THE FOURTH OF JULY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1837, 25 August 1913, Page 7

THE FOURTH OF JULY.

A SAFE AND SANE_CELEBRATION. Tho Fourth of July Celebration passed off throughout tho Unitod States with a marked declino in casualties resulting from pyrotechnic excesses. This (saj'B tho London "Observer's" correspondent) was duo largely to local ordinances restricting tho sale of _ dangerous fireworks, coupled with police vigilance. Tho day is hailed as tho safest and sanest Indepondenco Day tho country has over honoured, So far as known the deaths for tho wholo country only numbered sixteen, compared with fortyone last year and fifty-soven in 1911, while 784 wero injured, compared with an avorago of four thousand in'previous yeans. To curb patriotio ardour in celebrating Independence and tho playing with cannon', gun-powdor, torpedoes, toy pistols and other explosives, so far as Now York was concerned, resulted in tho observation that it was tho "tamest" on. record, in that not a single fatality is reported. Only minor accidents, such as fires and tlio usual crop of holiday drownings, marred tho day. With President Wilson's iinoly phrased oration delivered to them on tho battlefield of Gettysburg, 50,000 veterans of tho Civil War completed tho commemoration of their "fifty years after." Tho eyes of the wholo country have been fastened on tho celebration. It was an extraordinarily impressive jubilee of bluo and grey. Not a single man was under 65, and most of them wero 70 or over.

Tho celebration of tho. battlo which practically, settled the Civil War and sounded tho doom of tho Confederacy was notable in other respects. On© was tho test which tho regular army boro of successfully conducting what was really a liugo military camp, covering a largo area and meeting its necessities as to sanitation, commissariat, arid other arrangements. Tho othor was tho failure of President Wilson to impress his audience. It was his first national utterance delivered viva voco outsido Washington sinco ho was elected President.

Various chroniclos on tho scone, .writing from different ancles with different political affiliations, all remarked on the cold reception accorded to tho President. It may be that his aged, scaried and maimed audience was over-full of memories of Lincoln. Anyway, what was hopod to bo a glorious climax to a momorable ovent was not realised. Here is tho improssion of ouo correspondent:—

"Tho livest memories hero are those of fifty years ago, or more, but a longer memory than that is needed to reach hack to tho memory of such a reoeptioi' as Mr. Woodrow Wilson, Presidont uf tho United States, had from tho fag end of this cclobration. Thero arohoro men who liavo made it their business to follow Presidents for the last thirty years. Nono of tliom over saw anything liko it. Prepared with an address which should have thrilled ovory ma.ll ami woman wlio heard it President Wilson went flat."