Arizona republican., 1904-06-05
Two Presidents at Gettysburg.

The presidents enemies purport to find cause for chuckling in an incident alleged to have occurred on Memorial day. just after MT. Roosevelt's speech at Gettysburg. As the story runs, on the presidential train returning from the historic battlefield Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, commenting on the fact that MT. Roosevelt is the first president since Lincoln to speak at Gettysburg, said that a promise was secured from President Cleveland. during his first term, to speak where Lincoln had Cleveland wrote Gen. Sickles that he had changed his mind.
 In his letter Mir. Cleveland is alleged to have said that he was not in the battle of Gettysburg, and knew noth- ing about it except what he had read
 that he thought it would be presump- tuous in any one who did not take part in that famous struggle and was not familiar with the battlefield and all that happened there, to speak on that hallowed ground. Besides, said MT. Cleveland (according to this story) President Lincoln said all there was to say, in the very best way in which 1t could be said and any president who tried to elaborate on his immortal speech would suffer by comparison.
 The point sought to be made by MT. Roosevelts enemies is obvious, and they are engaged in a foolish perform ance. They are trying to make 1t ap- pear that he was guilty of a discred- itable presumption in speaking, as president, at a place and on the same subject already immortalized by Lin- coin, and that Gen. Sickles emphasiz- ed the fact by his story. BoshI MT. Roosevelt would be the last man to en- certain the thought of making another Lincoln speech at Gettysburg. He knows, as everybody knows, that MT. Lincoln made on the field of Gettys- burg the most classic and the most eloquent and the most thrilling address ever heard in the English language Furthermore, MT. Roosevelt makes no pretense of being an orator. His speech of last Monday on the most de- cisive battlefield of our civil war was printed in full next morning in The Republican, and our readers had an opportunity to judge for themselves whether the president said anything worth while. But it is not a waste of space to recall here some of thewhole- some things that were said by the president in his pointed way.
 We agree with the New York Tribune: President Roosevelt struck a characteristic note at Gettysburg. But the last word on Gettysburg's sig nificance to the generation which fought the war was said long ago. No one can hope to make another speech there like Lincoln's. It is wiser to try, I as the president did, to find lesson for our own day in the patriotic de- votion to which Gettysburg and the | hundred other battlefelds of the civil war so richly testify"
 The president justly said that the AAANA iiCSN iiiSilOlJ llIG lidliOll ed Monday combined the power of fealty to a lofty ideal with the power of showing that fealty in hard, prac- | tical, common-sense fashion" They | discovered that little could be done by | sudden, violent effort; that triumph | would come not by a single brilliant | victory, but by a hundred painful and 1, tedious campaigns" They realized the | necessity of continuous effort, of con- stant struggle and self-denial Fidel- I, ity to duty, the president holds, is as imperative for us today as it was for i he men who saved the union a genera ton ago. We can make and keep this country worthy of the men who gave their lives to save it only on condition |