AN IMMORTAL DEDICATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1915, Page 5

AN IMMORTAL DEDICATION.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG. "the fact cannot too frequently M emphasised that the Allie,d nations are fighting the battle of democracy. Ia many respects the present war furnishes a parallel to the conditions that obtained during the American Civil War," says the Toronto Globe. "What more fitting epitaph over the graves of our soldier dead than the immortal words of Lincoln at Gettysburg?— " Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we ar® engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come tot dedicate u portion of that field as a resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do (his. But in a larger i sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot con* J secrate, we cannot hallow this ground. j The brave men. living and dead, who ; struggled here have consecrated it far ! above our poor power to add or The world will little .note nor long rM ' member what we say here; but I can never forget what they did here. It ia for us, the living, rather to be dedi-: cated here to the unfinished work which' they who fought here have thus far so' nobly advanced. It is rather for us to! be here dedicated to the great task: remaining before us; that from these! honored dead we take increased devo-i tion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;, that this nation, under Owl, shall lmve a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people hv Ihe people an<£ for the people shall not perish from the earth.'

"The principles of democracy are immutable," adds the Toronto Globe.; "Fifty years after his death the words of Lincoln still furni-h for the civilised world the highest conception of imlividiial and national freedom."