he moment
are not what a man ought to think about, but the verdict of his
conscience and of the consciences of mankind.
When I look at you, I feel as if I also and we all were enlisted men.
Not enlisted in your particular branch of the service, but enlisted to
serve the country, no matter what may come, even though we may sacrifice
our lives in the arduous endeavor. We are expected to put the utmost
energy of every power that we have into the service of our fellow-men,
never sparing ourselves, not condescending to think of what is going to
happen to ourselves, but ready, if need be, to go to the utter length of
complete self-sacrifice.
As I stand and look at you to-day and think of these spirits that have
gone from us, I know that the road is clearer for the future. These boys
have shown us the way, and it is easier to walk on it because they have
gone before and shown us how. May God grant to all of us that vision of
patriotic service which here in solemnity and grief and pride is borne
in upon our hearts and consciences!
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
[Delivered at the National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., May 30, 1914.]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
I have not come here to-day with a prepared address. The committee in
charge of the exercises of the day have graciously excused me on the
grounds of public obligations from preparing such an address, but I will
not deny myself the privilege of joining with you in an expression of
gratitude and admiration for the men who perished for the sake of the
Union. They do not need our praise. They do not need that our admiration
should sustain them. There is no immortality that is safer than theirs.
We come not for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drink
at the same springs of inspiration from which they themselves selves
drank.
A peculiar privilege came to the men who fought for the Union. There is
no other civil war in history, ladies and gentlemen, the stings of which
were removed before the men who did the fighting passed from the stage
of life. So that we owe these men something more than a legal
reestablishment of the Union. We owe them the spiritual reestablishment
of the Union as well; for they not only reunited States, they reunited
the spirits of men. That is their unique achievement, unexampled
anywhere else in the annals of mankind, that the very men whom they
overcame in battle join in praise and gratitude that the Union was
saved. There is somethi
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