USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > The Society of the Sons of the Revolution in the District of Columbia > Part 5
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rock of refuge and that rule of salvation is Liberty. It is the one sure reliance, the one guide to life, safety and happiness. And when you ask Americans where the foundations of the Liberty we enjoy are to be found, a great majority will name the American Revolution, where our ancestors suffered, for we have been so taught in our youth that Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill were its beginnings. While such may be true in one sense, let us not be led into false conceptions in this respect. Far be it from me to intimate that that Revolution was not of priceless importance to us and to mankind. But what our fathers fought there for were not so much the rights of them- selves and their posterity. More particularly they struggled for the rights of other Englishmen, and what inspired them and made them master builders were those ancient Anglo-Saxon rights that had been won for them on English soil by their own forefathers. In our Capital, the city of Washington, there rises a lofty, splendid and stately spire, erected to the memory of that pivotal figure of our Revolution, George Washington. It rests upon a tremendous and solid base, necessary to its stability. Deep down in the ground that base is founded. How deep, how solid, no one knows but its build- ers, for its massive foundations are never now seen by us. If we go down into the cellar of our political history and study there the sills and sleepers of freedom, the foundations of the well-rounded dwelling wherein is found the liberty we all enjoy today, there is much that we shall see. That liberty, that freedom, owes its origin to beginnings of fifteen hundred years ago. All through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages and in modern times down to the Abolition of Slavery, those rights have been held and added to by the English-speaking peoples. They came not as summer breezes; most of them came in storm and stress; for centuries Anglo-Saxon skies have resounded with combats for liberties. What our fathers of the Revolution did in this relation presents a new view, for they not only secured to us, their posterity, the imperishable blessings we enjoy today, but also they freed every English colony from the selfish colonial policy of the times of George the Third. And their action inspired all other peoples of the civilized world to examine carefully into their own rights, and this examination caused a realization of wrongs that set the world ablaze, first in England itself, then in the French Revolution, and later in the European Continental uprisings in 1848. Our American Revolution in this respect became one of the major foundations of Liberty-America's noble contribution to the list. It brought forth first the Declaration of Independence, an immortal document which from its inception has been in essence a declaration of war on all kings, princes, and potentates the world over. And out of that struggle there was further brought forth the best system of free representative government thus far the world has ever seen-a system that secures justice to all and protects all, high and low alike, from the encroach- ment of unlicensed power. But none the less, that Revolution was
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but a step, one phase of a great movement involving the destiny of the human race that continues to this very day. Along that great highway over which humanity has progressed in this movement, there are many milestones that mark its progress. The signing of the Magna Charta at Runnymede in 1215 was one; the Reformation in Europe in the sixteenth century was another ; the coming here of the Pilgrim Fathers yet another. So was the French Revolution that followed our own Revolution; so, in the thought of many, was our own Civil War. And, as we look back at our development as Americans and at the same time glance at the paths over which other nations now our allies, have trod, there we see diverging or intersecting roads with the obstacles created by one nation against the other, when our interests and our aims did not seem identical. Now all those paths have centered into one main highway. There we, the free peoples of the world, are standing bound in the one great cause of today. That cause concerns not the destiny of ourselves as individuals, nor of ourselves as nations or peoples; it is a cause that concerns the fate of humanity itself. For, as we have grown in strength and in might, as liberalism has spread to other peoples, so has the rule of despots, of emperors and kings grown weaker. Today government by inheritance and absolutism have centered in a few, in one, we might say, in the hands of the German Kaiser himself. Under his guidance it is engaged in its death struggle. This war is to deter- mine whether that form of government conceived by our fathers and dedicated to personal liberty is inherently and fundamentally strong enough to survive against its opposite form where the power rests not with the people but with their privileged few. So it is, that incidentally, and accidently, we are now fighting for England, just as England is now fighting for us ; but essentially and fundamentally, we, all of us, the English, French, Belgian, Italian, Japanese and Ameri- can people, are fighting for ourselves and for civilization. The call of today is for men to consecrate their talents, their energy, their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in the cause of humanity. We, the Sons of the Revolution, clearly see that that struggle of our fathers was essentially a part of the struggle of today. One of our foremost public men, in reminding us that George the Third, with his packed and corrupt Parliament and his equally corrupt Cabinet, headed by Lord North, did not represent the true spirit of the English people, either in those times or since, put the case thus: The American Revo- lution was but a revolt against a Teutonic King of England, led by an English gentleman, by name George Washington.
Now, in the English Army there is a hallowed custom which gives to every regiment the right to inscribe on their colors the name of every battle in which they participate. Do you know that there is one regiment of British troops that fought against us from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, who refused to inscribe their American battles on
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.
their colors? They said, when that as a battle honor, was offered them, that they did wish to commemorate battles where they had fought Englishmen. And this regiment fought in the Irish Wars, and there is no record of such battles on their regimental banners. We of the Marine Corps know that regiment well. During the Boxer uprising in China, in the summer of 1900, we formed its acquaintance. It is known as the Twenty-third Foot, or the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and it was on an historic spot cherished by English-speaking peoples that our acquaintance was formed. At Taku, China, at the mouth of the Peiho River, more than fifty years before, Capt. Josiah Tattnall, of the American man-of-war Toeywan, came to the assistance of an English frigate, engaged with Chinese pirates, and uttered his mem- orable words, "Blood is thicker than water." There, on that very spot, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and the American Marines, early in that summer of 1900, wrote these words into actual deeds. We en- gaged there in battle against one enemy, and for the first time in the history of the two nations English blood and American blood was shed together. I was not with those forces at that time. But a few weeks later I arrived, and on the night of July 12, at Tientsin, I saw the Twenty-third Foot for the first time. In the darkness of that night we allies were assembled on Victoria Road in the British con- cession of Tientsin. We were to endeavor to take the Chinese City of Tientsin some 3 miles away, held by a formidable force of Chinese troops and Boxers. The Twenty-third Foot came up and were halted in our immediate presence. By and by, the word was given to advance. "Royal-Welsh!" was their command, instead of "For- ward-March!" Away went those khaki-clad British soldiers into the darkness. When dawn came, there on the open plain to our left was revealed the deployed skirmish line of the Welsh with their khaki-covered helmets standing clear on the sky-line. But on the backs of the British officers we noted something black in the shape of a triangle. "A good idea," we thought, "the men will know their officers, but the enemy in front will see no difference." Later in the day, after we had advanced under fire with heavy losses and had reach- ed a position under the Walled Forts of Tientsin, whence we could proceed no further, we were again joined by the Twenty-third Foot. We had settled there more or less exhausted, but had "dug in" to stick. Some of us turned to Capt. Gwynne, who commanded the British forces, and, noting then that that black triangle was of rib- bons, we said we thought it a clever idea so to distinguish their officers to their men and not to the enemy's snipers. "Not so," said Gwynne. "It serves that purpose here, but such is not the object. These rib- bons are the 'flash' preserved by us in memory of our service in Ameri- ca in your Revolutionary War." And then he told us the story of the flash. In those times they wore the periwig, with its pigtails or queue. After the surrender of Yorktown they were sent to Nova Scotia, where they learned, a year or more after its discontinuance,
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that the pigtail was no longer in fashion. As the last regiment to wear the queue, they took the ribbons with which the periwig was tied and sewed them to the backs of the collars of their tunics, and wore them thereafter as part of their uniform. In 1823, when some ques- tion arose as to their right to wear this as a distinctive feature of their uniform, the circumstances became officially known, and an order came from the Crown, reading: "The King has been graciously pleased to approve the 'flashes,' now worn by the officers of the Twenty- third Foot, or Royal Welsh Fusiliers, being henceforth worn and established as a peculiarity whereby to mark the dress of that distin- guished regiment." And we learned some further interesting infor- mation as to the 'Twenty-third, which served to endear us, as Marines, to them. The Hon. Sir William Howe, commander-in-chief of His Majesty's armies in America, after Gen. Gage, was designated to that high command from service as colonel of the Royal Welsh. He, as you know, made a failure of his mission. When relieved by Sir Henry Clinton, the famous Admiral Howe, his brother, came to American shores in command of the British fleet. Then the French had openly come to our help with a squadron stronger than that of Admiral Howe. The British ships were insufficiently manned. Howe had no marines, and he made his wants known. Out of compliment to their former colonel's brother, the Royal Welsh volunteered for this duty. In isolated fights, the most notable of which was that with the French Caesar, a seventy-two, by the British Isis, of fifty guns, the spirited and gallant behavior of the Royal Welsh as marines was noted in the official reports. And let me tell you here something of more recent history. When our Gen. Pershing first set foot on British soil on June 10, 1917, from the gangplank of the steamer Baltic, the military bands greeted him as our most distinguished soldier with but one air, that to which the national hymns "America" and "God Save the King" are set. And there was a guard of honor of British soldiers, who presented arms to him at this instant. It was composed of a detachment from the Royal Welsh, the Twenty-third Foot, the com- rades of the United States Marine Corps of 1900. During its two hundred years of existence the Royal Welsh have been the recipient of many honors. The Prince of Wales' Feathers, the Red Dragon, and the Rising Sun are the badges of the Prince of Wales. They were given the Twenty-third for its services in the Marlborough campaigns, when George the First, in 1714, conferred on them the title "The Prince of Wales' Own Regiment of Welsh Fusiliers." To commemorate this distinction, it advances to the command of "Royal- Welsh!" instead of to our "Forward-March!" And the White Horse of Hanover, the badge of George the Second, was granted to the Royal Welsh after the battle of Dettingen (1743), where the King personally witnessed the regiment's gallantry. The Sphinx was awarded them after the Egyptian campaign in 1801, where the regiment carried a high, disputed sand hill at the landing. Its battle
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honors begin with Namur (1695), on what is now Belgian soil, and include such names as Blenheim, Oudenarde, Egypt, Martinique, Corunna, Salamanca, Peninsula, Waterloo, Inkerman, Sebastopol, Lucknow, Burma, Peking, and Ladysmith. No regiment which, dur- ing by far the larger part of its history, has consisted of a single bat- talion. has a list of "battle honors" as long as that of the Twenty- third Foot. When Gwynne told us that they had fought at Bunker Hill, we asked him what happened to them. "Well, you jolly well shot us up there," he said. "Some sort of an order was given to your people to wait until we got to the top of the hill." "Yes," we said, "every American schoolboy knows that order, 'Wait until you see the whites of their eyes.'" "Well," said Gwynne, "it cost us eight hundred men out of twelve hundred, that day, so our regimental his- tory says. But that, as history, is over. It is worth noting that these days are proud days for us; for the first time in the history of the two nations we, the regular forces of each, are acting together against a common enemy." So, there with the American dead and British dead about us, we became real friends, to remain so forever, each thereafter praising the other in official reports to their respective governments. Now the Twenty-third Foot is an old organization; with twenty-five other foot regiments, they were called into being in 1689, created by William of Orange, one of the most liberal of monarchs on the Eng- lish throne, to take part in a struggle against the well-organized at- tempts of a mighty Bourbon military autocrat to force his will upon other freer but less disciplined nations of Europe. And history is now repeating itself; the Royal Welsh is again engaged in a like struggle with the greatest military autocrat of all times, in the cause to which we Americans are also consecrated, where they are once again shoul- der to shoulder with the United States Marines.
At the beginning of the great war of today the home battalions of the Royal Welsh were assembled at Wrexham Depot for service in France. On French soil they fought and bled in the stress of those times. When the German advance was hurled back from the Marne, and modern trench warfare was initiated on the Aisne, after months of the fiercest fighting, there occurred an incident-a moment of re- laxation, if it may be so called-that many of us read of at the time. On Christmas Eve of 1914, on a sector manned respectively on oppo- site sides by the Saxons and the British, the firing suddenly ceased, but not by orders. The Saxons shouted out first, "Don't shoot." The British lads held up their hands in assent. A barrel of beer came over the trenches from the Saxon side, and the British in turn gave over their surplus rations. These British troops who responded to this invitation were none other than the famous Twenty-third, the old associates in China of the United States Marines. Let us remem- ber that Christmas Eve of 1914 and those Saxons, our enemies now. The carol chorus that arose from the German trenches that night came from hearts that for the time being expressed peace on earth and good
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will to mankind. Their ways are not our ways now, though their strain is in the Anglo-Saxon stock. Their song silenced for the time the crack of the sniper's rifle leveled across no man's land.
"You English there, why won't you come out," the Saxons called, and then the candles burned along parapets that were before guarded with ceaseless vigilance. A British chaplain gave to a Saxon colonel a copy of the English soldier's prayer, and in return received a cigar with a message for the bereaved family of a certain wounded British officer who had recently died a prisoner of war in German hands. And on the following Christmas Day the Saxons and the Welsh buried their dead and even played together a game of football, which the Saxons won. That such things could have occurred in the midst of war seems unbelievable to us, but that they did occur there can be no mistake. It brings us back our faith in the virtues of men. That truce was not an official truce, for no Kaiser willed or authorized it. It came from the hearts of those who were bearing the brunt of war; it expressed that sentiment upon which in the end the world will once again be united. And, as we remember what came from the hearts of Saxons, chained unknowingly to them to the wheels of the Prussian military despotism it is our duty to destroy, let us also hearken back to what it was my endeavor to make clear in the beginning. Let us again go down and examine the cellar of our political history and study there anew the sills and sleepers upon which our instituted form of government, dedicated to personal liberty, rests. There we find certain fundamental rights inherent with that system, such as the right of public assembly, the right of petition, the right of protest and the right of free speech. But first of all we find there the right of public assembly. We, the English-speaking peoples, had a word "moot," a noun, meaning ordinarily a dispute, a debate, a discussion, but its original preferred definition was "a meeting," a formal assem- bly. It is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin. Those ancient Saxons, the forebears of the very men who declared that unofficial truce that Christmas night, carried what we may now call the beginnings of representative government out of the forests of Germany into Eng- land. They had what was known as the folkmoot, the hundredmoot, the villagemoot, and the shiremoot, assemblies of the people for the discussion of matters that concerned them-the people. Puny and imperfect but well defined, these moots-the seed of representative government-found lodgment on English soil. There it was nourish- ed and has grown into the institutions we cherish and fight for today. For from these moots of the ancient Saxons there have grown, under our guidance, parliaments, congresses, legislatures and constitutions, and governments expressive of the public will, while in the Germany from whence the seed came, liberty is dumb.
How did such come to pass? To understand, let us read these words of the German Emperor, uttered very early in his reign :
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"It is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and votes, that have welded the German Empire together. My confi- dence rests upon the army."
And again, in 1898, he said :
"The most important heritage which my noble grandfather and father left me is the army, and I received it with pride and joy. To it I addressed the first decree when I mounted the throne. * * * And leaning upon it, trusting our old guard, I took up my heavy charge, knowing well that the army was the main support of my country, the main support of the Prussian throne, to which the deci- sion of God has called me."
Von Bernhardi, in his book, "Germany and the Next War," thus expressed the German aims :
"Our next war will be fought for the highest interests of our country and of mankind. This will invest it with importance in the world's history. 'World power or downfall!' will be our rallying cry."
We are in this war to give expression by our deeds to the purpose of Almighty God. For it is written: "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." So it is that every American who now crosses the Atlantic goes on a holy errand, and every gun, every shell, every bullet aimed at the heart of the enemy is engaged on a sacred work for the relief of humanity. America's cause is as just as Truth, as holy as a Benediction from the Almighty.
The New World is to carry forward this war for humanity from now on, and hereafter, so long as brute force attempts to control man- kind. The clouds across the Atlantic are dark, indeed, in these times. But what of the radiance which shines from Heaven upon the free New World! Here is the hope of humanity. The Old World is inextricably engulfed in misery. It cannot do more than stagger along in bloody trenches, unable to make that succesful war essential for an enduring peace. So, far away across the Atlantic, civilization stands stretching out its arms to us for help against the common enemy. In answer to that call, in the name of Jesus Christ, we are going forward to victory. God, give us loyalty, God, give us fortitude, God, give us unflinching and unfailing courage to fight our country's cause and to fight gloriously alike for Him.
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MEMBERSHIP ROLL
"To teach our sons and daughters, by precept and example, the honor of serving such a country as America-that is a work worthy of the finest manhood and womanhood. The well-born are those who are born to do that work. The well-bred are those who are bred to be proud of that work. The well-educated are those who see deepest into the meaning and necessity of that work."-HENRY VAN DYKE.
EDWARD PRESCOTT ABBE
ELECTED
April 14, 1915.
2138 California Street, Washington, D. C.
Great-great-great-grandson of William Blackler (1740- 1818); Captain in Colonel John Glover's (Massachusetts) Regiment, May 19, 1775, to December, 1775; Captain of Massachusetts Militia, 1776-1777.
WILLIAM STONE ABERT. November 5, 1901.
Attorney-at-Law. Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C.
Great-great-grandson of Timothy Matlack (1730-1829); Colonel in command of the Fifth Rifle Battalion of Penn- sylvania Volunteers.
ANTHONY CALLIS ADDISON. November 29, 1889. (Charter Member)
Bureau of Fisheries. 1910 Sunderland Place, Washington, D. C.
Great-grandson of Andrew Leitch ( ....- 1776); Major, Virginia Continental Line; killed in the action of Har- lem Heights, 1776.
JAMES HENRY ALBURTIS November 7, 1919.
Copy Editor, Government Printing Office. 29 W. Irving Street, Chevy Chase, Md.
Great-grandson of Johonnes Van Metre, Jr. (1735-1818); Commanded a Company in Second Battalion of Berkeley County Militia, Virginia.
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ELECTED
HENRY TURMAN ALLEN.
October 9, 1893
Major General, U. S. Army. Commanding Army of Occupa- tion, Germany.
Great-grandson of John Allen (1749-1816) of Virginia; Captain of Taylor's Regiment, Virginia Convention Guards; Major and issuing Commissary of Albemarle, Virginia, January 1779-November 1782; emigrated to Kentucky 1786, located in Bourbon County 1788.
SELDEN BROOKE ARMAT. March 31, 1920.
Captain, U. S. Army. Office Director of Finance, Muni- tions Building, Washington, D. C.
Great-great-grandson of Richard Brooke, who served as a Lieutenant in Captain William Lynn's and James Scott's Company, First Virginia Regiment of Cavalry commanded successively by Colonel Isaac Read, Lieu- tenant Colonel Green, and Colonel James Hendricks.
DAVISSON ARMSTRONG. May 20, 1892.
President, Citizens National Bank. Frostburg, Md.
Grandson of William Armstrong, (1763-1848); Ensign, Captain William Bratten's Company, Colonel William Irvine's Regiment, Seventh Pennsylvania Line.
MATTHEW CHALMERS ARMSTRONG. April 19, 1916.
Real Estate. Hampton, Va.
Great-great-great-grandson of Israel Camp (1723-1778) Ensign and later Captain in the Revolutionary Army, Connecticut troops.
Great-great-grandson of Rejoice Camp, private in Cap- tain Johnson's Company Connecticut State Troops, Fifth Battalion, Wadsworth Brigade 1776. Captain Samuel Camp's Company, Colonel Hooker's Regiment Militia.
Great-great-great-grandson of John Hamilton, Captain Third Hampshire County Regiment, Massachusetts Militia.
CLARENCE AIKIN ASPINWALL. March 21, 1917.
President, Security Storage Company, 1839 Wyoming Ave., Washington, D. C.
Great-great-grandson of Adonijah Montague (1757- 1828) who was in the battle at Bennington, Vermont.
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ELECTED
EDWIN BURR BABBITT. March 4, 1895.
Brigadier General, U. S. Army. Camp Lewis, Washington.
Great-great-grandson of Jonathan Titcomb, (1728-1817); Member of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, 1774; Colonel of a Massachusetts Regiment in the Rhode Island expedition, 1778; Member of the State Convention of Massachusetts in 1780; and Brigadier-General of Militia.
PHILIP RANDOLPH BAKER. July 27, 1920.
Lieutenant Commander, U. S. Navy. 2901 Sixteenth Street, Washington, D. C.
Great-great-great-grandson of William Baker; served in a militia company recruited in East Haddam, Connec- ticut, participated in campaign of Long Island and evac- uation of New York; died as a result of ill treatment while a prisoner of war in the hands of the British.
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