The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-02-09
On this soldiers sepulcnre the chaplets

on this soldiers sepulcnre the chaplets
of their homage"
Dr.. Stryker eulogized Gen. Lawton's
military career and went on to say:
This better Plantaganet, this latest
Bayard, without fear and without re-
proach, this modern Philip Sidney,
whose life was also poetry put into ac
t1on, has shown once more of what
a stuff is incorrigible manhood-in
what substance root the memories that
last.
For true poet, and so proven, is one
who has written at least some things of
which no poet that ever lived can have
been ashamed would gladly have
owned; and a true man is admitted to
the fellowship of heroes by the equality
and peerage of his supreme deeds.
Here was one whom Raleigh, GuStavus
Adolphus, William of Orange, Winkel-
ried, Cambronne, NGaribaldi would know
at sight He was of that time-enduring
breed which has made Agincourt and
Naseby and Quebec and Lucknow of
immortal story. H, was comrade to the
MarylanderS who guarded the retreat
at Long Island, to the men who passed
Pleasanton, who soaked the sod of the
Peach Orchard, who ran singing
through the tide at Manila, who held
Guantanamo.
Let it be said. and let it be said
here, that none of us is of those who
walk backward into the future and
translate the present upside down.
"A timid and carping pessimist lives
only in the pluperfect, but good faith
lives in the future perfect. The one is
subjunctive. the other is indicative.
My duty is- in the imperative and
unconditional mood. When in the name
of mankind and that peace might be
real we undertook in 1898 to cleanse
the seas, we affirmed a principle and
made precedent that I for one hold
to have written the most honorable leaf
in all our history
But all that has been since was cor
ollary to that. No special pleading of
professional malcOntentS with whom
wisdom will not die, not 4 priori alb
straction, can unsay what this dead
soldiers zeal did for America. Rather
does such death enjoin upon our pur-
pose and performance such ends as
shall indicate us from cowardly in
1ifferentism and evasion in the face of
whatever duty and however unexpected
or comDlex-enjoin us to regard and
to teach liberty's authority.
I'm some good day-not far away,
please God-when those islands, found
lings no longer, shall have been rem
dered as a majestic addition to civiliza-
ton, to regulated freedom, and to the
God of these there in fair Luzon, right
where he fell front to his duty let the
valiant frame of this true liberator rise
in immutable bronze, while, under
standing us at last, our brown broth
ers, gazing upon that statue, stature.
statute, all in one, shall say he was
America, but he is ours too Lawton.
He was slain by us ignorantly in unbe-
lief. but he has forgiven
The casket, lightened of part of its
burden of flowers, was lifted to the
shoulders of troopers, borne down the
aisle to the street, past the great crowd
outside and raised to the caisson wait
ing at the door. The waiting ranks
of cavalry moved forward and closed
about it as a guard of honor. Orders
flung from rank to rank down the
crowded avenue brought troop after
troop and platoon after platoon wheel
ing into line. Then. with rumble of
wheels and clash of trace chains, field
and siege batteries Joined the process
sion, and the hero of three wars moved
on his last march to his final resting
place on the Virginia hillside beyond
the Potomac