Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1906-06-07
THE COURTRY'S DEFENDERS
President Roosevelt Pays Homage
to Memory of Valiant Dead.
This Country Those to Whom
We owe Its Existence.

Ports mouth, Va. The De-
coration day ceremonies here were
conducted by the Army and Navy union
and were the most elaborate and i'm
pressive held in recent years. Presi-
dent Roosevelt, who came down from
Washington on the government yacht
Mayfiower, accompanied by Mrs. Roose-
welt and two of the younger children.
made the memorial address. He spok5
IN part as follows:
This day is hallowed and sacred in
=ur history, for on this day throughout
the land We meet to pay homage to the
memory of the valiant dead who fell
IN the great civil war. No other men
>eserve so well of this country as those
to whom We owe it that we now have
a country. Moreover, the men to
whose valor we owe it that the Union
was preserved have left us a country
reunited In fact as well as in name.
They have left us the memory of the
great deeds and the self-devotion alike
of the men who wore the blue and Of
the men who wore the gray in the
contest where brother fought brother
with equal courage, with equal SINGER
ity of conviction, with equal fidelity u
high ideal, as it was given to each
to see that ideal.
This audience is composed largely OF
veterans of the civil war, largely Of
men who have served in or are serving
in the Army and Navy of the United
States. They are concerned not only
with the duties of the soldier and the
sailor, but with the duties of the
civilian, with all matters affecting the
plain, everybody citizen as he does his
everyday duties. For we must always
remember that in our country our
Army and Navy are an army and navy
made up of volunteers; all our forces
are volunteers; our regulars, afloat
and ashore, are merely our fellow-citi-
zsns who of their own free will have
taken up this particular task. The
task once through they return to the
body of our citizenship; and exactly
as the efficiency of our military service
depends chiefly upon the efficiency OF
the average enlisted man, so the eff
cheney of the nation as a whole do
pSlluS CHIEFLY up Tie way III WHICH
the average man performs his plain
everyday duties.
We can not too highly honor the
memory of the leaders in the civil war
of Grant and Lee, of Sherman and
Johnston, of Stonewall Jackson and
Sheridan, of Farragut and of the cap
tains who fought under and against
him. But after all the man upon whom
the chief credit must rest was the
plain man in the ranks, the man IN
blue or in gray who went in to see
the war through, and who did see it
through. He had the courage to stand
without flinching the pickering of the
skirmishes and the hammering of the
great fights; he had the steadfast en-
durance to bear with accomplishing
resolution the hunger and the heat and
the cold, the scorching days and freez-
ing nights, the grinding, heartbreaking
fatigue of the marches. the wearisome
monotony of the comps, and the slow
suffering of the field hospitals. Lead
ership is necessary in order that we
may get really good results out of a
high average of individual character;
but without the high character in the
average individual the leadership by
itself can avail but little.