Anniversaries

Twenty-five years ago last week Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies at General Dwight Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims. It was V-E day, the end of the crusade in Europe; to Americans and much of the world, Ike and his triumphant armies were the heroes of an un forgettable moment. The atomic bomb, the cold war, Korea, Viet Nam, were all ahead. Wrote Poet Phyllis McGinley:

"That was an island in time, secure and candid, When we seemed to walk in freedom as in the sun."

That instant of military glory unalloyed was the last in the nation's memory. The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki accompanied the defeat of Japan. Korea turned into an unpopular, slogging stale mate. Viet Nam has divided the nation and stained the military's proud escutcheon.

It has come to this: last week a student organist in Phila delphia refused to play a long-honored hymn that most Protestants have never given second thought to: On ward, Christian Soldiers.

Another anniversary, perhaps more instructive in 1970 than V-E day, passed unmarked in the U.S. last week. On May 7, 1954, Viet Minh troops overran the 10,000-soldier garrison of French Brigadier General Christian de Castries at Dienbienphu.

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