GETTYSBURG JUBILEE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 19, 23 September 1913, Page 7

GETTYSBURG JUBILEE.

The Fourth of -July in 1913 was fittingly celebrated at Gettysburg by a gathering of veterans, who fo:.g.'vt there and at Yicksburg, Southern-vic-tories which indirectly saved the I niou i.iv stiffening public opinion in tr.o North. They arrived from every part of the L'nited States, their ages ranging from seventy to one hundred jc U"-i, though for the most part hale au'l hearty. Not since Lincoln made Ins moving address on the same historic spot fifty years ago was American opinion stirred, north, south, ea&t and west, by an emotion so ennobl ng. Thus does time bring forth from the fields of battle the spirit of the heroic ■lead to lift the souls of men who have rrrown soft in peace. One cannot read the accounts of the celebration without ,1 lump rising to the throat (says a writer in the "Broad Arrow") especially of the re-enactment of Pickett's famous but unsuccessful charge by a bettering handful of survivors. These Americans, liiio our kinsmen in the dominions, are fresher in their emotions than we are in England, and are not ashamed to give them rein. By another year the force o? 40,000 which nssembled on July 4 will be smaller and feebler. That is why it is good for the Republic that the lesson of the anniversary of Gettysburg should have been driven home ere it was too late. Tn the "mingling of blue and grey" the last drop of bitterness left by the Civil War went for ever,and a great memory hides the terrible scars it left both in the North and the South. This latest celebration of the anniversary of the national independene was significant in another way. It marks the end of the childish way in which every town and county used to show its joy by an aimless general display of fireworks and bombastic speeches from politicians on the make. It is not the victories of peace that stir men to higher things, but the memories of war.