"Eternal Father who hast begirt us round with loving care, blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, and has committed to us rules of reason as holy messengers of Thine: Forgive our foolish ways, capture our truant thoughts, direct our wandering wills, as once again with contrite hearts we fling ourselves as penitents in utter self-abasement upon the world's great altar stairs of prayer that slope through darkness up to Thee. . . . Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen." With this prayer by Chaplain ZeBarney Phillips the U. S. Senate began its deliberations one noon last week.
Scarcely five minutes later Senator Barkley from Christian Kentucky rose and said: "From the Committee on the
Library I report back favorably, without amendment, the joint resolution [S. J. Res. 21 ]. . . . This is the usual form of resolutions authorizing the erection of monuments without any expense to the Government."
Said Vice President Garner from pious Texas: "Is there objection to the present consideration of the joint resolution?" Placid silence followed. The clerk read the resolution. More placid silence marked the automatic passage of S. J. Res. 21. Not unusual is it for the Senate to adopt a resolution permitting erection of a monument to a Civil War cavalry colonel who was also a great Republican orator. But altogether unusual was the Senate's action when the soldier-orator had an even greater fame as an antiChristian, a man who, were he still alive, would have picked up the prayerful chaplain's "rules of reason" and used the phrase as a knife to stab the Senate's faith in God. For the man to be honored by the statue authorized by S. J. Res. 21 was no other than Robert Green Ingersoll. Since 1930 the Freethinkers have been collecting funds to erect a statue of their agnostic hero, first planning to dedicate it on the centenary of his birth last August. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, commissioned to make the statue, completed in his Texas studio a clay model of the orator, in frock coat with arms akimbo. When cast in bronze the figure will be 12 ft. high, standing upon an 8-ft. marble base. Before that can take place, however, the House must also approve S. J. Res. 21, President Roosevelt sign it and the Robert Ingersoll Monument Association (headed by his daughter Mrs. Maud Ingersoll Probasco) raise another $10,000 or $12,000. Then will follow the choice of a site in Washington. According to the Senate resolution that site will be on Government land, but not on the grounds of 1) the Capitol, 2) the Library of Congress, 3) the Mall, 4) the White House.