The Laramie Republican

NEW COMMANDER OF AMERICAN LEGION SPEAKS AT LINCOLN

(By Associated Press.)

Lincoln, Neb., Nov. 11.—When free men go out to battle it is the winning of peace they fight for, as "there is no such thing as the winning of a war," Alvin Owsley, the new national commander of the American Legion said here today in an address dedicating Nebraska's new capitol.

"Death and ruin are the stakes in the game of war," he said; "ruin and death are the price men pay for peace whenever that spirit of destruction breaks its bonds. The ending of war is a great thing, but the beginning of peace is a greater thing; for with the coming of a just peace the march of mankind is taken up again, mankind going forward step by step to better things. Not as the day of the making of an end, but as the day of the beginning of a great endeavor, let us observe this anniversary.

"On this day of days I am here with you, joyful in heart to pledge the mind and soul of the American Legion to all good efforts of constructive citizenship. We have sanctified our comradeship through honor to our dead, and through the last full measure of devotion to our disabled; and that devotion to our disabled shall maintain us until the last man broken in the service of his country in the World war be fully restored and set again upon the pathway of achievement and hope.

"The American Legion is carrying out a constructive program that goes toward the building of a better citizenship. With eager zeal, we are seeking to carry equal opportunity of education to every nook and corner of the land, to the homes where children of poverty dwell, to be available there as well as where wealth and luxury abounds."