that is what we of Texas have been doing ever since. It is no accident, nor yet is it an error of those charged with responsibility for building the Texan memorials, that this one compares with the magnificent shaft commemorating San Jacinto as the faint cold radiance of Polaris compares with the noonday splendor of a Texan summer sun. That is, and always has been, the Texan point of view. It is part of the unconscious tribute that we pay to our self-confidence and racial pride.

2.   THE TEXAN REVOLUTION, 1835-1836

As a proving ground of history, the Texan Revolution was unique. Though fought on a terrain comparable with that of the World War of 1914-1918, and, as regards the value and area of the contested region, for a comparable prize, the numbers engaged were so small that the historian can trace the main springs of human action and human conduct which caused its every move; and the actuating motives, mental oddities, and moral obliquities of the participants, their shifting plans -- their increasing heart-beats -- as can be done with no other event of similar importance in the history of the world. Every problem, economic, political, personal, governmental, emotional, military, and financial, that vexes our so-called modern era passes beneath the microscope of the student of history who examines the story of Texas from May, 1835, to May, 1836. And under the microscope of history, its problems are seen in clear relief, even as a slow-motion picture passes, in detailed review, action too rapid for the normal eye. Human motives and human conduct, and human reactions to hardship, ambition, selfishness and greed, and to a government that is either too arbitrary or too weak, are, in all ages, much the same. The United States, Mexico, and Texas suffered and, from 1835 to 1880, for the most part, solved all the problems -- social, political, economic, and governmental -- that threaten world peace and human happiness today.

Mexico, in 1834 and 1835, sought relief from the uncertainties and weaknesses, hardships and petty tyrannies, which arose from an ill-conceived and badly-working effort at democracy, for which the Mexican people, not yet accustomed to self-government, were not prepared, and yielded to the personal dictatorship of General Santa Anna as a measure of relief from lesser ills. For this error,