Newport Navalog

AN EDITORIAL

The Unknown Soldier is the symbol of all those who have given their lives in sacrifice for their country. Before his tomb, millions of Americans, visitors from other countries, sightseers and tourists of every description stand in respectful silence as they look upon the burial vault that houses the remains of one who is representative of so many.

The memory of every American who gave his life in war for his country is here preserved. The measured tread of a constant patrol is ever present, not only to guard what is sacred but to remind all who come to this shrine that our country remembers, that it lives by the sacrifices of the dead as well as by the efforts of the living. The Unknown Soldier represents those who have not died in vain.

Existence then, is to be cherished, to be well spent, to be sacrificed if necessary to a cause that is a worthy one. A man lives and dies with a purpose when he lives and dies for a friend, a family, an organization, a cause, a country, his God. Any other purpose is a negative and a selfish one and offers no justification for living.

It is, therefore, a tragedy when we look over the daily papers to find so many young sailors dying needlessly, selfishly and without purpose. The imagination is sorely tried to include such within the shadow of the Unknown Soldier's tomb. Their memory is surely preserved in the hearts of their relatives, but the love and affection that preserve it are darkened by the bitterness that this death was not necessary, that it was selfish, that it was in vain. Worse than this, these victims are sometimes guilty of the death of innocent persons.

A man who decides that he himself is master of life and death is not a man. He is a figment of an inflamed imagination, a frankenstein, self created who wreaks destruction upon others and finally ends up in a burial mound of broken glass, splintered wood and twisted steel. Relatives may take his body to a National cemetery. He may be laid to rest in a quiet country churchyard.

But in the records of the police, in the annals of the naval service, in the hearts and minds of all who knew him, his headstone will remain on the highway, a monument to carelessness, selfishness and vanity.