The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1913-07-04
ADDRESS.
and Fellow Citizens:

Friends and Fellow Citizens:
need not tell you what the battle
of Gettysburg meant. These gailahV
men in blue and gray sit all about
us here. Many of them met here upon
this ground in grim and deadly strug-
gle. Upon these famous fields ana
hillsides their comrades died about
them. In their presence it were an
impertinence to discourse upon now
the battle went, how it ended, what
it signified, But so years have gone
by since then, and crave the priv
ilege of speaking to you for a FEW
minutes of what those so years have
meant.
What have they meant? They have
meant peace and union and vigour, and
the maturity and might of a great ma
ton. How wholesome and healing the
peace has been! We have found one
another again as brothers and COM
rades in arms, enemies no longer,
generous friends rather, our battles
long past, the quarrel forgotten-ex-
cept that we shall not forget the
splendid Valour, the manly devotion of
the men then arrayed against one an
other, now grasping hands and smll-
| ing into each others eyes. How COM
plete the union has become and how
dear to all of us, how unquestioned,
how benign and majestic, as state af-
ter state has been added to this our
great family of free men! How hand
some the vigour, the maturity, the
might of the great nation we love
with undivided hearts; how full or
large and confident promise that
life will be wrought out that will
crown its strength with gracious JUS
tice and with happy welfare that
will touch all alike with deep content
metn! We are debtors to those 80
crowded years; they have made us
heirs to a mighty heritage.
But do we deem the nation complete
and finished? These venerable men
crowding here to this famous field
lave set us a great example OF de-
votion and utter sacrifice. They were
wiling to die that the people might
live. But their task Is dcne. Their
day has dawned into evening. They
look to us to perfect what they es-
tablisked. Their work is handed on
to us, to be done in another way Dut
not in another spirit. Our day is not
over: it is upon us in full tide.
Have affairs paused? Does the ma"
ton stand still? Is what the 80 years
have wrought since those days OF
battle finished rounded out, and COM
pleted? Here is a great people, great
with every force that has ever beaten
in the life blood Of mankind. And
it is secure. There is no one within
it's borders, there is no power among
the nations of the earth, to make it
afraid. But has it yet squared itself
with its own great standards set up
! at its birth, when it made that first
noble, naive appeal to the moral judg-
ment of mankind to take notice that
a government had now at last been
established which was to serve men,
not masters? 1t is secure in every
thing except the satisfaction that its
life is right, adjusted to the utter
most to the standards 6 righteousness
and humanity. The days of sacrifice
, and cleansing are rot closed. We
have harder things TO do than were
|, done in the heroic days of war, be-
cause harder to see clearly, requiring
|, more vision, more calm balance OF
judgment, a more candid searching
!. of the very springs of right.
Look around you upon the field OF
Gettysburg! Picture the array, the
fierce heats and agony of battle, col
| umn hurled against column, battery
believing to battery! Valour? Yes!
Greater no man shall see in war; and
. elf-sacrifice. and loss to the utter
. most: the high recklessness of ex-
. alted devotion which does not count
the cost. We are made by these tragic
epic things to know what it costs to
make a nation-the blood and sacri-