Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-10-10
our GRAY old Hero Guests.
TLANTA'S whole heart goes out in
q welcome to the good gray knights

"a welcome to the good gray knights
and their attendant company of dis
tinguished and charming guests who are
gathered within her gates for the reunion of
the Confederate veterans. chlvalrous and
solemnly beautiful time it is-a summoning
of memories that grow ever more gracious
with the drifting autumns; a mastering of
warriors, still gallant through the dust of
weary years, who soon VIII cross over the
river and rest with old comrades beneath
the shade of the trees" 1t is to them and
their epicaI story that we turn in these rare
reunion days with the affection and f1lial
reverence of people whose spirit stands true
to old -shrnes and old heroisms. Looking
into their eyes, where once the fires of battle
famed so valiantly and where rose the tears
which only brave and broken hearts en-
gender, we see the South of our fathers, green
and magical again-that' land of courtll-
ness and fruitful leisure, of melloWness and
patriarchal state; that dear, dear past which,
''being dead, yet speaketh" with heroic and
tender grace.
It is no Lost Cause" which these vet
Grams and their sons and daughters have
gathered to commemorate; 1t is cause
transfigured and caught up among the stars
of history. More than that, it is cause
whose very sorrows made for greater South
and live, along with its glOries, as an en-
nobling power. For these gray soldiers
who revisit us today were at their greatest
and nobIest, not in the flush of Bull Run and
Fredericksburg, but when they turned grim
ly homeward in the desolatlon OF 1865. There
lay the test of Southern mettle, and thence
sprang the hardest resolution of people
whose English fibre was blent with the zeal
of the Hugenot and the steadfastness of the
Scottish Covenanter. If men had said be-
fore that the South's was the heritage OF the
cavalier, lacking the stern strength of New
Engand's Puritan ancestry, they could say
SO never again as they watched the Con-
federacys disbanded warriors graphing With
a bIeaker and fiercer wilderness than the
Pilgrims from the Mayflower ever adventur-
ed We honor the veterans of that struggle
the pioneers of the new South who kept heart
when all about them was ruin and kept faith
when all before them seemed darkest peril.
We honor and revere them for the gaunt
courage with which they carried forward the
torch of their civilization and rebuilt its
broken affairs; for we know that had they
failed there would be no such South as over
arches us today, and no such America.
Theirs was the spirit after all, which made
the Union worth saving-a spirit too great
for harbOring bitterness, too high to dwell
sullenly upon things lost when things to be
achieved lay ahead. Theirs is the American
ism that has sent two generations OF gallant
sons to fight for the Stars and Stripes since
their own cherished banner was furled.
Theirs is the loyalty to the Republics early
faith and leading to which we of these trou-
bled latter times shall do well to take heed
"as unto light that shineth in dark place.
If these beloved veterans speak to us of
heroic past, they speak yet more eloquently
of the present and future, bidding us face a
new age with courage and go forward with
the new duties which Americas larger mis-
sion in the world now lays upon u.s.
Atlanta welcomes them. all Georgia well
comes them, the whole South takes them to
her heart the whole nation looks with quick
ened spirit and misty eyes upon their ranks
of gray marching once more to the old music,
ere the sun set and the last of the thin line
has vanished.