The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1904-06-04
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.
Extracts from His Adde'S on Memo.
rial Day on Battlefield of
Gettysburg.

Gettysburg, Pa, May 3l.-On historic
Cemetery hill, overlooking ground hal
lowed by the blood of $4,000 brave men
and in the presence of a concourse of
thousands, who had assembled to pay
tribute to the memory of the nations
dead. President Roosevelt on Monday
delivered notable address.
The president said in part:
The civil war was great war for
righteousness; war waged for the
noblest ideals; but waged also in
thoroughgoing, practical fashion. It.
was one of the few wars which mean,
in their successful outcome, lift to-
ward better things for the nations Of
mankind. Some wars have meant the
triumph of order over anarchy and IL
centiousness masquerading as liberty;
some wars have meant the triumph OF
liberty over tyranny masquerading as
order; but this victorious war of ours
meant the triumph of both liberty and
order, the triumph of orderly liberty,
the bestowal of civil rights upon the
freed slaves, and at the same time tho
stern insistence on the supremacy OF
the national law throughout the length
and breadth of the land.
"TEe soldiers who won at Gettys-
burg, the soldiers who fought to fin
ish the civil war and thereby made
their countrymen forever their debtors,
have left us far more even than the
memories OF the war itself They
fnr
this continent those who came after
them, their children and their chill
dren's children, might enjoy lasting
peace. They took arms not to destroy.
but to save liberty; not to overthrow,
but to establish the supremacy of the
law. The crisis which they faced was
to determine whether or not this peo-
pie was fit for self-government and
therefore fit for liberty.
"The lessons they taught us are les
sons applicable in our everyday lives
now as in the rare times Of great dis
tress. The men who made this field
forever memorable did SO because they
combined the power of fealty to lofty
ideal with the power of showing that
fealty in hard, practical, common-sense
fashion. They stood for the life of eff
fort. not the life of ease. They had that
love of country, that love of justice,
that love of their fellowmen, without
which power and resourceful efficiency
but make man danger to his fell
lows.
ut was because you men of the civil
war both knew how to use liberty tenn
perately and how to defend it at need
that we and our children and our chill
dren's children shall hold you in honor
forever. Here, on Memorial day, on
this great battlefield, and all over this
land our people meet to pay reverent
homage 10 the dead who died that the
nation might live; and we pay homage
also to their comrades who are still
with us.
Cali are at one now, the sons of those
who wore the blue and the sons of
those who wore the gray, and all can
unite in paying respect to the memory
of those who fell, each of them giving
his life for his duty as he saw it: and
all should be at one in learning from
the deaths Of these men how to live
usefully while the times call for the
performance of the countless necessary
duties Of everyday life, and how to hold
ourselves ready to die nobly should the
nation ever again demand of her sons
the ultimate proof of loyalty"