The Colorado statesman., 1906-06-02
VIRGINIA SPEECH
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S MEMO.
RIAL ADDRESS AT PORTS
MOUTH.
THE MAN BEHIND THE BALLOT
Chief Executive Pays Homage to the
Heroic Dead and Enforces the
Duties of the Living.

Duties OF the Living.
Portsmouth, Va.-President Roose-
velt Joined the people of Virginia
Memorial Day in beautiful and i'm
pressive tribute to the nations dead.
Under the auspices of the Army and
Navy Union, the organization of the
officers and enlisted men of the United
States army and navy, the President
delivered the Memorial Day address
here to an audience numbering thou
sands.
Immediately after delivering the ora
tion of the day President Roosevelt un-
veiled monument erected in the naval
cemetery by the Army and Navy Union
to the memory of it's dead comrades
The procession consisted of several
thousand men from the North Atlantic
fleet, Army and Navy Union organiza-
tions, Grand Army veterans, camps Of
Confederate veterans and many other
societies.
The President said, in part:
This day is hallowed and sacred in
our history, for on this day, through.
out the land we meet to pay homage
to the memory of the valiant dead who
fell in the great Civil War. No other
men deserve so we'll of this country
sthose 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-devo-
ton alike of the men who wore the
blue and the men who wore the gray
in the contest where brother fought
brother with equal courage, with equal
sincerity of conviction, with equal
fidelity to a high ideal, as it was given
to each to see that ideal.
Moreover, it is a peculiar pleasure
to speak to-day under the auspices of
the Army and Navy Union, of the
Union, which is meant to include the
officers and enlisted men of the regular
forces of the United States.
Exactly as there is no other body
of men to whom in the past we have
owed so much as to the veterans OF
the Civil War, so there is no other body
of men among all of our citizens OF
to-day who as a whole deserve quite as
well of the country as the officers and
enlisted men of the army and navy of
the United States.
This audience is composed largely
of veterans of the Civil War, largely
of men who have served in or are serv-
ing in the army and the navy of the
United States. They are concerned
not only with the duties of the soldier
and the sailor, but with the duties or
the civilian, with all matters affecting
the plain, everyday citizen as he does
his everyday duties.
I'm the last analysis, it is the man
! behind the ballot who counts most in
civil life, just as it is the man behind
the gun who counts most in military
life.
1--WE cannot 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
captains 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 il
through.
$50 again in our Republic as a whole
| it is just as true in peace now as it
was forty-five years ago in war that
] it is the character of the average man
that must be the determining factor in
| achieving national success or going
down to national disaster"