Connecticut western news., 1911-06-01

second part The party of the first part is the state; the party of the second part is the citizen. Every naturalized alien who assumes the obligations of citizen. ship, every native-born son who arrives at the age of majority-every man who has and claims a country and flag en- ters into this sacred relationship. No man can escape it.
 The party of the first part covenants and agrees to preserve order, to build roads, to establish schools. to maintain courts of justice, to provide equitable laws. to set up institutions of charity, to establish foreign consulates, to main. tain an army and navy, and to reach out it's long, strong arm to the uttermost isle of the seven seas to uphold and safe guard and protect its humblest subject and citizen. That is the states con- tract.
 The party of the second part covenants and agrees to obey the laws, to help sup press mobs and violence to pay taxes, to go to the polls and vote, to study public questions, to serve on juries, to hold pos itions of trust, and, if need be, to go to war and offer up his life for his land. This is a citizens contract.
 It is the conscious or unconscious re- cognition of this great principle that constitutes patriotism. Patriotism is to citizenship what conjugal love is to mar riage. 1t is noble, @ sacred, holy thing. l think l see in the philosophis- ings of certain political and socials cults, and in the enthusiasms of certain move ments of international scope--I think I see in these an insidious tendency to be- little and undermine this old.fashioued virtue. think see on the part>of cer. tain dreamers of dreams 8 tendency to look upon all nations with like favor. Indeed 1 sometimes detect and resent a disposition to sympathise with tue enemies of one's land in great controver- subsequently, when those enemies hap pen to be weak people and men of another color. My friends, man has no more right to join, issue against his own land than he has to join issue against his own wife, and home. and tireside. His country hedges him about in his sleeping and waking hours. Its lnstru- mentalities are watching over him whithersoever he goes. He accepts all these favors. Not only should affection, not only should love, not only should fidelity. hold him to an unbroken loyalty to that flag and that land, but even the ordinary instincts of reciprocity and gratitude should hold him to that coun- try. This is patriotism. This is the philosophy, the ethics, the rationale of patriotism.
 It was such a contract as this that our colonial ancestors recognized when they set up a new civilization upon an unex. plored continent under the protection of the mother country. It was such a con- tract as this that the mother country broke In the exercise of the inaliena- ble right of revolution, our fathers drew up new contract, separate and distinct from the relationship which had for merly held them, and America was born "a tottering infant in the family of nations. For seventy years that con- tract, that constitution, that covenant stood. Then came the supreme test. Then came the days that tried mems souls.
 Surviving veterans of that great con- test, you know the story-as who does not know it? It is engraven on memories with the chisel of experience. It is ren. dered holy by your scars. It is typifed by the bronze badge of courage that stands upon your breasts. You are the men who kept the faith. You are the men who redeemed the pledge. You are the men that fulfilled the contract even unto death
 The speaker said he wished to cordially ) approve the editorial suggestion made by The News, that the time has come when others must relieve the veterans of the burden which the full observance of Memorial Day imposes-the physical labor involved in carrying out the de. ) tails of preparation and decoration. The veterans are richly entitled to your best cooperation.
 Pity the man, if such there he, who shall begrudge to these surviving hero x, these thinned and ever thinning ranks, these splendid and living reminders Of how nobly men can live and how will. ingly men can die-pity the man, say, who would begrudge to thee, veterans of that Grandest of all Grani Armies, a single farthing of the modest reward ! that great and grateful p 'ople extends to cheer and hearten their declihing Dir tLan n.--LA LAaa nt