" THE PRICE OF VICTORY \
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AN ORATION
BY
L. D. WATSON
STUDENT AT
EDWARD WATERS COLLEGE
JACKSONVILLE, FLA.
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Subject: The Price of Victory
The Price of Victory is a subject of vivid im¬
portance, and I beg to acknowledge that my
inefficiency, will not allow me to throw a con¬
spicuous light on this great subject, though I
wish to call your attention to a few of its
important veracities.
First, let us plainly understand that the
value of a thing must be estimated by its
use, and the word price means the exchange
value of one thing expressed in terms of units
of another. And victory means a triumphant
conquest or a gaining of superiority in any
war or combat—over struggle, temptation,
passion or competition. And it is not only
desirous, but it is essentially necessary, and
worth every energetic effort put forth to ob¬
tain it.
There are two great warfares in life, name¬
ly, internal and external; and Mr. King's psy¬
chological statement concerning the psychical
and the physical unity of thhe mind, proves
that defeat in one tends to defeat in all, but
victory in one helps to be victorious in all.
Someone may ask, Watson, where is this
inner battlefield? Dear ones, according to
King's Rational Living, it is where man fights
alone.
Philosophers, logicians and psychological ex¬
perts have assumed the most earnest minded
men of all ages to have been Martin Luther,
Augustine, Paul and Socrates, and they declare
that the hottest, firiest and iro5:t pernicious
battles are ffought wholly within. The selfish
laws of the members waning against the
moral laws of the mind. Mortal combats try¬
ing to conquer self. Out there alone in the
mind of men, when there is no observer to reg¬
ister the proceedings, except God alone, or
that theocratic keeper of records and feals
who keeps an accurate account; of all mortal
transactions.
AUhough thousands and thousands—boys,
pirls, rren, women, nations a^d kingdoms—
hive paid the price, and triumphantly rejoiced
while conspicuously placing their fame and
name preeminent in the civilized and intellec¬
tual vrorld, which for us is sufficient proof
th?t we too C3n be victorious.
But Tadies, gentlemen, classmates and fellow
students, I do most sincerely beg to pursuade
you that these battles cannot be won by mere
longing and idly wishing for victory, but by
perseverance, faithful striving and putting
forth every energetic effort, we to can victor¬
iously rejoice, while the civilized nations are
forced to acknowledge our superiority.
Because our thinking faculty or our mental
development will have been so cultivated until
we can eruditionally revolve the ideas in our
minds or our hearts, and through the sympa¬
thetic nervous system transmit them to the
brain, and reciprocate them into atomic sen¬
sation, from which we gain perception, and
from perception conception, -aid from concep¬
tion judgment, and from judgment sylogism.
And Aristotle, that oriental logician and Ath¬
enian philosopher, who was the founder of de¬
duction, declared that through the process of
sylogistic reasoning we gain knowledge, and
from knowledge we gain power.
bo with Aristotle's deductive and Roger Ba¬
con's inductive and Stanley Jevon's hypotheti¬
cal sylogism, we ought to gain such philo¬
sophical reasoning power, until Athenian lo¬
gicians ar.d oriental philosophers would be
forced to bow in humble submission to their
superiority.
And we can triumphantly rejoice over the
interanl victory, and heroically enter the ex¬
ternal combats with victorious determination.
Now speaking of external warfares and vic¬
tories. Let us not forget the antogonistic bat¬
tlefield, since the world today is overwhelmed
in antagonism.
Yet time will not allow us to discuss the
heroic deeds of the many great combats, such
as accomplished by the great French Napo¬
leon rsonaparte, nor Xerxes, Cyrus (the great
Persian general), Darius, nor Artaxerxes,
Pompey, Titus, nor the Caesars of Rome, Xen-
ophon and Alexander the Great, the great Ath¬
enian and Macedonian generals, who in their
times conquered the known world, and wept
because there was no other world to be con¬
quered by them.
But I do wish to call your attention to the
American black man for a moment, who has
shed his blood in every battle fought by his
country-—U. S. A. If you please, just briefly
trace him back from Villa's chase in Mexico.
That heroic 9th and patriotic 10th Cavalry, sup¬
ported by the 24th and 25th Infantry! Couple
him to the Black Patriotic Volunteers, and
then march back to the Spanish-American bat¬
tlefield, and you will find it painted in negro
blood.
Go to Santiago; call Col. Miles, if you
please; have him explain how they ran head¬
long through barbed wire fence.s and showers
of Spanish bullets, displaying perfect marks¬
manship, taking that fortified position at el-
Caney. Then look at the blood streaming down
San Juan Hill for American victory.
Then bring him back to America, his father¬
land. Go from the oriental shores of Maine
to the golden coast of California, and you will
find his blood spilled all along the wayside.
You can find the negro soldiers all out in
Oklahoma, Utah and Arizona, even in the In¬
dian Territory, combatting with the Red Men
in national defense. And our boys are always
patriotic, heroic and victorious.
Go back to the Confederate battlefield. It
is painted in negro blood. While they are war¬
ring with the rebellious, go up in the Willard
Hotel in Washington, D. C., for a moment.
Take a seat by the east window with President
Lincoln as he views the first regiment of 20,000
marching double quick, crossing the Potomac
river into Virginia, and then look at the 186,-
000 shedding their blood in Ft. Pillow, Bel¬
mont, Andersonville, Chickamauga, Ft. Sump-
ter, Petersburg and Richmond, and on many
other battlefields in the Union Army against
the Rebellions, not only for the reunion of the
States, but for the stroke of Abraham Lin¬
coln's pen to declare the Emancipating Proc¬
lamation.
And then go back to the Revolutionary bat¬
tlefield, with that great horo, General George
Washington. You will find our boys there,
where their colonial patriotism is influenced
by the sons of liberty, with that (common¬
wealth) zeal of Democracy and (theocratic)
protection tore that British Stamp Act Taxa-
tion asunder, heroically pulled off that tyran¬
nical yoke of Parliament, and victoriously es¬
tablish a Republic, with Chrispus Attucks, a
black man having the honors of shedding the
first drop of blood for it, in Boston, Mass., on
the 5th day of March, 1770, naming it U. S. A.
And today we have a population of over 104,-
000,000; Washington, D. C., its capital, a city
only 790 miles from E. W. C., with a popula¬
tion of 331,069 inhabitants, of which 94,466
are colored.
And from Attuckss until today they have
ever shown national patriotism. So we will
pass on begging the interesx m your prayers
for our boys who are in the cantonments, on
the high seas, and even on No Man's Land,
shedding blood for universal democracy.
Now just a word about intellectual victory.
Having the intellectual inspiration of so many
great heroes — Edison, Whitney, Franklin,
Morris and thousands of others whom time
will not allow us to discuss, though their pro¬
duction stands conspicuous and serviceable un¬
til this day.
The science and arts, underground railways,
electric trains, wireless telegraphy, dread-'
naughts, submersible and air battle cruisers—
that intellectual faculty of man has taken
flights ou in space, patrolled the solar system
and gained astronomical victory.
Look at the famous Athenian astronomer,
Eratosthenes, measuring an arc of a meridian
by menas of a noon shadow, away back 240
years B. C., and the 5,000 stadia which he finds
to be the angular differenc in the sun's atti¬
tude, in Syena and in Alexandria, Egypt, en¬
ables him to calculate the earth's circumfer¬
ence to be 24,000 miles.
We could name such scientists as Kepler,
Galileo, and even Sir Isaac Newton, who an¬
nounced the general laws of universal gravita¬
tion; who with that planetorial parallax, threw
their geometrical plumb line out into space,
and inferred astronomical calculatioin of plan¬
etorial distances, even from the moon which
is nearest, to Neptune the most distant star,
which is 2,800,000,000 miles beyond the merid¬
ian sun.
And do not forget our National Geographic
Society in Washington, D. C., who with its
geological pickaxe dug down through the
strata through the mnieral kingdom, and
squared the lithological speares, giving scien¬
tific calculation of the earth being 56,255,000
square miles of land, 140,295,000 square miles
of water, a total superficial area of 196=940,000
sqquare miles, and six continental divisions;
and the human family divided into three races,
sixty governments and a population of 1,192,-
000,000.
Last and most essential is moral victory,
which we can best obtain through divine guid¬
ance, and that we can get through earnest and
fervent prayer, for prayer has helped others
and prayer will help us. For example, Hannah
prays, Samuel is born; Esther prays, Haman
is hanged; Elisha prays, Jordan is divided;
Daniel prays, the lions are muzzled.
Prayer has divided seas, made flinty rocks
ruph into fountains, quenched flames of fire,
ar>d disarmed vipers. It has stopped the sun
in its rapid race across the blue ether, arrested
tho moon, commanded angels down from heav¬
en. bur^t open iron gates, and conquered leg¬
ions of devils. Through prayer we can gain
moral victo^v and a home in that Holy City,
Npw Jerusalem.
O, that I had such intellectual zeal as Soc¬
rates, the founder of philosophy, or such men¬
tal power as Euclid, founder of geometrical
pcience. and could etymologize words like Web-
rW, with such oratorical force as Demos¬
thenes, I would pour out to you the issues of
this great subpect, The Price of Victory, and
you could not restrain, for your hearts would
overflow with enthusiasm, and always be in¬
fluenced to pay the price of victory.
L. D. WATSON,
Student of Edward Waters College.