Today, we are here to celebrate, and to honor and to commemorate, the dead and the living, the young men, who in every war, since this country began, have given testimony to their loyalty to their country, and their own great courage.
In a world tormented by tension and the possibilities of conflict, we meet in a quiet commemoration of an historic day of peace. In an age that threatens the survival of freedom, we join together to honor those who made our freedom possible.
For our part, we shall achieve that peace only with patience and perseverance and courage–the patience and perseverance necessary to work with allies of diverse interests but common goals, the courage necessary over a long period of time to overcome an adversary skilled in the arts of harassment and obstruction.
There is no way to maintain the frontiers of freedom without cost and commitment and risk. There is no swift and easy path to peace in our generation. No man who witnessed the tragedies of the last war, no man who can imagine the unimaginable possibilities of the next war, can advocate war out of irritability or frustration or impatience.
In the end, the only way to maintain the peace is to be prepared in the final extreme to fight for our country–and to mean it.
On this day of remembrance, let us pray in the name of those who have fallen in this country’s wars, and most especially, who have fallen in the First World War, and in the Second World War, that there will be no veterans of any further war, not because all shall have perished, but because all shall have learned to live together in peace.
And to the dead here in this cemetery, we say, they are the race. They are the race immortal, whose beams make broad the common light of day. Though time may dim, though death has barred their portal, these we salute, which nameless passed away.
