When he rose, he saw his mother almost under him and, not far behind her, Judith with her father, Judge Page. The lieutenant of regulars was standing on the edge of the crowd, and to his right was Grafton, also standing, with his hat under his arm--idly curious. But it was to his mother that he spoke and, steadfastly, he saw her strong, gentle face even when he was looking far over her head, and he knew that she knew that he was arguing the point then and there between them. It was, he said, the first war of its kind in history. It marked an epoch in the growth of national character since the world began. As an American, he believed that no finger of mediævalism should so much as touch this hemisphere. The Cubans had earned their freedom long since, and the cries of starving women and children for the bread which fathers and brothers asked but the right to earn must cease. To put out of mind the Americans blown to death at Havana--if such a thing were possible--he yet believed with all his heart in the war. He did not think there would be much of a fight--the regular army could doubtless take good care of the Spaniard--but if everybody acted on that presumption, there would be no answer to the call for volunteers. He was proud to think that the Legion of his own State, that in itself stood for the reunion of the North and the South, had been the first to spring to arms. And he was proud to think that not even they were the first Kentuckians to fight for Cuban liberty. He was proud that, before the Civil War even, a Kentuckian of his own name and blood had led a band of one hundred and fifty brave men of his own State against Spanish tyranny in Cuba, and a Crittenden, with fifty of his followers, were captured and shot in platoons of six. "A Kentuckian kneels only to woman and his God," this Crittenden had said proudly when ordered to kneel blindfolded and with his face to the wall, "and always dies facing his enemy." And so those Kentuckians had died nearly half a century before, and he knew that the young Kentuckians before him would as bravely die, if need be, in the same cause now; and when they came face to face with the Spaniard they would remember the shattered battle-ship in the Havana harbour, and something more--they would remember Crittenden. And then the speaker closed with the words of a certain proud old Confederate soldier to his son: