The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-06-17
SYMPATHY WITH THOSE WHO
 LOSE

| A recent issue of The Portland Ore. gonian has an editorial devoted to the
 results of the South African war and to | lost causes" generally, in which 1t takes
 the position that while the advantage Is | with the British the glory is with the
 Boers. The editorial so well written and part of 1t so interesting to Southern people that we make this exact:
 Who ever thinks of hanging wreaths of immortelles over the chariot of the conqueror? No; they are for the graves of those who lost The song of the vanquished is the song that reaches the heart though the poet who wrote one was pleased to imagine it otherwise. Mankind has chaplets and ballads for those borne down in the battle-the vic- tor can take care of himself.
 Perhaps it Is some obscure expression or the. sense of humor; perhaps it is a development of our common instinct of perversity; perhaps 1t is only the pleas ure we take in cheating ourselves with fiction ornamented in the guise of truth but certain it is that glory most bright ly glids the tomb where sleep the cham pions of vain and foolish cause. His tory says that Europe, as reasoning being, could not endure the anarchy that made Poland almost uninhabitable; but tradition knows only the poets tribute to Thaddeus of Warsaw. No Briton has ever won glory in enforcing the em- pire's rightful sovereignty over Ireland but Robert Emmet is immortal in song and story: and unhappy Ireland" along with unhappy Poland" will carry to generations hence an increment of honor and rectitude. given through sheer sym pathy with their just but tragic fate.
 The glory of the Civil War, even at the North, as the generation that fought it passes away. is with the South Be- cause it is the Lost Cause" men sigh and shake their heads mournfuly, regard less of the principles established in spite of it, and regardless of the merits of the shot at Sumter. Perfunctorily we recog- nize the Blue. enthusiastically we sing of the Gray. The poems that touch the patriotic soul are not of the North, but Under the Sod and the Dew" or per haps something of Timrod's, or Father Ryan, or Theodore O. Hara. They are poetry. to be sure, but the memory of the Southland's fate touches with added pathos every military piece written be- low Mason and Dixon's line. This is the history of lost causes generally. Ger many got the indemnity in 1871; France gets the glory and poor Alsace-Lorraine moved about the map like a piece of bric-a-brac. has a place near the heart of every dreamer. The Six Hundred rode back without effect at BalaklavaI The column stands at Thermopylae. and Byron's lines ring in the corridors of every cultivated mind; but over the dead bodies of Leonidas and his brave Three Hundred the myriads of Xerxes marched on into Greece.
 The reference in this extract to our own Lost Cause" is so truthfulIy and feellngly put that we need make on apology for the somewhat lengthy quo- tation. That our own people should en- tertKain feeling of reverence for the cause for which We fought Is not to be wondered at, but that the same feeling. to d great extent pervades the North was not expected. Perhaps The Ore gonian, which is noted for it's fairness whenever it speaks of the South or the Southern people may be inclined to exag- gerate the Northern feeling. but we bardly think so. The same feeling which moves the world to speak with admira- tion of Emmet and Koscinsko. of Kossuth and Wolf Tone, and to mention with reverence the fate of Ireland and Poland will prevail when reference is made to the Boers and their cause. as it already prevails to a large extent when the world speaks of the Southern Confed-