THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11026, 14 March 1914, Page 6

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS.

DELIVERED BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN NOVEMBER 19, 1863. Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this 1 continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, ana dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are mot on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense ,we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. Tho brave men, living and dead, wlio struggled here, have consecrated it, far abovo our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say liere, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, tho living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought hero have thus so far so nobly curried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honoured dead wo take increased devotion to that- cause for which they gavo the last full measure of devotion; that wo here highly resolve that-these dead shall'uot have died in vain: that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.