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Show HI and their sacro'd honor to the causo; for they Hfj knew .iiipir motives were as pure as the- celes- Bf tial milk that drawn "from Hera's sacred hosom Hf bleached the plant on -which it fell to everlasting Hj whiteness." K That war raged for seven years, bringing with B , it unspeakable sufferings, but the republic B'' emerged in triumph from it consecrated to free- fl dom, a new light to the world, and the deeds of H , brave men and the smile of God made glorious its H ' standard. H , Then began in earnest the conquest of the H j wilderness. Ht ' From Maino to Georgia, the brave men went V out to the conquest, against the savage and tho m savage wild. Side by side with them walked HHt' those sanctified women, who, burying in their H hearts a thousand innocent longings, took up tho H toil, the hardships, the sufferings, the dangers, B and, with smiling faces, accepted their fate and B upheld their husbands' arms. m For as it has always been, "The grandest bat- M ties that ever were fought; have been fought "by H the mothers of men." H Half a century later an idea of their devotion H was given in a single sentence. "When General H Jackson was president, ho went with Daniel Web- H ster to Webster's native New Hampshire home M Looking out upon the granite hills, the general B "My God, "Webster! What do men raise here H for a living?" M The sombre eyes of Webster glowed as he re- H B "Mr. President, they build schoolhouses, and M raise men! M There is nothing in history finer than the spec- M tacle of those pioneers on that march west. They M were all poor, each family on an average had M less than a Nevada miner receives for a month's H work. But so fearless were they and so steadfast H of soul, that with every return of this anniversary, H they gathered around their rude altars and sang H triumphal anthems. When in the autumn they H had gathered their little harvests, they held a H festal day of Thanksgiving and praise. ' H The retreat of Xenophon has been ringing H ' down the years for three and twenty centuries. He had an army of ten thousand men and a march of three thousand four hundred, miles to reach the sea. His men were seasoned and perfectly disciplined soldiers. They were armed with swords and spears and protected by helmets and shields. They made the distance in seven months. They crossed rivers and mountains and valleys and patches of desert, but generally their march was through a productive country, where the people had no weapons or organizations to resist them. Our pioneers started on a march of the same length, but they had to fight their way and fight for food from the first, and they knew in advance ad-vance it would require three generations of them before, like Xenophon's command, the advance guard could from a height behold the western ocean. They had rifles, bibles and the plow for weapons. Their shields were their tenacity of purpose, their faith in God, and the helmets they wore were the helmets of righteousness. Which was tho greater achievement. Soon other brave men and women from beyond the sea joined them, assimilated with them, and then began the creation of the new American race. Soon the deep respirations of the steam engine en-gine began to be heard on land and on the rivers and lakes, taking some of the labor from arms of flesh and transferring it to arms of steel. Then the Louisiana and Florida purchases were made, and the Father of Waters held all its course through the now Republic. New states were rounded into form; new stars appeared on the flag. A war came, but it was fought through to a glorious finish, more stars appeared on the flag, and on land and sea the flag took on new prestige. pres-tige. A few years later the magnetic telegraph came to draw men and nations nearer together, and to be to man what Mercury was to Jove a messenger messen-ger as swift as light; to carry greetings to loved ones that would seem when received, like carres-ses; carres-ses; to herald events, to guide men's business, to be a new arm to commerce, to declare wars, to whisper peace to the nations, and it with the perfecting per-fecting press opened a new school for the people through the medium of the daily newspaper. Then followed another war. It was a righteous righte-ous war, though, not for the reasons given for it. That too, was ended and gave to our country all the mighty space between the seas, and new stars to the flag. Our country began to be called "The Great Republic," and its progress was tho marvel of the world. But because of a mistake made by tho fathers, strife and heart burnings had been awakened between the northern and the southern sections of the Republic, which culminated in a war so terrible ter-rible that tho world, looking on, declared that the great Republic was doomed. The war raged for four years, and when it Anally died of exhaustion, exhaus-tion, half the land was a wreck and tho whole land was almost as was Egypt on that dreadful morning when in each house there was one dead. Then followed some bitter years, but when the passions of men were cdoled and the tears were dried, men, north and south, began to realize real-ize that the mistake made by the fathers was in truth the perpetuation of a mighty wrong which was recorded as a debt against the nation, drawing draw-ing compound interest, and that the war was but the insistence on the part of eternal justice that the debt should be paid in full. So tho stage for the mighty tragedy was set by unseen hands and the tremendous acts were called by higher powers than mere men. They realized, too, that the original declaration that "all men are created equal" had at last become be-come true, and that full freedom to all the earth had new securities. So when a few years later another war was invoked to wipe out a terrible wrong, to tho government's gov-ernment's call for volunteers the response was a world surprise, for the measured tread of those soldiers from every state, all under one standard, stand-ard, all hastening to one point, all singing tho same battle hymns, made echoes like the tolling of the bells of Destiny. The war closed, with the cruel arm of Spain broken. Then the fairest island in all the seas was redeemed and cleansed of a century's filth; its starving people fed; order established; schools opened; the pestilence that had raged beyond control for three generations, throttled and subdued, and Anally a government of the . people installed. Then our flag was voluntarily lowered and furled; the last of our soldiers embarked, em-barked, the last of our battleships, that had been standing guard, swung out into the bay, her great guns roaring in final salute, and sailed away; her crew singing "Home Sweet Home." Then the nations, looking on, were forced to admit that never before since the first page of history was written, had so grand an act been consummated by any nation; never before had the results of free government been so splendidly shown, never had such majesty been given to a nation's flag as on that day shone on our more than royal standard. stand-ard. When a century after our country's independence independ-ence was achieved had rolled around, the changes amounted to a transformation. The land was gridironed with railroad tracks. Then the locomotive loco-motive had become more than a common carrier. . It had become an avangel, the herald of a new and irrepressible progress. It had crossed the Hudson and moving westward answered back the hoarse challenge of Niagara's' roar; it had crossed the Alleghanies and swept-through the cotton lands of the south the corn lands of the north, it had rolled on over the prairies on over the Mississippi Mis-sissippi and Missouri, a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, it had climbed the great Rockies, in the crags mingling its scream with the eagles, then descending the long escarpment it had met and kissed its brother that, starting from beside the Sacramento, had swept up and over the blue Sierras with their snows and their pines thence across the desert that had so long held concealed under its robes of serge, its treasures to a meeting meet-ing place by the great inland dead sea. It is hard to beat back the impression that as those two steel sons of Vulcan touched noses they did not commune together; did not tell each other of the engineering fetes they had per formed; of how they had made the savage beast and savage man flee before them; of how tlio eagle on throbbing pinions fled away as they answered his scream and shook with their tread his eyre in the crags; how even the frontier sullenly sul-lenly retreated before them as they swept on in their great race, how the valleys had been exalted ex-alted and the hills bowed down to make their path smooth; that civilization on unsolled sandals san-dals might follow, and how they had toiled until the continent was compassed and a smooth path made over all the mighty space between the seas, at once changing the thoughts of men and the paths of commerce. The mines had already given up treasures enough to found and equip and embellish an empire; em-pire; the telephone had awakened its still small voice, not only to help man in his work, but to thrill his soul with the thought that if it was possible for the voices of friends far removed to come through storm and night with all the old familiar tones to cheer us, it may be possible that in a softer air, the voices of other friends that long ago were stilled, may yet again be awakened awak-ened to enchant us. In the meantime, too, God's great working agent, electricity, had decended to earth to become be-come the servant of man, to do his heavier and lighter work; to aid new comforts to his life, to light his homes, his cities, his ships and mines; to turn his machinery; to run his chariots; to make more fertile his fields. And all the wilderness between the Mississippi Missis-sippi and the western ocean had melted away; over all the mighty expanse happy homes, and temples of freedom, to learning, to religion, to - justice and to industry had been erected, until at last when the nation's anniversary day came, and the hymns to liberty, as today, were awakened awak-ened as the cliffs of Maine grew radiant under the dawn, those hymns, "following the sun and . H keeping company with the hours," rolled west- H ward in unbroken strain until their last ecnuus H came back from out the air beyond the Golden H Gate. H Today those anthems are being sung where H the oceans meet in the Panama canal that eighth m wonder of the world, in the Hawaiian and Fhilip- H pine island and up where the flag reflects the M 'lite light of the midnight sun beside the Bering fl H What I have said is but a brief synopsis of H, history that should be repeated once a year. B The connected story is sublime; the advance B has been magnificent beyond compare. The three M million people whose settlements made but a m fringe on the shore of the Atlantic, have become H a hundred million and have absorbed the best m part of a continent, and all the time have kept 1 aflame the torch of liberty until its reflected light M ' has become a beacon of hope to all the world. H Such industrial triumphs have been wrought M as were never seen before, while from every m page of the great record shine out the names of B heroes, sages, statesmen, scholars, writers, sci- 1 entists, historians, and men of affairs, some of H whom will continue to grow in the world's esti- H mation until their statues in the gallery of the I, , ages will' take on colossal proportions and be Hh haloed with everlasting light. HJ Of course, some grave mistakes have been Hf made, but they need not be named today. A H. great deal of work remains to be done before ex- HJ act justice can be done for our people and tho H world; there must still be improvements in the H general and state governments; in the conduct of Hi' affairs in cities and hamlets; for the republic, H t like planets and suns, is made up of atoms which H must be kept in place to insure its steady motion. H ' We must have our country's prestige restored H on the sea by a great merchant marine. !We must have our boys in school trained in i the simpler duties of a soldier, not to beget mill- u tarism, but to keep alert the military spirit for l)( that is the staff upon which patriotism leans, and ": the nation that does not keep that spirit in full I f vigor very soon becomes a subject nation. I ! T The old world is rocked by a war that causes H ,. a shudder through the universe. All the old bat- I jj tleflelds are being fought over, the track of the H war for a thousand miles marks a new, awful, , Golgotha. Cities and ships are being destroyed, I '-, j the land made a wreck, the war extends into the Xj i clouds and beneath the sea. The thought of it Mm a11 and especially of the despairing women and IB children is heart breaking. HH Had the different countries been states incor- H porated into one great republic where free men HH would have guided events would there have been HRj any war; any cause for war? fcg) . This is a question that will be oftener and H oftener asked in the coming near future. Hh Our country is at peace, and the prayer of our HH people is that the peace may not be broken, and Bw it never will be broken except in self defense or if to cure some monstrous wrong like that which If J made our war with Spain holy. But since the wk world outside has gone mad with a blood lust and behind the blood lust a land lust and behind the land lust are unholy ambitions, we would not have our country taken by surprise or bo altogether alto-gether unprepared should trouble come. Nevada was battle born. On the night of her birth in the windows of the republic no lamps-of lamps-of welcome were lighted; tho clouds of war blotted out every star in the sky. The people were divided. Neighbor looked upon neighbor with suspicion and a full quota of men stole away to the north and the south to join the armies where brother was fighting brother. But all who went were Americans, all who returned re-turned were better Americans than when they went away; while for the wounded and the sick of that war Nevada gave in proportion to tho number of her people five hundred per cent more than any other state. At the same time her mines held up the credit of the nation, and though a little later, when tho debt of the war was almost overwhelming and the business of the country was as unsteady as is a ship when a gale suddenly dies and leaves the ship no steerage way in the tumbling surges, the government, at the behest of less than ono hundred New York and London interest-gatherers crippled and almost crushed Nevada's chief industry,- still there are no two sides to the thoughts of her people now, and were another call to be made upon her patriotism, another cry that native land was about to be assailed, my belief be-lief is that her responses would be as it was when the Maine went down; that the cry would be "Our Country and the Right," and should the ordeal or-deal be severe enough to call out all the resources of the country and all the valor and endurance of our people; when the clouds finally lifted, the foremost of the world's nations would be second class compared with ours; so caparisoned would it be in might, so panoplied with power and so ablaze with the archlights of freedom, that- her flag would symbol to the nations a majesty such as, five and thirty centuries ago, the devout Chaldean Fire Worshippers saw when they turned to the east at dawn, to watch the stars fade before the splendor of the rising sun. |