Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1910 — PATRIOTIC LESSON IN MEMORIAL DAY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PATRIOTIC LESSON IN MEMORIAL DAY.

OF ALL our anniversaries. Memorial Day is the one that has most power to stir the American heart, and to show that this heart still beats true to the traditions of the heroic age of out republic. The decoration of the graves of those who have died for their country is no outgrowth of modern sentimentality. This custom is of great antiquity; classic Greece was wont to thus honor its departed heroes. Inspired poets recited their eulogies. Great orators extolled their valor and self-sacrifice. Sweet-voiced singers sang their praises. White-robed maidens strewed with flowers the graves of those who had been laid to rest in native earth, while a nation’s tears fell for the unreturning brave who had fallen on the field of battle, and lay in unmarked trenches which are so often the soldier’s last resting place* On the 23d and 24th of May, 1865, the armies of the Union passed in grand review before the President and

the Secretary of War in Washington. It was one of the most impressive and soul-stirring pageants which this country has ever seen. On the first day eighty thousand men of the Army of the Potomac marched through the ■streets of the national capital, and on the following day the sixty-nine thousand members of Sherman’s army carried their tattered flags over the same line of march. In all there were one hundred and forty-nine thousand men in that blue tide which, 'for six hours on one day and on the next, flowed past the Capitol; and on the great banner which stretched across the front the building the tired and war-worn veterans read a sentiment which must have touched their hearts. It was their country’s acknowledgment of her sense of obligation to them. The words were these: “The only national debt we can never pay is the debt we owe the victorious Union soldiers." This year a thousand little processions made up of those same men will march behind muffled drums and with flowers in their hands, to decorate the graves of those' comrades w'nose marching days are- done. Those who passed before the President in the grand review of forty-five years ago were mostly young men, some of them mere boys. The little companies which make their way from post headquarters to the cemetery now are made up of old men. Each year finds the heads whiter, the line thinner, the steps more feeble. Yet the loving memories remain unchanged, the old comrades unforgotten, the service in their honor unneglected. The dignity and faithfulness with which the veterans of the Civil War •observe, this annual ceremony has not been lost upon the country. The pathetic spectacle of these feeble old men marching every year under the flag they once defended has touched us all. It has helped us to realize that we have indeed a ‘national debt we can never pay," and has confirmed the beautiful custom of giving one day in the year to our dead, be they soldier or civilian.