The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1907-06-06
PRAISES FOR SOLDIER DEAD
The Pastor of Park Avenue Methodist
Church Makes Plea for Better
Citizenship and Points New
Lessons of Memorial Day

nor Of the state hundreds of Kenosha
people turned out and marched in
solemn procession to the cemetery
and cast flowers on the graves of the
sleeping heroes of the Civil war.
The members of the Fred S. Lowell
Post of the Grand Army, the mem ers
T of the W. r. c., and Spanish-Amer-
lean war veterans gathered at the
Post hall early in the morning and
traniping to the martial music of the
drum and fife they marched to the
cemetery. A stop was made at the
soldiers monument and a great
wreath was placed on the monument
IN honor Of the unknown dead sleep
ing IN the forgotten cemeteries and
battIehelds of the southland. At the
cemetery the usual ritualistic cere.
monies were carried out, after which
the bands of the soldiers scattered to
the different cemeteries and last night
every soldier buried in the cemeteries
about Kenosha slept beneath canopy
of flowers.
| After the service of Commemora-
ton at the cemetery the crowd re-
turned to Park Ave. Nj. E. church
where a great mass meeting was held.
There were patriotic songs and reel
tations and the Rev. w. w. Stevens
delivered the annual address, teach
ing new lessons of patriotism and
paying tribute to the soldiers living
and dead. The speaker said in part.
Members of the Grand Army of the
Republic and fellow citizens: It
seems to be the will of the All-Wise
Ruler that nations as we'll as indi-
viduals shall be made perfect through
suffering. Rome never was so noble
as when in the early days of the re-
public she was engaged in repe1ling
her invaders; Greece never so heroic
as when hurting back the Persian
hordes at Marathon and Salamis.
Every great nation which exists to
day has been born and nurtured in the
throes of agony. Japan, a genera
ton go an insignificant heather peo-
pie, has through fierce conflict IN two
and assumed the place of great
world power, while China and Russia,
her vanquished antag onists, have
been aroused from the sleep of mil
lenium and the endurance of serfdom
to intense activity in their efforts to
secure Christian civilization and
political freedom.
There are three chapters in our own
history as a people which are written
in blood and shining in glory. They
are Settlement, independence and
Emancipation. We might add a
fourth, which although not yet writ
ten, means the extension of our 1iber-
ties to the oppressed of other, and we
hope, of all lands.
The New England settlement from
which we derive our character as a
nation was the result of desperate
struggle for religious liberty against
unequal odds in England. Driven
before the royal wrath to Holland,
they remained ten years among I'M
sympathetic sneighbors and then
banished to the wilderness of the new
world that they might be loyal to their
own sovereign and yet secure liberty
of conscience to themselves and their
children. The history of their heroic
endurance of suffering and privation
is too familiar for repeating. It has
been truly said: "God had sifted
three kingdoms for the wheat of this
planting and then sifted the wheat as
the living seed of nation"
Colonization for the sake of religious
liberty was followed by revolution in
blood for civil liberty. Eng1and's
grea statesmen recognized the justice
of the claim made by the colonies. In
parliament there was Burke and Fox,
Bassie and Pitt, the Earl of Chelham
and LORD North, himself at the head
of the British ministry, all mighty
men, and all in sympathy with the
colonists. The feeling was even more
general among the common people of
England. Then why the stubborn
resistance of King George? Why
those eight years of agony with rivers
of blood from Lexington to York
town? Evidently that the sons and
daughters of liberty might know the
value of freedom and that the gener-
ations following might guard we'll
their virtues. If temple of liberty
was to be reared in this land which
should stand forever its foundations
must be laid in sacrifice and cemented
with blood.
Again, the Declaration of Indeperd-
ence had said: 'A1l men are created
equal" The writer's doubtless meant
fair Anglo-Saxons, but God Almig hty
included black skinned Africans.
Jefferson in his ORIGINAL draft of the
constitution interpreted it in the
latter sense and charged the king
with the introduction of slavery in
the colonies. The constitutional con-
vention knew that slavery was OBJ
noxious to free people and did not
dare to strike that clause out. They