ADDRESS ON MEMORIAL DAY AT ARLINGTON, MAY 30, 19171

The program has conferred an unmerited dignity upon the remarks I am going to make by calling them an address, because I am not here to deliver an address. I am here merely to show in my official capacity the sympathy of this great government with the object of this occasion, and also to speak just a word of the sentiment that is within my own heart.

Any Memorial day of this sort is, of course, a day touched with sorrowful memory, and yet I for one do not see how we can have any thought of pity for the men whose memory we honor to-day. I do not pity them. I envy them, rather, because theirs is a great work for liberty accomplished and we are in the midst of a work unfinished, testing our strength where their strength has already been tested.

There is a touch of sorrow, but there is a touch of reassurance also in a day like this, because we know how the men of America have responded to the call of the cause of liberty, and it fills our mind with a perfect assurance that that response will come again in equal measure, with equal majesty, and with a result which will hold the attention of all mankind.

When you reflect upon it these men who died to preserve the Union died to preserve the instrument

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Only that part of the address is given which concerns international affairs.

which we are now using to serve the world-a free nation espousing the cause of human liberty. In one sense the great struggle into which we have now entered is an American struggle, because it is in the sense of American honor and American rights, but it is something even greater than that, it is a world struggle.

It is a struggle of men who love liberty everywhere, and in this cause America will show herself greater than ever, because she will rise to a greater thing.

We have said in the beginning that we planned this great government that men who wish freedom might have a place of refuge and a place where their hope could be realized and now, having established such a government, having preserved such a government, having vindicated the power of such a government, we are saying to all mankind, "we did not set this government up in order that we might have a selfish and separate liberty, for we are now ready to come to your assistance and fight out upon the fields of the world the cause of human liberty." In this thing America attains her full dignity and the full fruition of her great purpose.

No man can be glad that such things have happened as we have witnessed these last fateful years, but perhaps it may be permitted to us to be glad that we have an opportunity to show the principles that we profess to be living, principles that live in our hearts, and to have a chance by the pouring out of our blood and treasure to vindicate the things which we have professed.

For, my friends, the real fruition of life is to do the things we have said we wish to do. There are times when work seems empty and only action seems great. Such a time has come, and in the providence of God America will once more have an opportunity to show the world she was born to serve mankind.

ADDRESS AT THE CONFEDERATE REUNION,

WASHINGTON, JUNE 6, 1917

I esteem it a very great pleasure and a real privilege to extend to the men who are attending this reunion the very cordial greetings of the United States.

I suppose that as you mix with one another you chiefly find these to be days of memory, when your thoughts go back and recall those days of struggle in which your hearts were strained, in which the whole nation seemed in grapple, and I dare say that you are thrilled as you remember the heroic things that were then done.

You are glad to remember that heroic things were done on both sides and that men in those days fought in something like the old spirit of chivalric gallantry.

There are many memories of the Civil War that thrill along the blood and make one proud to have been sprung of a race that could produce such bravery and constancy; and yet the world does not live on memories.

The world is constantly making its toilsome way forward into new and different days and I believe that one of the things that contribute satisfaction to a reunion like this and a welcome like this is that this is also a day of oblivion.

There are some things that we have thankfully buried, and among them are the great passions of division which once threatened to rend this nation in twain.

The passion of admiration we still entertain for the heroic figures of those old days, but the passion of separation, the passion of difference of principle is gone-gone out of our minds, gone out of our hearts, and one of the things that will thrill this country as it reads of this reunion is that it will read also of a rededication on the part of all of us to the great nation which we serve in common.

These are days of oblivion as well as of memory, for we are forgetting the things that once held us asunder. Not only that, but they are days of rejoicing because we now at last see why this great nation was kept united, for we are beginning to see the great world purpose which it was meant to serve.

Many men I know, particularly of your own generation, have wondered at some of the dealings of Providence, but the wise heart never questions the dealings of Providence, because the great long plan as it unfolds has a majesty about it and a definiteness of purpose, an elevation of ideal which we were incapable of conceiving as we tried to work things out with our own short sight and weak strength.

And now that we see ourselves part of a nation united, powerful, great in spirit and in purpose, we know the great ends which God in His mysterious Providence wrought through our instrumentality, because at the heart of the men of the North and of the South there was the same love of self-government and of liberty and now we are to be an instrument in the hands of God to see that liberty is made secure for mankind.