The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-19
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1905.
A NOBLE WORK.

Commenting on the movement on foot to erect a monument in Macon ITO the Women of the Confectionery" The Fort Gaines Recorder says;
 All honor is due to the men who fought and suffered and died for the right. No cause ever saw braver sol diers and better fighters, and no coun- try has given birth to more devoted and patriotic citizenry than were the men who upheld the Stars and Bars for more than four years of constant fight ing, and who at last saw that flag go down without a speck or stain on it's folds. All honor is due the soldiery of rhe Confederacy and We pay 1t willingly and gladly.
 But the bitterest part of that war was not fought on the fields of carnage and Of glory. It was fought in the homes and in the hearts of the women at home. No pen of ready writer can fully set down the sacrifices and the efforts of those noble women. The days of dreary, heartbreaking waiting for news from the front, the constant pail of dread forever hanging over them while they waited, hoping. yet dread ing the result of every battle; opening letters with beating hearts, reading newspapers with blurred eyes and trembling fingers as the list of killed and wounded was set out in cold type; those were days and scenes to try the hearts and souls of gentle and loving women, and well did they bear the test High-born daughters of fortune who had never known or felt want or toll worked in harmony and sisterly fellow ship with the daughters of the poor who had never known anything but toll. and all with the same end in view, ana that end to do something for the absent ones
 In their homes spinning and weaving warm. garments for loved ones in the camps, in the fields doing mems work to raise food for their families: in the hospitals or on the battle fields aiding and assisting the wounded and dying everywhere there was something for them to do and never did they shrink where love. patriotism and duty called
 By all means let a monument be built. It cannot be built large enough nor high enough to faithfully portray the virtues of those whom it is intended to commemorate. Though its top ahould disturb the clouds 1t would fail short of telling the whole story of the love and yeneration that the Southern people feel for the women of the Con federacy, but the building of 1t win be an evidence that they are not forgotten and that their deeds live in the hearts or the people of the South.
 This is certainly an era of rnonu- ! ment building. We build them to men of all tho walks of life, but Southern money and Southern effort cannot be devoted to a nobler use than in build ing monuments to ''the wives and the mothers. the sisters and the daughters and the sweethearts of the best soldiery the world ever saw" as The Recorder puts it. We have no Confederacy now; hence we cannot erect national mon ument to commemorate the virtues, the sufferings. the patriotic devotion of those who upheld the spirits and the courage of those who fought. but each State which formed an integral portion of the glorious but short-lived little nation should build for itself and its women. that Southrons in all the days to come may know the example set by the women of the Confederacy.
 We want no monument which will keep alive in the hearts of present or future generations feelings of discord or sectional bitterness. We want no columns of stone or marble that would or could be regarded as a mark of ill., feeling towards any other portion of the Union. What we want, and what we should have, are not trtumphaI arches or humiliatIng admissions. but something that will faintly testify to the world that We remember with low Ing reverence what was done and en- dured by the generation of women who are fast passing into the other life. In building for them, we build for our selves monuments of undyfng gratitude and neYer-forgetting love.