It would be a great mistake to suppose that all that was added to our army by such men as these was merely what it gained in physical force and manly prowess.  Our neighbors on the other side of the water, whose attachment to monarchy is so strong that it sometimes makes them unjust to republics, have sometimes attacked the character and discipline of our army.  Nothing could be more unjust.  The federal army was noble, self-sacrificing, devoted always, and to the discipline of that army no men contributed more than the members of this university and men such as they.  They bore always with them the loftiest principle in the contest and the highest honor in all their personal relations.  Disorder in camp, pillage and plunder, found in them stern and unrelenting foes.  They fought in a cause too sacred, they wore a robe too white, to be willing to stain or sully it with such corruption.

Mr. President I should ill do the duty you have called on me to perform if I forgot that this ceremonial is not only a reception of those who return, but a commemoration of those who have laid down their lives for the service of the country.  He who should have properly spoken for us, the oldest of our graduates, altho not of our members who have fought in this war,—­Webster of the class of 1833, sealed his faith with his life on the bloody field of the second Manassas, dying for the constitution of which his great father was the noblest expounder.  For those of us who return to-day, whatever our perils and dangers may have been, we can not feel that we have done enough to merit what you so generously bestow; but for those with whom the work of this life is finished and yet who live forever inseparably linked with the great names of the founders of the Republic, and not them alone, but the heroes and martyrs of liberty everywhere, we know that no honor can be too much.  The voices which rang out so loud and clear upon the charging cheer that heralded the final assault in the hour of victory, that in the hour of disaster were so calm and resolute as they sternly struggled to stay the slow retreat are not silent yet.  To us and to those who will come after us, they will speak of comfort and home relinquished, of toil nobly borne, of danger manfully encountered, of life generously surrendered and this not for pelf or ambition, but in the spirit of the noblest self-devotion and the most exalted patriotism.  Proud as we who are here to-day have a right to be that we are the sons of this university, and not deemed unworthy of her when these are remembered, we may well say, “Sparta had many a worthier son than we.”

FOOTNOTE: 

[10] Speech at Commemoration Exercises held at Cambridge, July 21, 1865.

WAKE UP, ENGLAND![11]

BY KING GEORGE