Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 113, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1910 — Memorial Day Proclamation [ARTICLE]

Memorial Day Proclamation

By GOVERNOR MARSHALL

Death is the arch gleaner in the fields of time. Each day is harvest day and each soul is ripened grain. Windrow after windrow, he mows down the human race. He spares not young man nor maiden, nor him who stoops with age. Each going down lehves a void unfilled in some human breast; but the patriot’s death sobers and fills with sorrow the nation’s heart. If the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church, then the life and death of the soldier who offered his life as a willing sacrifice for the preservation of the Union, must remain the most fruitful germ in the formation of American character. It is well for a people to live in the present and to plan for the future bpt it is ill for a people to forget the past. Thus far, in our history, we have not ceased to remember the toil, devotion and sacrifice of the living and; the dead who, from ’6l to ’65, counted all else naught if thereby they might preserve the union of the states. Year by year, with the beauty of the lily and the fragrance of the rose, we seek .to voice above their graves the gratitude of the American to the hero of that- age. Only a feW' now stand near the portals of that door which never outward swings. This year as they bedew with tears

the graves of their long-gone companions in arms, let the people'of Indiana reverently lay aside their usual avocations and join in this .solemn service. Let them make the day one of solemn consecration to the rights of men and of saddened reverence for that shedding of blood without which, thus far, in the world's history, there has been no remission of sin. In the hope that such will be the character of that day, I, Thomas R. Marshall, Governor of the state of Indiana, do hereby designate and set apart Monday, May 30th, 1910, as MEMORIAL DAY, 9 and do proclaim the same to be a legal holiday throughout the state May all that is said that day come from lips afire with patriotism and hearts aglow with love for the hero dead and the hero living. Rone at the Capitol in Indianapolis and given under my hand and the great seal of the state of Indiana, this 11th day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ten, aijd in the year of the independence of the United States one hundred thirty-fourth.

THOMAS R. MARSHALL,

Governor. FRED A. SIMS, Secretary of State.