And now it is eminently fitting that the men of the great war and the men of the lesser war claiming not only to have been good soldiers but to be good citizens should come here to assist at laying the foundation of the monument to him who typified in his career the virtues of the soldier and exemplified in his high office our ideals of good citizenship. I am glad that such a monument should have been erected here in this wonderful State on the shores of the Pacific; in this city with a great past and with a future so great that the most sanguine among us can not properly estimate it; this city of the Occident which looks west to the Orient across the Pacific, westward to the west that is the hoary east; this city situated upon that giant ocean which will in a not distant future be commercially the most important body of water in the entire world.
I thank you for coming here and for giving me the privilege of joining with you to-day in these solemn ceremonies of commemoration, the ceremonies of laying the foundation of a monument which is to keep green in mind the memory of McKinley as a lesson in war and a lesson in peace, as a lesson to all Americans of what can be done by the American who in good faith strives to do his whole duty by the mighty Republic.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Illustrations without captions have had a description added, this is denoted with parentheses.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
[Pg 12]: “hundreth” replaced with “hundredth”
[Pg 12]: “thoroughout” replaced with “throughout”
[Pg 345]: “encouragaging” replaced with “encouraging”