and in our energy and education.
But we must take care that our citi-
zens be always citizen soldiery. There
| is no fear that we shall make them love
war by training them to it. Tue more
| they know of the real hardships of the
world and the biyouac, the cost of prep
aration, and the real meaning of deadly
weapons, the less likely are they to chal-
i lenge the dread arbitrament of war. 1t
is the ignorant only who are ready to
rush into fight. The most peaceable
nation in the world is England, who has
/ 70 c11 49, o,.
continuously in army posts in every
cline. Germany is peace loving, chiefly
for the reason that her children know
that war will take them from home and
work to the army. which they all love,
but whose dangers they understand as
no nation given to merely peaceable pur-
suits can ever do.
Whether the present struggle may in
volve contest with some such power we
know not. Let us prepare, and n0lv.
Even if the struggle be with Spain alone
| let us not despise our enemy. Sixteen
millions of people. brave people, can
never be despised. The North was
greater than the South in men and money,
but we know what the struggle meant.
And no one can prophesy what may be
involved in the fall of the Spanish dy-
Europe. Let us be ready. War is no
picnic, but grim reality.
We have had wars in our history.
Our birth knew its throes for years after
the congress of delegates from coast
line of little colonies, without power to
pledge even them, or aught else but
their own lives. their fortunes and their
sacred honor, made the immortal and
prophetic declaration of liberty, as rep
resentatives of the United States of
America" We knew war in 1912 when
we went into it so unprepared that a
British force of 5000 men burnt our
capitol The so-called Mexican war was
play. But we knew what war was in
1S61-1865 when the heroes OF North and
South struggled together in deadly en-
brace.
We hail its heroes to-day, those who
are gone and those who stay with us,
now veterans with gray hair. of whom it
is hard to think as the bearded men of
twenty to twenty-five who swung home
by hundreds of thousands with the
mighty step of men who knew what
battle was and who had met it bravely
face to face.
This is Union Day, as the Fourth is
A1DC1ty NLOdt PAAdS4PlCo OCSOA4O
creeds only when they have been bap-
tized in blood. The Union became an
article of faith only by the war; we
pledge ourselves to it, and this day
pledges its perpetuity while we have
citizens like those whose memory is in
our hearts.
Peace loving though we be, there can
be no length Of days to nation without
men who are ready to die for it. It is
not braggarts we want, but the stern,
quiet, peace loving man. like those who
died that the nation might live.
Say to such man that this is his
country's
-''WilI,
And there's the foe
He has no thought but how to kill
Two at blow
No wild misdoubtings, fearings tease him;
Death comes with fearless eye he sees him,
With fearless hand a welcome giles him,
And when he fa's
His latest draft of breathing leaves him
In faint huzzas.''
In the memory of their lives and of
their deaths, let us never forget to look
and watch and pray for the land they
loved so well.
Fire at Morris Plains.
Local firemen took a general outing to