New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1913-07-05
CITY OBSERVES FOURTH
WITH MUSIC AND SONG
Sunlight Helps Make Safe and
Sane Exercises a Success
Mayor Stays Away.
DELAY AT CITY HALL
Boy Scouts Step Into Breach
When Executive Fails to APP
pear-Dr. Soyeda, of Japan,
Praises Our Progress.

Praises Our Progress.
Thousands Of persons gathered in the
bright sunlight yesterday in the various
parks and open spaces in Greater New
York to lend their aid in the city's great
est safe and sane Fourth of July cele-
bration ever held. The days exercises
were pronounced a success on all sides.
The programme as arranged for the
different boroughs went through without
a hitch The patriotic exercises planned
for City Hall by Mayor Gaynor's safe and
sane committee were delayed a short
while. owing to the failure Of the Mayor
10 appear He stayed away. as his voice
was not in condition TO permit him to
speak in the open air, il was said.
The celebration at City Hall opened at
1890 a. m. with the appearance of four
boy scouts. accoutred in the cooked hats
and blue and white uniforms of Cont
nentals, and bearing the Stars and Stripes
side by side with the flag of the Revolu-
ton. They filed up the City Hall steps
70 the music of a fife-the same kind of
fife used when Alexander Hamilton drilled
his company on the Common, since be-
come the site of City Hall.
The Boy Scouts of America not merely
opened the exercises but played the chief
part in making it possible. The con-
tractors who were to put up the stands
had failed TO materalize. as Controller
Prendergast said, and the entire work
had TO be done by the boys, who also
acted as ushers.
After the invocation by the Rev. Percy
Stckney Grant. ID, rector of the
Church Of the Ascension, Controller
Prendergast, who presided. made the eX-
cuses of the Mayor. whom cold had
prevented from attending. Dir. Prender-
CAST declared that the Fourth was in
a sense an international celebration, for
il marked the triumph Of male suffrage
on an entire continent.
I'VE also celebrate to-day" he said
the victory Of Gettysburg and Grants
entry into Vicksburg, and we may well
be thankful not only for those victories,
which made the Stars and Stripes wave
over a united country, but for the great
tenderness which has made the men who
fought on that field fifty years ago unite
on it to-day and pledge themselves anew
to the country for which their comrades
died"
Herman Ridder and j. s. Hyatt, Of
Philadelphia, who had been appointed by
Mayor Blankenburg to attend the celebra-
ton, praised Mayor Gaynor for his efforts
toward a safer Fourth. Mr.. Hyatt said
that during the Fourth in Philadelphia
four years ago they had killed four peo-
pie and injured more than 400, all in the
name Of patriotism. Mayor Gaynor's ex-
ample in New York. he said, had done
much to make a repetition of such Things
in other cities impossible.
Mr.. Prendergast, in introducing DR.. ].
Soyeda, of the Japanese Chambers of
Commerce, said that the American people
as a whole bitterly resented the efforts
made by certain demagogues to embroil
them with Japan.
"Sages and great men are the common
property of the world" said DR.. Soyeda,
"ard the names of the founders of this
Republic are household words in Japan as
in America. Coming as I do from the
Far East, I cannot help admiring the
achievements you have already accom-
plished. Such a wonderful anu unparal-
leled progress as we witness here is. of
course, the result Of the activity of the
American people in every direction
Higher still than this admiration is the
hope placed in your country by its neigh
bors on he other shore of the Pacific.
You are called upon to do the noble work
o. amalgamating the different races Of the
world and of uniting the East with the
West"
Captain Benedict J. Greenhut then read
The Declaration of independence. and John
Barrett, director general of the Pan-Amer-
lean Union, made a brief address. in
which he declared that the Declaration
had been the inspiration for twenty other
republics on this continent. He then read
a message from DR.. Lauro Muller, Min
lister for Foreign Affairs of Brazil. The
message felicitated America upon its in
dependence, and declared that the Brazil
ian statesman sympathized deeply with
his brothers of the North in their rejoic-
ing
Then came patriotic songs by the De
Witt Clinton High School girls, an ad-
dress by Borough President McAneny,
who said that New York's problems were
in a sense those Of the world, for New
York comprised among its list Of citizens
men from almost every section of the
globe then "The Star-Spangled Banner
and the meeting was over.