Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1904-05-31
HONOR PAID TO HEROES.


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HONOR PAID TO HEROES.
Continued From Page H.
ridges; where the cavalry fought;
where the hills We're attacked and de-
Tended; and where, finally, the great
charge surged up the slope only tot
break on the summit in the bloody
spray of gallant failure.
But the soldiers who won at Get
tysburg, the soldiers who fought to a
finish 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
fought for four years in order that on
this continent those who came after
them, their children and their chill
drens children. might enjoy lasting
peace. They took arms not to destroy,
but to save liberty; not tooverthrow,
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 lf-government and
therefore fit for liberty. Freedom is
not a gift which can be enjoyed save
by those who show themselves worthy
of it. In this world no privilege can
be permanently appropriated by men
who have not the power and the will
successfully to assume the RESPONSE
bility of using it Alright In his recent
admirable little volume on freedom and
responsibility In democratic govern
ment, President Hadley, of Yale, has
pointed out that the freedom which is
worth anything is the freedom which
means government and not anar-
chy. Freedom thus conceived is a con-
cfr
telligent and good man to do better
things than he could dc without 1T;
which is in it's essence the substitution
of self-restraint for external restraint
the substitution of a form of re-
straint which promotes progress for
the form which retards it. This Is the
right view of freedom; but it can only
be taken there is full recognition
of the close connection between liberty
and responsibility in every domain of
human thought. 1t was essentially
the view taken by Abraham Lincoln,
and by all those who, when the civil
war broke out, realized that in self
governing democracy those who de-
sire to be considered fit to enjoy lib
erty must show that they Know how
to use it with moderation and justice
in peace, and how to fight for it when
it is jeoparded by malice domestic of
foreign levy.
The lessons they taught us are les
sons as applicable in our everyday
lives now as in the rare times of great
stress The men who made this field
forever memorable did SO because they
combined the power of fealty to a
lofty ideal with the power of showing
that fealty in hard, practical, common
sense fashion. They stood for the life
of effort, not the life of ease. They
had that love of country that love of
Justice, that love of their fellow-men,
without which power and resourceful
| efficiency but make a man danger to
| his fellows. Yet in addition thereto,
they likewise possessed the power and
the efficiency; for otherwise their high
purpose would have been barren OF re-
suit. They knew each how to act for
| himself, and yet each how to act with
his fellows. They learned, as all the
generation of the civil war learned,
| that rare indeed is the chance to do
| anything worth doing by one sudden
and violent effort. The men who be-
| lieved that the civil war would be end
| ed n'ninety days, the men who cried
| loudest con to Richmond" if they had
the right stuff in them speedily learn
ed their error; and the war was ac-
| tually won by those who settled them
selves steadfastly down to fight for
i 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 a single brilliant
victory but by hundred painful and
tedious campaigns. In the east and
the west the columns advanced and
recoiled, swayed from side to side and
again advanced; along the coasts the
black ships stood endlessly off and on
before the hostile forts; generals and
admirals emerged into the lAGht, each
to face his crowded hour off ScceSs or
failure: the men in front L &ht; the
men behind supplied andpW. led for
ward those in front; ands final
victory was to the deetl jail who
played their Grts well and nanfully
| in the scores 81 battles, in the count
less skirmishes in, march, in camp, OF
in reserve, as commissioned officers
CIR in the ranks-wnerever and when
ever duty called them. Just so ii
must be for us in civil life. We car
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 com
mon sense, in whatever position Ire
allots to him. National greatness Is
of slow growth 1t cannot be forced
and yet be stable and enduring; FOR l
is based fundamentally upon nationa
character, an national character
| stamped deep in people by the llVe'
of many generations. The men Whe
went into the army had to submit t.
discipline, had to submit to restrain
though the government of the leaders
; they had chosen, as the price OF win
ming. So We the people, can pre-
serve our liberty and our greatness II
time of peace only by ourselves exer
cising the virtues Of honesty, self-re
straint, and of fair dealing between
man and man. In all the ages OF tn
past men have seen countries los
: their liberty, because their peopl
! could not restrain and order them
selves, and therefore forfeited tn
right to what they We're unable TO US
with wisdom.
1t was because you men OF the CIV
war both knew how to use npert
temporarily and how to defend u q
? need that we and our children ana on
children's children shall hold you !
r honor forever Here, on memorial DAY
: on this great battlefield, we common
, crate not only the chiefs who actuall
! won this battle; not only Meade, an
his leutenants, Hancock and Reynolu
, and Howard and Sickles and the man