The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-04-08
ENOUGH TO GO ROUND

and, 1nVerSely, that too great mod
esty is as certain to win contempt as
is an overweening conceit.
The difference in result between
bumptiousness and diffidence is that
ing in the one and Illuminating in
the other.
The very highest type of successful
egotist is the man who has been long
depressed that takes it into his head 30
file a claim; besides the mere force of
petus of the broken habit of restraint,
there is an honesty and a purpose be-
hind the departure from the tradition
of modesty that bespeaks faith itself
in the delayed demands.
For forty years and more the boast
ing of North Carolina has chiefly con-
sisted in the broad and, we take it mis-
taken, expression of dignity that we
were too big to boast. We have not
grasped the fact that this in an adj
vertising age. We have pointed to our
own collossi with the idea that their
heads would tower above the skyline
of the world without the aid of
prophets to the view. Locally, we
have been a people of a proper pride.
Folklore, old songs and the history
of mighty deeds have fiourished by the
fireside and lowered over the cradles
of the folks. But we have not run to
books and in the day when We turn
towards the light, when we venture
not to blow. but to murmur in the
horn set towards the faces of the
world the notes of truth, it is not sur
prising that the whisper of the blast
should raise protest.
The belated claims to the worlds
attention come with too much assur-
ance. They have about them the
frankness and the unskilled directness
of speech that indicate their truth.
The long wait has merely served to
emphasize and make positive the
truths that have slumbered as the
racial inheritance of generations.
1t is a fortunate thing that North
Carolina has suffered attack in the
tunate that the assault came at a time
when she could be defended by those
who were able to speak and to act con-
vincingly when her historians were
graduates of the school of war itself
their prejudices cooled by time, their
faculties enriched by study. The re-
ply to the Christian charges" showed
merely that the things the present
learned at the feet Of the past with
the confidence won at mothers knees
were. true indeed; that the sentiment
of two generations was born in truth
years the story of their epic greatness.
When these things were established
and monument was to be erected al
Appomattox, it was natural and fitting
that the facts should be told upon the
granite of the shrine, simply and yet
and the simple epigrams on the monu-
ment told story that stung the pride
of certain citizens of Virginia who had
come to eliminate in the glorious re-
cord of their own soldiery the posi-
bility of merit otherwhere. The in
scription en- the monument is short. it
is all-embracing. The point is that it is
true! First at Bethel, farthest to the
front at Gettysburg and Chicamauga,
last at Appomattox" are phrases which
are declaratory simply of history, and
not remotely envious or deprecatory Of
either the pride or the deserts of
others. 1t is simply that what we are
and what We We're, we say. And the
spirit that would take affront at what
we know can have but the one result
of showing to the world through the
persistency of expression backed by
proof the verify of the claims that are
made!
North Carolina has been favored
with men who were the saviours of
crises precipitated by others. She has
been favored by history, the haven of
conservatism, the home den of the
lion-hearted moulders of fate. 1t has
never been her part to claim aught
more than she had, nor to disparage
the claims of others. Before the
phrase was molten into words, the
idea that there is glory enough to go
round was a working principle in the
Tar Heel State. Her people have
never been captious, never envious.
They have been too strong in the con-
fidence of their own worth and their
own history as they knew it to carp at
others. Within the last six weeks the
Legislature of North Carolina has gone
to the point of approprlating thirty
thousand dollars to the Virginia
Jamestown Exposition, trumpeted
forth as a celebration of the first col
ony in America, when practically
every legislator voting for the bill
knew that the claim was not true, and
that in a sense it took from his own
State a record of history which should
be undisputed, even by inference, and
cannot be denied. Whites colony, on
Roanoke Island, was settled in 1884,
many years before Jamestown was
conceived. But it was not the policy
of North Carolina to blacken the