The Daily Alaska Empire

MEMORIAL DAY.
Memorial Day, tenderest of all American holidays, is with us again today, remindful of the debt a grateful country owes the men who gave their all for its safety and perpetuity. Amid its preoccupation with economic stress, the nation pauses to celebrate with piety and pride the deeds of bravery and patriotism performed on land and sea in the hour of emergency. It does so in the reassuring confidence that should duty ever call again the breed will not be found extinct. Its glory and its traditions survive in the hearts of living Americans, despite the organized efforts of those spineless groups which deprecate national defense and are restless to undermine it.
The day of remembrance of our heroic dead has more than ordinary significance.
The need of the hour is for the stamina that has overthrown every armed enemy of the United States. The situation calls today for no whit less of courage, or perseverance, of the will to conquer that our forces have always displayed when they faced the foe.
It is to meet to recall the vicissitudes of the founding fathers and to derive inspiration afresh from their fortitude and faith. It was these virtues, as well as valor in battle, that made their causes triumphant.
Today, as we pause to honor ourselves by paying tribute to the nation's dead from war, the sense of the great need for preventing in the future the sacrifice that was demanded of them ought to be more confirmed than ever before. Representatives of the world's nations, large and small, are gathered around the council table in Geneva seeking some practical formula of disarmament and security to the end that war may be outlawed from among civilized peoples. The remembrance of these dead should serve to strengthen the determination of Americans that every influence likely to lead the nation into new wars shall be avoided if possible and that we shall lead in the work of bringing the nations of the world into an accord that will make wars impossible. No greater tribute could be paid to them than such a reconsecration for world peace.