242 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



thirty million people; eight thousand millions worth of 

 property was destroyed ; hundreds of thousands of lives 

 were lost, and hundreds of thousands of men carry with 

 them still the marks of that contest. But in spite of it 

 all, our country today is the home of more than seventy 

 millions of people ; no slave lives within its borders, and 

 the example of Lincoln has been followed in Russia and 

 Brazil. And that institution, which was so proud and 

 haughty in the middle of the present century, bids fair 

 to become extinct the world over before the twentieth 

 century is ushered in. 



Out of the old field comes new corn; out of the past 

 battle-fields arise examples that will teach while time 

 lasts. As the survivors pass away new generations fall 

 into line and take up the story and pass it on to the youth 

 of the next, and in commemorating the past we are guard- 

 ing safely the heritage of the future. 



At this reunion the Women's Relief Corps represents 

 the women of the war and their descendants. To the 

 mothers of that war I have already referred. The Sons 

 of Veterans are present and in the event of another war 

 they would undoubtedly take the places of their sires in 

 a way that would do honor to their pedigree. The world 

 would repeat the old Greek proverb: "This is not 

 Achilles' son, this is Achilles himself." 



It was the good fortune of the late war to bring into 

 play a wide range of talent. This is evident when we look 

 upon any gathering of the survivors. The soldiers on 

 both sides were not machines; the armies of that war 

 were thinking machines. George Eliot describes a game 

 of chess in which the pawns and other pieces thought and 

 made moves on their own account, thus greatly compli- 

 cating the game to be played. It was such a game as this 

 that was played in 1861. Many a battle turned on the 

 active and quick thought of some young volunteer officer 



