T THE SUPREME SACRIFICE By CHARLES S. O'CONNOR HE future commentator will probably attach but little historical importance to the American occupation of Vera Cruz, as such, on April 21, Looked at from the point of view of the historian, it was, directly, but an act of retribution for an insult to the American flag, and indirectly a notable example of generous friendship for a stricken land and of the beneficent power of the American Republic. At our very doors lay a sister republic, rent and torn by dissension, lust for power, assassination and plunder; where wealth fearlessly and without an atom of legal restraint flaunted its effrontery in the faces of the poor; where political and industrial oppression went hand in hand; where patriotism had given way to conspiracy, outrage and anarchy; where civilized warfare. had degenerated into barbaric slaugh NOTE-Illustrations used in this article copyrighted by American Press Association. ter; where murder was enthroned in the capitol. This was the situation in Mexico at the time of our invasion; this is the situation in Mexico to-day. What the taking of Vera Cruz by the American bluejackets and marines under Admiral Fletcher, with the resultant efforts at mediation, will mean for Mexico, time alone will show. Revolution is in the air; the springs of justice are poisoned at their very source. To the American nation, however, April 21, 1914, was a day of rejoicing and of triumph. The hurried but careful preparation, the speeding dreadnoughts, the eager faces that lined the rails and looked out from the turrets, the mad dash into Vera Cruz harbor, the joyous cheer that arose as Uncle Sam's boys swept up the sun-baked streets of the city, the steady hands that clutched the rifles and the clear and fearless eyes that looked along each glistening barrel- all this gave notice to the world that American patriotism. CASKETS OF THE HEROES WHO FELL IN BATTLE AT VERA CRUZ back to its foul lair. It required the Civil War, with the sacrifice of thousands upon thousands of Catholic lives in defence of the Union, to awake the nation to the foul blot of Knownothingism. On the bloody and disastrous field of Bull Run, when the Union bigotry to realize that the Republic that day placed the Vatican between itself and its enemy, between the Union and disruption? It took the Spanish-American War to put a quietus to the ranting and howling of the A. P. A.s, although United States Senator George F. Hoar, the chivalrous and eloquent son of the old Bay State, had already consigned this malodorous organization and its ilk, these "secret, black and midnight hags," to the dark and foul depths of their origin. The United States was engaged in war with a Catholic country, yet the patriotism of every Catholic CORPORAL DANIEL A. HAGGERTY citizen and soldier was as firm and steadfast as that of the founders of the Republic. What a splendid manifestation of the devotion of a loyal Catholic to his country was that given by Captain John D. Drum of the Tenth Regulars, who on the morning of the battle of Santiago received his God in the Holy Eucharist, and a few hours later gave his life for his country-killed at the head of his command. "For God and Country" was never so eloquently preached. For some time now the country has been afflicted with the same old disease under new titles, the old having lost. their potential efficiency. On April 21, while blatant bigots, assassins of character, "Guardians of Liberty" and the rest of the foul breed, were sowing discord and ill-will, filling the land with time-worn slanders against their Catholic neighbors of disloyalty to American institutions and treason against American liberty, reflecting the very foulness of their own lives and the degeneracy of their imaginations in obscene rantings in printed sheet and meeting-houses, taking to their bosoms every human derelict and outcast that could be hired to raise his unclean hands against Holy Church, the Mother of Saints; while they were fomenting religious hatred and breeding religious strife, from the consequences of which they would be the first to flee-behold the answer : Daniel Aloysius Haggerty of Cambridge, Mass., a practical and loyal Catholic, educated in a parochial school, a former altar-boy, was lying dead in the streets of Vera Cruz, pierced by a Mexican bullet, the very first to give his life for the honor of his country and his country's flag. Three of his brothers in the faith died with him! Is it not time that the real American people, the conscience of the nation, with this picture before them, cry "Shame!" on those enemies of order and justice, those knights of the cellar and the dark-lantern, who prostitute patriotism and make a mockery of the sacred name of liberty? But the intellect of the breed is so warped, its brain so stupid, its spirit so venomous, that the life's blood of even a million Haggertys would not cleanse it of its foulness. The "Father of his Country" had adjured them to hold in grateful remembrance the services of a Catholic people; every But Haggerty and Lane and De Fabbio and DeLowry have not died in vain. Witness the magnificent outpouring of the sympathy and appreciation of nation, state and city that followed their cold remains. How richly they deserved it all! These mere boys went into battle, not with the nonchalance of one flipping the ashes from a cigarette, but with the knowledge of impending death. They gave not only all they had, but all that they hoped to be. "Greater love than this no man hath." These were the real Guardians of Liberty; this was the su preme sacrifice. The funerals of these young Catholic heroes were attended with magnificent public manifestations of patriotism and reverence. All classes and creeds stood with bowed heads, as the slow, measured step of their comrades in arms marked time to the mournful cadences of the dirge. Since those human vultures, those unscarred veterans of a thousand conspiracies, have not spared these defenders of the flag even in death, but have questioned their allegiance to Mother Church, it may not be amiss to give the readers of THE ROSARY MAGAZINE a brief sketch of these boys and their funerals. They are object-lessons that should long remain in the memory of every American Catholic. Perhaps the most magnificent tribute that was paid by nation, state and city, by citizen and soldier alike, was that accorded the remains of Corporal Haggerty. |