The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1909-05-30
DECORATION DAY LESSONS.

! Decoration Day a holiday, dccrees that
! when holiday falls on Sunday, the
succeeding Monday shall be observed
as the holiday; and this will be the
programme this year.
There viii be memorial services to-
day, in honor of the departed veteran
dead, there will be evidences of love
and appreciation in the cemeteries, but
tho official observanccs will be tomor-
row, and the official ceremonies Of the
Grand Army posts will be at the Gene
teries at the hours named in the local
programme in the columns of the local
reports.
1t is altogether fitting that the OBJ
servances OF the day be carried forward
with loyal reverence, that the great
sentiment upon which the day was
founded shall be kept ever fresh in the
minds OF the people Of this country
To those who are always counseling
moderation, who never wish to push
things TO extremes, who never desire
to appear so much IN earnest in thc
advocacy Of their convictions or prin-
ciplcs, as to offend anybody, it is well
TO recur TO time when there had TO
be earnestncss and uncompromising
staunchucss to principle, or the Nation
would be slain.
The young men who volunteered to
serve the cause Of the Nation, TO de-
fend its life, and 10 offer their own
lives for it. were not men disposed nat
urally to war, They did not undertake
to 90 TO battle merely TO vindicate
their own courage, or TO show that the
fighting blood of our race had not de-
Perforated; much less would those men,
by that act, wish TO pronounce them
selves merely fighting men, going forth
to meet other fighting men to see
which would win in the long and tc-
dious campaigns and bloody battles
that all knew would follow. They went
in vindication of their convictions, of
the principles of loyalty, and 10 en-
force the rights Of frcemen and the
right of the Nation to live. They went
TO put down the assailants of the Ma
ton S life, and to prove, no matter
how much argument might Justify the
right Of secession, no matter how much
it might be thought that the States
which went voluntarily into the Union,
had the right to withdraw from it at
pleasure, that idea must be opposed.
and that National life would he pro
tected. at the cost Of the hearts blood
of those who pledged their lives on
the altar Of freedom. Many tens of
thousands fell in that struggle, de-
Tending the Nation IS honor and the Ma
ton $ life; many other ten thousands
were cruelty wounded or were stricken
with illness which shortened their
DAYS, and made their lives
a torture until the grave ended all
worldly effort for them.
1t was not merely a matter of fight
ing for the sake of fighting, nor for
the sake of seeing whether the North
Of the South had the better men. II
was a case where the claim that the
better education in the North, its high
er standard of hteracy, was bound to
prevail over the men of the South,
was proven a fallacy. Man for man
the combatsnts were about as evenly
matched as it would be possible to
choose champions TO decide any event
or question, whatever. The man of
the South who could not read was apt
to shoot just as quick and as true, if
not little more so, than the man of
books from the North. And SO far
as that is concerned, the contest de.
cided nothing. The great thing that
was decided was that the Nation must
live, and that those who assailed it
must be destroyed. And in the arbitra-
ment of war the Nation triumphed,
and it triumphed because it was right
it triumphed because the Nation was
a great exemplar to mankind of free
institutions, of liberty-loving men gov
erniug themselves. The sentiment
which induced those young men TO go
forth to war, not because they loved
war, for most of them hated it in and
Of itself, arose from their full deter
mination to put down in blood assaults
upon the Nations life which had been
made in blood,
The lesson Of the dav. therefore. il
not that war is good, or that it is good
to have fighting men; but that men
shall stand fast by their convictions
and push them TO whatever extreme
is necessary whenever they are fully
satisfied that they are right. The les
son Of the day is not lesson for the
compromising of opinions; but of en-
forcing right and loyal opinions to the
| utmost possible extremity, where vital
issues are at stake; and that spirit
should he the oxygen that the day