Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-08-09
HIGH TRIBUTE PAID.


Colorado Springs, Col, Aug. 2.-The
feature of the quarto-centennial cele-
bration of Colorado's admission as a
state was the address by Vice Presi-
dent Roosevelt Friday afternoon. In
part the vice president said:
You, the men Of Colorado, and above
all, the older among those whom am
now addressing, have been engaged in
doing the great typical work of our peo-
union itself. no other task has been so
important as the conquest and settle
ment of the west This conquest and
settlement has been the stupendous feat
just closed. It stands supreme among all
such feats. The same kind of thing has
been in Australia and Canada, but upon
q less important scale: while the Russian
advance. in Siberia has been incompara-
bly, slower. In all the history of mankind
there is nothing that quite parallels the
way In which our people have filled q
vacant continent with self-governfng
commonwealths. knit into one nation.
And of all this marvellous history per-
haps the most wonderful portion is that
which deals with the way in which the
Pacific coast and the Rocky mountains
were settled.
The men who founded these communi-
ties showed practically by their life work
that it is indeed the spirit of adventure
which is the maker of commonwealth.
Their traits of daring and hardihood and
iron endurance are not merely indispen-
sable traits for successful pioneers: they
are also traits which must go to the
makeup of every mighty and successful
people. You and your fathers who built
up the west did more even than you
thought. for you shaped thereby the des-
tiny of the whole republic. and as a nee
essary corollary profoundly influence
the course of events throughout the
world. More and more as the years go
will find ffC ;dor II,
the thought and action of the west, be-
cause the conditions of development in
the west have steadily tended to accen-
tuate the peculiarly American charac-
terfstfcS of its people.
There was scant room for the coward
and the weakling in the ranks of the
adventurous frontfersrnan; the pioneer
settlers who first broke up the wild prai-
RE soil, who first hewed their way
into the primeval forest; who guided
their white-topped wagons across the
endless leagues of Indian-hunted desc
1ation, and explored every remote noun
tain chain In the restless quest for metal
wealth. Behind them came the men who
completed the work they had roughly
begun; who drove the great railroad sys-
TENS over plain and desert and mountain
pass; who stocked the teeming ranches,
and under irrigation saw the bright
green of the alfalfa and the yellow of the
golden Stubble supplant the gray of the
sage-bush desert: who have built great
populous cities, cities in which every art
and science of civilization are carried
to their highest point, on tracts which
when the nineteenth century had passed
its meridian were still known only to
the grim trappers and hunters and the
red lords of the wilderness with whom
they waged eternal war. Such is the
record of which we SO proud. It is
a record Of men who greatly dared and
greatly did; a record of wandering wider
and more dangerous than those of the
Vikings; a record of endles feats of
arms. of victory after victory in the
ceaseless strife waged against wild man
and wild nature. The winning Of the
west was the great epic feat in the his
tory Of our race.