Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 132, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1914 — DAY OF UNION AND LIBERTY [ARTICLE]

DAY OF UNION AND LIBERTY

This I* the Time the Nation Should Remember the Debt It Owes to the Veterans. On May 30, 1862, there was no such smiling land as we see this day. Then the booming of the guns alternated with a dead march four years long; today we see an exultant republic, running eagerly forward to meet its fuller and more glorious destiny. And whom shall we thank for this? The venerable men who walk or ride on Memorial day beneath their sacred battle flags, and the men who sleep today beneath the blue of the sky and the stars of the night How great their sacrifice! Some gave literally all they had —even their names. They lie in unmarked trenches, their very place of sepulture forgotten. Their names are lost, and they have gained a name the which neither man nor time can wrest from them —the name of Patriot. . _ .. Their prowess save us peace; Undying be their fame. It is for us of the younger generation) whose eyes opened on a country wrapped in peace, to fill up our hearts as urns with the precious wine of gratitude and offer them, brimming over, to that Grand Army of the Republic which marches in flesh and spirit on Memorial day. Are there shadowy and invisible reunions at Bull Run, and. SpottsylVania, and the Wilderness, and Manassas, and Malvern Hill, and Cold Harbor, and Gettysburg, and Atlanta? Well, might there be when the nation at this time rises on memory’s wings to the heights of

a vicarious heroism. For Memorial day is the day of the living and the dead, the day of comrades whom no sting of death nor lapse of time can separate. It is the day when the Grandy Army militant salutes the Grand Army triumphant. It is the sacramental day of nationality. It is the day we acknowledge each and all our debt to the boys of ’62, who are now the patriarchs of ’l4. It is the day of neither North nor South, nor East nor West, but of Union and Liberty, now and forevgr, one and inseparable.