d this: that when those times of peace have come on, and it
is no longer possible for such a people to realize its ideal of courage
in arms, it is nevertheless driven to express the ideal in other
ways--by monuments, arches, inscriptions, statues, literature,
pictures, all in honor of those of their countrymen who lived the ideal
before the world and left it more lustrous in their dying. That is the
full reason why we know how brave a people the Greeks were--by their
peaceful ways of honoring valor in times of peace. And that in part is
why no nation in the world doubts the courage of the English, because
when the English are not fighting they are forever doing something to
honor those who have fought well. So that they never have a peace but
they turn it into preparation for the next war.

"And that is why, as the outside world looks in upon us to-day and
sifts the evidence of whether or not we are a brave people, it does not
find the proof of this in our homicides and duels, but in the spirit of
our forefathers of the Revolution, in the soldiers of the wilderness
and of Indian warfare, of the war of 1812, of the war with Mexico, at
Cerro Gordo, at Buena Vista, at Palo Alto, at Resaca de la Palma.
Wherever the Kentuckians have fought as soldiers, many or few, on
whatever battle-field, in whatsoever cause, there you may see whether
they know what it is to be men, and whether they have an ideal of
courage that is worth the name.

"Then a few years ago in Frankfort twenty thousand people followed to
the grave the bodies of the men who had fallen in Mexico. The State
has raised a monument to them, to the soldiers of 1812, to those who
fought at the river Raisin. The Legislature has ordered a medal to be
struck in honor of a boy who had defended his ensign. No man can make
a public speech in Kentucky without mention of Encancion and Monterey,
or of the long line of battles in which every generation of our people
has fought. This is the other proof that in times of peace we do not
forget. It is not much, but it is of the right kind--it is the
soldier's monument, it is the soldier's medal, it is the soldier's
funeral oration, it is the recognition by the people of its ideal of
courage in times of peace. And with every other brave people this
proof passes as the sign universal. But our homicides and our duels,
nearly all of them brought about in the name--even under the fear--of
courage, what effect have they had in