The Marietta journal. (Marietta, Ga.) 1918-1944, 1921-04-21
OUR MEMORIAL DAY
HAS GREAT MEANING
Continued from page one.)

Continued from page one.)
For this reason Memorial Days
have their meaning for those who
proudly wore the gray as well as the
blue. There are no political demon
tsrations thought of With the issues
of the present we have nothing to do
and it were no less proftless than
sad to revive those of the past. Next
Tuesday southerners will pay the an
nual homage of flowers to the heroes
who made the supreme sacrifice on
the martial field for great patriotic
principle. All owe rthe southland are
graves that are to freedom shrines.
TIE dust they hold returned to dust
that peoples cause might live. The
cause, like the heroes, persisted. So
much the more reason for this
tribute of grateful love. They who
fall with vanquished right are doubly
martyred.
No perfunctory ceremony this,
continued as seemly duty, since
other years but the dull pang of sor-
row recurs as memory lifts aside
Times sable veil and bids US remem-
Der the unreturning brave. The land
has still, women whose hearts are in
those graves, and men whose strong
est friendships lie buried there.
The South has forgiven, but it has
not forgotten.
And so, with April sun and shower
wooing the verdure from earth's pull
sing breast, while the hooking bird
whistles and trills among the haunt
ed pines, we send our garland-bear-
ing professions to the bivouac of our
soldier dead, and, for the day live
over the epic-tragedy in which they
acted well their part. There are
emotions of nation, as of an indi-
viduai, too tender for words, too sad
for tears. In such dumb grief, God
has given but one adequate and sat-
isfactory expression to the heart of a
people or the heart of a man-Flow-
erS.
Let your white gowned daughters
bank high those .weather-beaten,
sunken graves with the first bloom of
the year, and bid commerce, which
affects to know no sentiment, stand
uncovered. If Memorial Day is not
sacred day, and our cemetery not
holy ground, then truth is will O.
the wisp and life but an apple of
Sodom.
On our Confederate Memorial Day
no spectral hand is stretched from
the dead past to make the living pre-
sent shudder. No raven fits from
the cypress shade to croak "Never-
more" in the sunshine. No vanished
hopes and thwarted ambitions re-
turn to trouble joy and stir insurgent
thoughts.
To-day the South is a paean of
peace and good will. 1t has put its
hands to the pillow of progress and is
not looking back. Vanquished by
the sword it has learned, in travail
and patience, the secret of a victory
greater than any gain of war. The
crab of falling trees is heard in its
thinning forests, and the din of in
dustry sounds from it's Speeding
cities. Over the cotton-whitened
fields hangs the smoke of textile fac
tories and out of its busy 'marts the
wheels of traffic glide grooming with
the fruits of its development.
But the "new south" is not dis
loyal to the old. In the flush of the
victory of peace it stoops reverently
to lay cross of immortelles upon
the turf that covers its heroes slain.
The American spirit draws its
healthiest inspiration from the South
and always did. The South is the
only section of our country that re-
tains its American individuality. It
has no polygot population, harboring
allegiance across seas. It's sons are
straight descendants of the pre-revo-
iutionary pioneers, and their Ameri-
canism is bred in the bone. It is be-
cause they were such intense Ameri-
cans that they were drawn into "the
late unpleasantness."
There is no lingering touch of Bit
terness in the sentiment with which
the South enshrines the memory of
tie Lost Cause" There is a touch
OF the divine in the spirit with which
1T has forgiven. We speak of the
wonders of its recovery from the de-
ISOLATION of those four terrible years.
The completeness of its reconciliation
to the fate of the conquered and its
forgiveness is yet a great wonder.
To the children of the wartime gene
ration that stupenduous epoch is only
history. The father taught the son
no Hannibalic oath of eternal hatred.
No rancorous feud was transmitted
to unborn years. The South forged
Its bayonets into plowshares with
right good will and set about its Gre
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