The daily sentinel., 1907-05-18
pERvERs1oN OF MEMORIAL DAY.


Many people, more especially those
who are spoken of in kind of pat
ronizing way as "old Fashioned, /"
have been disposed to critlcise sharp
ly the readiness of so many members
of the Grand Army of the Republic
to promote any kind of movement
that promised to get anything in the
nature of pension from the govern
ment.
1t has not been quite fair to the
Grand Army society to draw its name
into these criticisms in a way that
has seemed to imply that the society
as an organization has been conduct
ing raids on the national treasury" I"
This is not the fact, and as to the
men who make up the society they do
not differ from the men who are
not members in their readiness to get
all the dollars they can out of the
public.
In this matter, even If the criticism
were well founded as to fact, fair
men could not hold them more CEN
surable than men in general. In any
other matter. the indignant protest
they make against the growing fash
ion of converting Memorial day into
a festal holiday, no reasonable person
can refuse them the warmest and
widest sympathy.
The day was set apart to be observ-
ed by all in reverent memory of those
who took arms in defense of the ma
ton in any of our wars, but more es-
pecially in the Civil war, and who
gave their lives in that conflict. It
was not possible to do this honor to
the anniversary of the death of each
and so one day was selected to stand
as the representative of all.
For many years the day was OBJ
served only seriously. as the anniver-
sary of the death of friend should
be, and with an eye to intoxicating
that broad and unselfish love of coun-
try which prompted most of soldiers
to take the risks they took. In re-
cent years change has come. Men
have forgotten, that 1t is a death day
and not birthday and have begun to
observe it with excursions and dances
and extra ball games and races and
holiday matinees in the theaters.
There is tendency in our people
to do this with every day when the
business of life is laid aside. Even
the birthday of the nation has largely
lost the patriotic color long given to
its observance and the festal element
has taken almost complete possession
of that day and about all our holi-
days.
In most cases this does not jar on
ones sense of fitness. for most of
them are natal days. The devoutest
church man feels no aversion to festal
observances sof Christmas, for that is
itself an anniversary of hope and
peace. But the church would be very
decidedly shocked If the crowd were
to turn to observing Good Friday
with dances and games and all sorts
of festal rejoicings.
A large proportion of Grand Army
men look with much the same kind of
abhorrence on the festal observance
of Memorial day. With these hon
ored dead" in Mr.. Lincoln's phrase,
they marched and fought and suffer-
ed. They buried them in hurried,
bloody graves or they were forced to
leave them TO the mercies of the foe.
The havoc and distress and marty
dom of those terrible years are very
real and vivid in their recollection
And now, when they, too, weighted
with years, and moving on the brink
of the grave, go out to lay flower of
memory on the resting places of those
comrades who near fifty years ago
gave the last full measure of devo-
ton to cause that has and still
is sacred to their ears offended by
| the Tilt of the piper's tune" and the
| shouts of the merrymaker, fills many
an old soldier with a sense of wrath
full humiliation, a feeling that his
comrades died and he risked death
for something of the value of which
the generation to which they trans
mitted 1t knows nothing.
1t is impossible not to feel some
sympathy with his wrath. Year by
year this day of heroic memories los
es more and more its patriotic sig
nitcance. 1t may be. as some say,
that the change has come because we
nave too few days of festal relaxation
but that is no excuse for perverting
the memory of the great tragedy in
TO farce and that too while many
OF the old players still live and re-
member and see the perversion.
Even If We have no sense of the
ttness of things nor consideration
for those whose devotion made the
day observed at all our own selfish
interest should a6monish us to keep
the day and its significance unpervert-
ed forever, for as surely as the night
follows the day the time will come
again to us as 1t comes more than
once to every people, when we shall
surely need all the uplifting power of
every shade and CLEAN of heroic and
patriotic inspiration that we can CLEAN
from our past.-Chicago Chronicle.
| L. E. Brown. of the Clark hotel