Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1898 — Gratitude. [ARTICLE]

Gratitude.

America’s show of gratitude for the deeds of her soldier heroes is a fitting monument to patriotism. No nation can compare with ours in the wealth of its reward for sacrifice. France prides herself upon the greatness of her Hotel des Invalided, and England boasts of the vastness of her military hospitals for the “queen’s own,” but America’s National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, as the final triumph of military asylums, surpasses anything else of the kind yet conceived. Of that vast horde of the youth and vigor of this country that freely offered itself in the cause of union, and liberty some 20,000 survivors are to-day in this retreat waiting for the final reveille. While they live they live like courtiers of a king, and when they die Old Glory’s folds enshroud their mortal clay, and booming cannon herald their departure on the last grand march.