Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1903 — THE CITIZEN’S DUTY [ARTICLE]

THE CITIZEN’S DUTY

Governor Durbin Touches the Keynote of One of Today’s Very Present Needs. ~ Mb -'■ » t ■ , A TERRIBLE OBJECT LESSON V , ~jJ «*«". Address to the Indiana Bons of Veteran! Conveys In No Uncertain Terms the Views of the State’s Chief Executive Upon the Recent Horror at Evansville —Some Needful Truths Are Driven Home. Indianapolis. July 10. Governor Winfield T. Durbin’s address to the state camp of tfie Sons of Veterans Wednesday evening, read by Major Arthur L. Bodurtha of. the Peru Journal In the absence of the governor, who was detained at Indianapolis by reason of the threatening situation at Evansville, is being widely quoted because of the emphatic declarations of the state’s chief executive setting forth his attitude on race riots and lynch laws. Coming at a time when the state is in the shadow of a terrible object lesson in the fearful results of attempted mob rule, the governor’s utterances on this occasion are of present interest. Governor Durbin said: ■- - - r -

"The demands of public business, made more pressing by unfortunate occurrences within the borders of the state, make it imperative that I shohld cancel my engagement to be present during the state encampment of the Sons of Veterans, I have been looking forward with pleasurable anticipation to this occasion, not only because of the gratification it would give me to renew old and agreeable associations. but that I might give oral expression to the high respect in which I hold the great organization you represent.

“The men who fought on the battlefields of the Rebellion did more than merely to preserve the Union in its original integrity. Great as was that consummation, of ever greater value is the heritage of inspiration which has come down to later generations of Americans through the noble courage, the transcendent patriotism of men who by the hundred thousand marched into the valley of the shadow of death that this republic, “the last, best hope of earth,” might be preserved. Futile the efTort to adequately estimate the magnitude of our obligations to the soldiers of the sixties, and useless to seek to glorify with human speech the service they performed, for the eloquence of such deeds aj theirs surpassed in infinite degree the eloquence of words.

The People Not Ungrateful. “We have not been an ungrateful nor • forgetful people. Our government has been generous beyond all precedent in Its fulfillment of Abraham Lincoln’s conception of the nation’s .duty towards its preservers—“to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans.” There is no more convincing refutation of the doctrine that republics are ungrateful than our annual pension budget of $150,000,000, a sum approximating that required for the maintenance of any one of Europe’s mighty standing armies. Thirty-five states and national homes opening their hospitable doors to 25,000 disabled soldiers and Bailors are monuments to the deepseated national appreciation of the volunteer. And yet; grateful as are the soldiers of the greatest war of history for all this material manifestation of a nation's gratitude, they have more than all this to ask .of the generation now so rapidly crowding them off the stage of action. The men who left the desk and the plow, the forest and the factory, the farm and the shop in answer to the call of duty in the houy when the very life of the republic was at stake, who faced disease and wotinds and death Itself unflinchingly, were Inspired by something higher and holier than sordid seeking after gain, either present or to come; In truth this entered Into their calculations not at all. The highest reward which the American people can confer tn the succeeding years for the unexampled sacrifices mad* by their militant forefathers, is that they shall Jealously preserve and bequeath inviolate to the future Citizenship of the republic that spirit of devotloa to American institutions which called into the field, and made vctorioua the- armies that followed Grant and Sherman and Sheridan forty years ago. Serving a Greet Purpose. “And it is to thia high purpose that this organisation gathered in convention here is dedicated. It is not a society conceived in the mere pride of ancestry, though ho American could confsr upon his children a richer heritage than the memory of sacrifices freely made, of arduous service une tflshly performed, of courage that did not shrink from the imminence of death itself, when the life of the nation. yes, more than that, the very perpetuity of free institutions, was at stake. But we believe in this country that the circumstance of birth is nothing; that it is only what a man is, not what someone else was, that counts; Chough we do not forget that what a Mb is may hear a very vital relation is the vtrtuae or the vices of those who gave him beiag. and of his poe"Btt what More fitting than that the ehftttxwa es t jo aeeo who Bor the flag’s safes fought upon a thousand battle-

quite as bravely in the same cause at home, should give themselves to the high and holy duty of commemorating the deeds of their fathers, and of Impressing upon one another and upon all the people of our common country that. In the undying words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: “ft is for ua, the,living • • to be dedicated * • to tfie great task remaining before ua, thei from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they • * gave the last full measure of devotion, that we may • • highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of I freedom, and that government of the j people, by the people, for the people, shall ndt perish from the earth.’ The Mob Denounced. “Within the past few hours, In one of the most populous and progressive cities of Indiana, we have had evidence of the fact that the time has not yet come even hi this great state, justly celebrated for its intelligence and its patriotism, when we may safely cease the inculcation of devotion to those free institutions for the establishment of which the blood of our heroes has been shed upon all the republic’s battlefields, from Lexington to Santiago. The man who joins in the senseless savagery of the meb is trampling under his feet the flag for which your fathers offered up their lives," is hurling himself insensately agair.st the barriers which centuries of civilization have erected between brute force and human rightp. The man who, inspired by the stupid passion of race hatred, would prescribe the halter and the torch for an entire race because individuals of this race sometimes commit offenses for which our laws prescribe befitting penalties, has not within him a spark of that regard for the rights of the weak which made this republic possible!. No Race War In Indiana. “Sons of Veterans, we will have no race wars, no class wars in Indiana. To all citizens, regardless of color or condition, impartial justice shall be meted out, upon all guilty of crimes the penalties prescribed by law shall be promptly visited, and he who goes to war in Indiana, no matter what his pretext, must fight under the red flag of anarchy and against the invincible flag of seventy millions of American freemen. The inevitable result of such a war is not a subject for speculation. “Sons of Veterans, because of the memories you cherish, the principles you uphold, the country you love, to no service more appropriate can you devote yourselves than to that of deepening and 3 widening public respect for the flig which symbolizes the traditions and the aspirations of Americanism, and for the uniform worn by those who follow it in peace and war in the service of the state and nation. The man who lives within the blessed shelter of the flag and yet looks upon it with unnatural hatred, the man who enjoys the protection of our bloodbought institutions and yet condemns his country and its defenders, is unworthy of having a flag or a country, much less such a flag And such a country. vi The Duties of Citizenship. “This government was established, it has been maintained, it can endure, only because it embodies the aspirations of a united people and round about it have centered their loyalty and love. It is not enough that we shall give passive approval to our Institutions and indifferent acquiescence to our laws. The duties of citizenship transcend such harrow limitations. The fires of patriotic ablaze on Bunker Hill more than a century ago, and which have lit up the pathway of the republic from that hour down to this, must be refreshed by each succeeding generation of Americans, lest they die away. The duty now descends to you, you have accepted it, and your organization, founded j in the memory of patriotism tested in [ the fire of bloody conflict, is helping. | in the fulfillment of its beneficent purposes. to make it certain that your fathers, in the language of Lincoln, ‘shall not have died in vain.’ Qod speed you in such service.”