The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1915-06-03
Memorial Address at Liberty
Before E. H. Bradstreet Post No. A., G. A.
H., and Citizens.

Before E. H. Bradstreet Post No. A., G. A.
H., and Citizens.
Sunday, May Both, at p. M, Frank
lin F. Phillips delivered the following |
address at Liberty:
Members of Liberty Post of the Grand
Army of the Republic, Fellow Citizens
of my native town of Searsmont and the
towns of Liberty and Montville, in both
of which lived in the stirring days of
the sixties of the great Civil War; La
dies and Gentlemen: A year has passed
since we observed the solemnities of
Memorial Day in this beautiful place,
the charm of which is imaged deep and
clear in my boyhood memories. This
village in the idyllic gorge of the bah
bling waters of "The Georges. between
two gracefully rounded hills that rise to
the dignity of true mountains, with its
vista of lake and lea and wood and
mountains to the south, while life re-
mains will appear to me Bethel, where
in my dreams from my boyhood "pillow
of stone" l saw the angels ascending
and descending. through the sun and
moon-gilded cloud-gates of heaven. I'm.
speakably lovely also is the setting OF
this day when we meet to pay homage to
our soldiers dead, this Both OF May,
when young leaf and bloom are passing
from the bosom of spring into the lap of
summer, as passed the troops of gallant
boys of this northland in the sixties into
the heated contests of the southland;
many of them, alas, destined never
again to return to the homes in which
their eyes first saw the light of life.
share your just pride that they and
YOU, Gentlemen of the Grand Army,
fought for cause that will be justified
in the pages of human history, till time
shall be no more, as the best, the most
worthy cause for which men ever took
up arms and went forth IN battle, to live
or die, as heaven should decree-went
when the slave and secession issue was
forced upon you, the naughty foe having
Note the strange tragedy of that choice
in the fact that the man who begged the
distinction of firing the first gun against
the Union at Charleston in that April
day of 81, committed suicide at the
collapse of the rebellion in April, '65.
The deepest lament of human history
is in the fact that man has to marked
extent exploited and enslaved his fellow
man. Confucius, the great Chinaman OF
$500 years ago, whose name IS to this
day reverenced by millions of OrientaIs,
said, "Give me full command of men for
three years, and | will show you per-
feet government" but they could not
comply with the request. Well nigh
thousand years before that period the
dream of freedom on the part of the
most gifted people in some particulars
the world ever knew, who had suffered
400 years of calling slavery in the brick
yards and mud sites of Egypt, while the
hand of the A ssyrian oppressed them,
took shape in the most perfect civil code
the world ever knew, the code of Moses,
the rush Graded waif of the Nile. that
bas been built into the civil codes of all
civilized nations; but that did not do
away with human exploitation and hu-
man slavery, more baneful in its effect
on the enslaver than on the enslaved.
When the Gallilean Founder of the
worlds ideal, the White Empire of Peace
and Good Will among Men, after 1900
years of experiment and failure of Moses
code, in the matter of civil emancipation
alone, proclaimed good tidings to the
poor, the healing of the bruised, and the
deliverance of them that were In bonds,
not only were the masses of his own
nation slaves and serfs, but all but 5000
of the 100000 people of Athens the
worlds university city and seat of the
worlds great philosophers, were slaves;
while half the great Roman Empire
were under the sane iniquitous ban, and
that pertaining to its white population
alone Of course the dusky races were
in subsection wherever the Empire held
sway. Kings, princes, dukes, doctors
of the law and privileged classes were
thus in league with wantonly wicked
and blood-thirsty Emperor, the ruined
monuments of whose old outrages are
still to be seen in the old world. Oh,
shame for mans humanity to man!
There followed three hundred years,
in which those who cherished the ideal
of the White Empire of Peace and Good
Will among Men, stood absolutely aloof
from any participation in the Roman
Empire that was not wrung from them
by sheer torce. There followed the con-
version of Constantine, and then the de-
cay of the Empire, it's vitals being eaten
out, its historic fall in the west dating
A. d. 49, Savagery then became su-
philosophy, no law. Another dread fol-
lowed. The Saracens swept over north
Africa and into Europe, threatening the
destruction of what remained. Charles
Martel met and checked the Saracens in
the great battle of Tours in A. d. 1872.
His grandson, seven feet TALL German
in language, "a Frenchman by name,
Charlemagne, built a new empire in the
heart of Europe in fifty-three military
expeditions, embracing the present terri
tory of Germany, Holland, Belgium,
France, Austria and north Italy, having
his court at Aix-la- Chapelle. At his
death the empire fell to pieces, and I'M
der Normans and Huns anarchy again
reigned. Feudal castles, lords and vas
sails, monks and monastcries grew as the
refugees of the medieval time, known
as the Ozark Ages" Hidebrand,
naughty and imperious, strong in adj
versity, but temperate in prosperity,
next brought order out of chaos; and
autocracies grew and multiplied after
him.
The dreams of the sovereignty of man
were cherished through all of these sue
cessions. North Italy, southeast France,
Holland, Hungary, and England, all had
their idealists of human freedom and
government of, for and by the people.
Napoleon rose in the latter part of the
eighteenth century, to smash the divine
right of kings, and to palter with those
who handled the shackles of ecclesiastic-
ISM All me: his own brilliant successes
blipdod him m his non1lar mission and