The Purest Democracy

When the 5th Marine Division cemetery was dedicated on bloody, windswept Iwo Jima, the sermon was delivered by the division's Jewish chaplain, Roland B. Gittelsohn. Said he:*

"Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the man who could have discovered the cure for cancer. Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined to be a great prophet. . . . Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth to their memory. . . .

"Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor. . . . Here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews.. . . Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy.

"Any man among us the living who . . . lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. . . ."

*As reported last week in The Living Church by Clifford P. Morehouse, editor on leave for service with the Marines.

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