Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-05-30
NATIONS SACRIFICE
Lives and Treasure for Preser-
walton of the Union.
DAY OF SACRED MEMORIES
Address at Arlington Today by Cor
poral James Tanner.
THE SOLDIERS OF ALL WARS
Words of Praise for Those Who Offered
Their Lives Upon Altar
of Country.
THE SOLDIERS OF ALL WARS

| Corporal James Tanner, past commander
| n-chief of the Grand Army of the Repub-
| lie. was the orator at Arlington today. His
| memorial address, in which he paid
| splendid tribute TO the young soldiers of
| the war with Spain, as we'll the grim old
! fighters of the sixties. was punctuated
| throughout with hearty applause. He said:
| When Admiral Togo returned to Toxic
| after destroying the Russian fleet, he went
| first to a sacred shrine and made solemn
| sacrifice to the spirit of his fallen COM
| rades.
| When Gen. Nogi had gained his great vic
| tory at Port Arthur. he went to the highest
| point in that vicinity. and. with gaze up
| lifted to the heavens. he devoutly thanked
| his dead comrades for the result achieved.
| So IT Is that we come together today to
| honor our dead. and SO it Is that the
| pagansm of the east and the Christianity
| of the west have a common point Of meet
| ing
This is the holy day Of all the year to
the Grand Army of the Republic.
| 1t Is the one day when our comrades oc-
| cupy the center of the stage.
| 1t Is rightly theirs. Proud as the proud
| est in their midst of the majesty of the re-
| public In all respects. its vast area, Its great
| resources. its mighty industries, its ad-
| NdHCelneHt III All the dTtS ana sciences, the
| surviving veteran feels today in the inner
| most recesses of his heart that much of
| this would not have obtained If during the
| four years of blood and hardship, Of suf-
| fering and death. he and his comrades had
| not stood solid wall of patriotic valor bat
| Ting for the life of the nation.
| We honor ourselves in honoring our dead
| today.
The benefit is all for the living and for
| the generations that will succeed us.
| Over this broad land today millions of
our fellow citizens have laid aside the daily
] duties of life. and in solemn procession,
| with bugles calling and beat of drum, with
| song and speech. in the great cities and In
| the hamlets by the countryside, they seek
to do honor to our loved ones gone before.
First Memorial Day.
| Those who would fail to honor the serv-
| Ices. sacrifices and the memory of those
who died to preserve their country as a
| mighty nation Of states, would evidence a
weakness which thank God, Is not inherent
! in our nation. and can never develop a
characteristic of our brave and loyal people
In the long ago when the Black Eagle of
Illinois, the greatest volunteer soldier of
his time. John a. Logan. issued, COM
mander-in-chief of the Grand Army, his
order defeating this day Memorial day.
many short-sghted souls deprecated the
wisdom of the act criticising 1t as calcu-
lated to keep alive the animosities of the
war. no" greatly iIISS were we
all know now, and have for many years.
| said then that I knew one old mother
who. If the fortunes of war had sent her
boy into n soldiers grave instead of
turning him to her sadly shattered would
have had no bitterness toward her stricken
sister in the south. when she went out to
laurel her lost ones grave, but that rather
there would have been an electric sob of
sympathy. running from the grave under
the naples of New York to that under the
magnolas of Louisiana. / think l am no
misinterpreter of public sentiment when
declare that not only our people generally.
but my surviving comrades mass, have
broadened tremendously since our days of
warfare. l go so far as to assert that %
per cent of the membership of the Grand
Army cheerfully concede today that the
vast majority of the men who stood in bat
tie against under the stars and bars We're
as sincere in the course they pursued as
were we of the Union host
But conceding that still maintain that
II is inconteStibly true that one side was
wrong. awfully wrong, one side. and
side only. right, and that was the ma
tons side. and the God Of Right proved
the truth of our contention at Appomattox.
Preservation of the Union.
In the physical contests in which the ma
tions of the world have engaged since time
began principles have told. In our con-
fct fought broad line Our op
ponents contested for an oligarchy of the
south. Their central idea was a confederacy
and the perpetuity of slavery. Ours was
the preservation of the Union simply and
solely that at first. In the progress of the
contest we reached a point where nothing
less than freedom for all people who walked
under the stars and stripes was an added
shlbboleth.
They are woefuly wrong who declare that
| that contest was entered upon for the aboli-
| ton of slavery. Abraham Lincoln truth
| fully stated that the primal object was the
preservation of the Union.
The freedom of the slaves became the
| secondary issue, and ii did not come until
| the slaves had rendered valuable service to
| the Union cause, resulting in many of them
finally entering into the conflict of battle
when justly took the position that a
| class of men. many of whom had risked
their lives for our flag, many of whom had
| lost their lives in its defense. could not in
| the justice of God be held in slavery under
| its folds.
| Time will not permit. nor have I the dis
position to go into the details of that mighty
| struggle. but In the memory of those of
| you TO whom those days and deeds SIM
ply history | would leave these tremen-
| dously impressive facts.
| The north and the south contested on two
thousand fields of battle and skirmish.
| Dead on the field, dead in hospital or
| prison pen, the Union forces left 100000 of
| their comrades. Besides these. a vast army
of crippled and permanently diseased COM
| rades and hosts of widows and fatherless
| We seemed TO be repeating the history
| of Pharaohs time-in many homes did
| the first born lie dead.
| a vast difference in point of view has
| existed ever since between those who en-
| dured and those who merely observed. 1t
| relates to the cost of the war, and / am
| frank to say In this great presence that
my very soul revolts when l hear men
| speak OF the cost of the war and undertake
+, TO put II In dollars On this occasion. so
| sacred TO us, l refuse to consider the cost
! OF the war any financial line in the
slightest degree. The real cost of the war,
its mighty cost, the only cost which ought
| to rise IN the thought and to the lips of pa
triotic men when they speak of what the
war cost. should be computed in relation to
the splendid manhood of the nation, south
and north. which went to premature graves
| in that mighty conflict.
| If II had not been for that war. and its
| awful holocaust, there would have been
| at least three-quarters OF a million more
of homes in this country than exist today.
After Appomattox' Pictured.
| turn from this TO ask your attention, for
a moment. 10 what l may term the com
| pensatory side of the question. What
| gathered we as the fruit of this great