The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1904-05-30

won by those who settled themselves
steadfastly down to fight for three
years, or for as much longer as the
war might last, and who gradually
grew to understand that the triumph
would come not by single brilliant
tedious campaigns. In the east and
the west the columns advanced and re-
coiled, swayed from side to side and'l
again advanced; along the coasts the
black ships stood endlessly off and on
before the hostile forts; generals and
admiralS emerged into the light. each
to face his crowded hour of success or
failure; the men in front fought; the
men behind supplied and pushed for
ward those in front; and the final vic
tory was due to the deeds of all who
played their parts we'll and manfully,
in the scores of battles in the count
less skirmishes, in march, in camp, or
in reserve, as commissioned officers
or in the ranks-wherever and when
ever duty called them. Just so it must
be for us in civil life. We can make
and keep this country worthy of the
men who gave their lives to save it,
only on condition that the average man
among us on the whole does his duty
bravely, loyalty, and with common
sense, in whatever position life alots
to him. National greatness is of slow
be stable and enduring; for it is based
fundamentally upon national charac
ter. and national character is stamped
deep in people by the lives of many
generations. The men who went into
the army had to submit to discipline,
had to submit to restraint through the
chosen, as the price of winning. SO we,
the people, can preserve our liberty
and our greatness in time of peace only
by ourselves exercising the virtues of
honesty of self-restraint, and of fair
dealing between man and man. In all
the ages of the past men have seen
countries lose their liberty, because
their people could not restrain and or
der themselves, and therefore forfeited
the right to what they were unable to
use with wisdom.
1t 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, we commemorate
not only the chiefs who actually won
this battle; not only Meade, and his
lieutenants. Hancock and Reynolds
and Howard and Sickel and the many
others whose names flame in our an
nails: but also the chiefs who had made
the Army of the Potomac what it was
and those who afterwards led it in the
campaigns which were crowned at APP
pomattoX; and furthermore those who
CIellan. with his extraordinary genius
for organization; Rosecrans; Buell.;
Thomas, the unyielding. the steadfast;
and that gerat trio, Sherman, Sheridan,
and last and greatest of all. Grant him
self, the silent soldier whose hammer
like blows finally beat down even the
prowess of the men who fought
against him. Above ali we meet here
to pay homage to the officers and en-
listed men who served and fought and
died. without having. as their chiefs
had, the chance to write their names on
the tablets of fame; to the men who
marched and fought in the ranks who
were buried in long trenches on the
field of battle who died in cots marked
only by numbers in the hospitals: who.
if they lived. when the war was over,
went back each to his task on the farm
or in the town. to do his duty in peace
rs he had done it in war; to take up
the threads of his working life where he
of the nation paaled to arms. Today, |
all over this land our people meet to /
pay reverent homage to the dead who
died that the nation might live: and
we pay homage also to their comrades |
who are still with us
All 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 i
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 10y
atty.
AT OTHER PLACES.