Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 41.djvu/30

 18 have only right to serve, with no foreign foe to hate or aid. We know from what a pit of war these States were dug and from what a rock of discord this union was hewn. We still remember what Washington saw and what Lee attested. We still hold dear that love of country and of God that threw a shield of steel about this citadel of a nation's hopes. Visit New York and you will find a multitude of unassimilated men, each group more numerous than the native populace of many a city from which these strangers come. Visit the average Southern city and you will find the face of Saxon and of Norman, with less than five per cent, of alien blood. If there be patriotism it is, thank God, in the South; if there be war, it is from the sons of Confederates that leaders will come. And this, I beg you believe, is not the boast of provincial isolation, but the calm calculation of the manner in which the Anglo-Saxon blood of America will assert itself in a day of need.

But it is not only this ideal of patriotism and duty that our dead have given us, a priceless heritage. From the spring that overflowed in the sacrifice of thousands there wells up now, please God, as then, those ideals of progress and of love that insure for us and our children and our children's children a goodly heritage. Perhaps it is the warmth of Southern skies; perhaps it is the peaceful product of a martial stock; perhaps it is the harvest of what brave men have sown. But whatever it is, let the sons of Virginians give thanks, here on God's acre, that the mind and the spirit of the South are asserting themselves to-day. Our wilderness is blossoming; the waste-places are rejoicing; the pens of Southern writers are writing large across the page of American letters; the brains of Southern men have flung railroads athwart continents, have organized great industries, have won the battles of sanitation and have captained the hosts of industry. That great Southerner in whose loyal hands the destinies of America are safe is not the fruitage of a generation but the blossom.