Respect for Robert E. Lee at Virginia Military Institute, May 5, 1926

Stroll through the stately campus of Washington and Lee University on a Wednesday or Saturday afternoon or on a Sunday, and the chances are that you will not go far before youe see ahead of or approaching you on the walk, two, three or more youths in the gray-clad uniform of the “West Point of the South.” Watch closely, if you please, as the V.M.I. cadets pass the historic old chapel that that houses the sacred dust of Robert E. Lee. The talk and laughter cease, the boyish forms straighten with soldierly erectness and one and all salute with military precision at the exact moment they pass in front of the dead warrior’s tomb.

The laughter and the careless chatter break out again; the cadets pass on. But there’s something about the spectacle that has stirred the blood of the beholder and will not allow him to forget. Call it rite or custom or what you will, it is a tribute that the young soldier of the Virginia Military Institute are scrupulous to pay. Day or night it is always the same—no V.M.I. cadet passes in front of the resting place of Robert E. Lee’s remains save at respectful salute. Thus the dead chieftain’s memory is kept alive in the hearts of generations of the South’s young men at Virginia’s great military school.

To-day the entire south stands like the V.M.I. cadet at salute beside the bier of the renowned hero who was great alike in the arts of war and peace. He led the young men of the South to war; he led them back to peace and taught them to accept honorable defeat like real men. Great as are the lessons to be learned from a study of the life of Lee during the eventful years that he captained the hosts of the Confederacy, even greater are those to be learned from the contemplation of the serene, dignified figure of the college president yonder in the quiet town of Lexington, showing his people and the world that defeat does not matter so much as the way in which it is accepted.

A great man in his lifetime, Robert E. Lee looms greater still on the pages of history. The South revers his memory, the world honors his name. And that is why the young cadets of the V.M.I. cease their conversation and silently salute as they pass, to and fro, the chapel which is to them, and to Virginia, a shrine around which time the heart-strings of the Southern People.

--The Roanoke (Va.) World News

From the front page of The North Wilkesboro Hustler, May 5, 1926

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