The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-08-16
SOME CREDITABLE woRDs

| Inc AdnSaS C1ty Journal often in I Gu'ges in somewhat bitter and unjust | criticisms of the South and Southern people, but we can forgive much to a | Republican newspaper with Northern
 sympathies. which uses such editorial
 language as the following:
 There is something peculiarly interest | ing at this day and distance from the
 great contest of forty years ago in unveil- sng a statue to the private soldier of the south. The one most inspiring event of the reunion of ex-Confederates at Spring held last week was the commemora tion Of the valor of the unnamed man behind the gun. profound ethical app -orriatene~s and file. rather than the personal exala- tion of the chieftain. Not all the ileroism nor devotion nor unconquerdbie courage lay beneath the shoulder straps Whi,e the memory of the great ca,tains can never pass away, yet more and more as time goes on are those memories crystal- izing into a composite commcmoration of the valor that carried the stars anl ba re to defeat without dishonor.
 We agree with The Journal that 1t
 is appropriate that monuments should
 be erected to the private soldier. While
 none of us can forget the officers who
 led the Confederate troops to hundreds
 of battlefields on which, whether in
 victory or defeat, courage and devo- tion unsurpassed were always dis played, 1t is also eminently proper that an occasional wreath of immortelles should be laid on the graves of those mstchless privates whose ragged uni forns and bright muskets are a heri- tage of honor for their descendants for all time.
 To our Lees and Jacksons and others, who planned battles and led armies, poems have been written, songs have been sung and monuments nave been raised, and they deserve all, for some of them had no superiors in the annals of war. But we show them no neglect and do them no wrong, when we de- vote some of our time and money to commemorating the deeds of those un- named rrivates but for whose loyalty and heroism leadership would have been in vain. All over this Southland of ours and in many Northern ccme- teries are graves without headstones, or with stones bearing the pathetic word "Unknown." but in these graves rest all that is mortal of men who were the peers in courage and devotion of those who died with Leonidas at Thermopylae or "kept the bridge" with Horatius "in the brave days of old"
 More than one-third of a century has passed since the last of the living pri- yates of that war sadly turned their backs on dead comrades and their faces toward ruined homes and impoverished families, and many of them are no longer in the land of living men. Yet those who are left. and their descend ants. honor both themselves and the dead by erecting monuments to the private soldier The scars caused by the war are mostly healed. the bitter ness engendered in that memorial ble conflict have mostly passed away for ever, and The Journal we'll says that "the time has long passed when praise for the Lost Cause involved disloyalty for the cause that won."
 There may yet be some who would cneer or jeer at a monument to Con- federate soldier who were no shoulder straps, but happily they are few and are becoming fewer. To most men, North and South, praise and honor for the private seems fitting, and these will join in the wish that more such evil derces of loyal remembrance could be eI Iecte6 ip the South.