402 State Papers and Addresses

Memorial Day, yes, it is truly that! We salute the brave men who fought
our fight in years long gone.

"In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow, beneath the crosses, row on row, "
but ever ringing in our ears, -as we remember with affection the hero-dead lying
'neath the poppies, is their dread warning that "they shall not sleep, " if we
who survive them failed to achieve that peace for which they fought and died.
And nations have failed, ingloriously! Instead of the peace among nations that
was their elusive quest, today finds other youths keeping their "rendezvous
with death, at some disputed barricade; " today sees hate among nations re-
vealed in new and terrifying forms.

As we contemplate the scene of far-flung battle, in Europe, along the
Eastern Mediterranean, in Africa, in China; as we hear the cries of hungry
children, the moans of countless maimed and dying; as we sit at ease in our
homes at evening, while overseas the night brings the whine of the sirens and
the roar of exploding bombs in embattled England—well may we, on this
Memorial Day, thank the Divine Providence which has preserved us from the
tragedies that have befallen countless millions of humans like ourselves the
world over.

Well may we say a silent but heartfelt prayer to the Almighty that the
carnage of war may soon be ended, and that the war-torn world may have re-
spite to mend the ravages of today's devastating warfare.

Surely, as we stand beside the resting places of our dead, there can be
nothing in our hearts\ but disgust and loathing for war, for here we see its
effects in all their stark reality. But, terrible as war is, throughout the wide
world today we see revolting conditions that, to anyone brought up in the tradi-
tion of America's way of life, are to be shunned even more than war, are
infinitely worse than death. We see entire nations enslaved that once were as
free and happy as America. We see whole sections of populations torn away
from their homes and banished to strange lands, deprived of their all, ofttimes
separated from their loved ones, doomed to a future of despair and want. The
only excuse for this heartless transplanting of national groups, is to insure that
they will not interfere ever again with the nationalistic and militaristic ambi-
tions of their conquerors.

No! War is terrible and to be avoided at all reasonable costs. But war is
preferable, infinitely preferable, to a peace of degradation and enslavement, to
life without the rights and privileges that we in America have enjoyed as pos-
sibly no other nation in the world ever enjoyed. To avoid war by agreeing to
accept anything less than the Constitutional Rights we have known, would be
to fail miserably to "keep faith" with those who died. To be derelict in preserv-
ing for generations to come after us that system of Government won and safe-
guarded for us by our forefathers, would be a submission that is unthinkable
to every true-blooded American.

Today, the eternal flame burns red under the Arc de Triomphe in a now
German-dominated Paris, in bomb-scarred London, in peaceful Arlington. May
that eternal flame always be symbolic of the flame of patriotism that wells in
the heart of every American. May it signify forever to those unknown soldiers'
who have passed into the warrior's Valhalla, and to all the hero-dead who fought