of Governor Herbert R. O'Conor 541

ARMISTICE DAY CELEBRATION
WAR MEMORIAL

November 11, 1941
Baltimore

ARMISTICE Day, 1918, wrote a jubilantly happy ending to a war that had
cost many thousands of American lives, and had drenched the whole,
world in the blood of its young manhood. It was a day that every American
who experienced it will remember as long as memory lasts.

Armistice Day, 1941, presents a vastly different picture. But while there
is no public jubilation, no frantically-happy crowds on this Armistice anni-
versary, nevertheless, there still is tremendous cause for heartfelt satisfaction
to every true American on this memorable day.

There is real cause for jubilation today because, though nearly a score of
once-free countries have been despoiled of their belongings, and of the most
priceless of all their possessions, their God-given freedom, the people of Amer-
ica today continue to enjoy to the fullest every right, every liberty won for
them, and jealously preserved for them, by our ancestors during these past 160
years.

To realize how blest we are in this respect, it is only necessary to think for
a moment of what Armistice Day, 1941, means to the devastated countries of
Europe. Looking back on the wild scenes of joy that transpired everywhere
on that great day in 1918, it is a saddening thought, indeed, to contemplate
what has happened since that time, not only to France, but to Denmark,
Belgium, to Poland, to Holland, to Norway and to Czecho-Slovakia. What bitter
thoughts Armistice Day must evoke in the minds of the people of those con-
quered countries! Or even in Great Britain, which finds herself this Armistice
Day in a death struggle for survival.

The newspapers, the radio, the screen, have brought us impressive evidence
of British courage to excite our admiration of Great Britain's Air Raid Ward-
ens, her Fire Watcher her Rescue and Bombs Squads and all the innumerable
specialized services which have enabled the people of Britain to survive and to
preserve their morale under the most disheartening circumstances.

England has suffered and suffered mightily, but at least its people have the
supreme satisfaction of knowing that England is still England, and that their
freedom has been unhampered. In Paris, however, in Warsaw and in all the
other capitals of the conquered countries, there is no such cause for satisfaction.
Instead there is the goose-step of heavy Nazi boots.

On Armistice Day twenty-three years ago, every man who had donned the
uniform of the United States felt that he could lay aside all thoughts of War,
because there would be no more war. That we were mistaken then should
merely serve to sharpen our alertness against the dangers of this present