Armistice Day

On a day whose very name had lost its meaning. President Roosevelt this week spoke to the world from the chill whiteness of the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. There was now neither armistice nor declared war; but the bodies of U.S. boys were at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Said he: ". . . We are able today . . . to measure our indebtedness to those who died. A few years ago, even a few months, we questioned, some of us, the sacrifice those had made. . . . Sergeant York of Tennessee, on a recent day, spoke to such questioners. 'There are those . . .' said Sergeant York, 'that ask . . . "What did it get you?" '

"Today we know the answer. . . . We know that these men died to save their country from a terrible danger of that day. We know, because we face that danger once again on this day.

"People . . . forgot that the danger which threatened this country in 1917 was real, and that the sacrifice of those who died averted that danger. Because the danger was overcome they were unable to remember that the danger had been present. Because our armies were victorious they demanded why our armies had fought. Because our freedom was secure they took the security of our freedom for granted and asked why those who died to save it should have died at all.

". . . If our armies . . . had lost ... we would have known why liberty is worth defending as those alone whose liberty is lost can know it. We would have known why tyranny is worth defeating as only those whom tyrants rule can know. . . .

"We know that it was, in literal truth, to make the world safe for democracy that we took up arms in 1917. . . .

"We know also what obligation and duty their sacrifices imposed on us. They did not die to make the world safe ... for five years or maybe ten or maybe twenty. They died to make it safe. And if, by some fault of ours who lived beyond the war, its safety has again been threatened, then the obligation and the duty are ours. It is in our charge now ... to see to it that 'these dead shall not have died in vain.' "

So spoke the President of a U.S. technically at peace, and actually engaged in an undeclared kind of war in which governments, rigidly polite to each other in their capitals, gave orders to shoot at sight on the seas. He knew that almost certainly by the week's end he would be signing a repealer of the Neutrality Act's "neutrality"; that the U.S. had steam up to start convoying its own ships directly across the Atlantic directly into British and Russian ports. The shooting had started, and convoying would mean more shooting. The President knew that around him, in the rolling disarray of marble slabs and granite headstones, there was still room for dead heroes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.