Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-05-30
SHALL THE DEAD
HAVE DIED IN VAIN?
While We Put Flowers on Their Graves
Let Us Not Make Mockery
of Their Sacrifice

WE CAN have some faint realization
w of the feelings of the nation when 1t
celebrated the first Memorial Day more
than fifty years ago 1t cost the North
the lives of 100000 young men to win
the Civil War. There was scarcely a
family over which the shadow of bereave-
ment la not spread itself. A son or a
brother, a grandson or cousin or
nephew had given his life. And the
| hearts of wives and mothers were aching.
The fathers and mothers of the boys
| who have died in this war-most of them
since last Memorial Day-are the chill
dren of the men and women of the Civil
War generation. The boys who fought
and died in France and Belgium are our
sons. Some $4,000 of them have given
up their lives, number small in com
parison with the casualties of the Civil
War But the nation mourns for them
today no less sincerely than it mourned
for the greater number half century
ago.
Many of the dead then were buried IN
the cemetery at home Their parents
could lay flowers on the green mound
heroic young spirit was near them.
The dead of this war are now lying in
the fields of Europe. Their graves are
marked with simple wooden crosses on
which their comrades hung wreaths
when they could get them. Those faded
tributes are swaying in the breezes this
morning three thousand miles away.
And the hearts of the mothers here at
home are aching with grief at the appar-
ent separation.
The only light that relieved the gloom
fifty years ago was the knowledge that
the boys had died for a worthy cause.
But it was hard for many women, bereft
of son or husband, to understand the con-
ditons which made it necessary for them
to make so great a sacrifice. And the
sympathetic did not try to make them
understand Instead they were very
tender with the stricken and did what
they could to make life seem bearable in
the future.
SO today it is forced upon our atten-
ton that we are not the first to be called
upon to mourn the soldier dead. 1t has
been the lot of woman from the begin
ming Men must fight and women must
weep, so runs the world away.
The light that shone over the grave
yards on the first Memorial Day is now
shining over the battlefields of this great
war where the dead of many allied
nations are resting side by side. The
hearts of American and English and
French and Belgian and Italian mothers
are there not only today, but every day,
and especially every night yearning over
their manchid taken off in his youth.
But they are conSoed by the thought
that the cause for which the life was sac
rificed was one for which it is worthy
to die.
Their thoughts and ours, as the Presi-
dent has we'll said in his Memorial Day
message, "are consecrated to the main
tenance of the liberty of the world and of
the union of its people in single COM
radeship."
1t behooves us, the living, to consider
whether we shall permit it to be said
that the dead have died in vain.
For what did they give up their lives?
We were told that we were fighting a war
to end war. The horrors of war have
been impressed upon the peoples of the
world so deeply that they will shudder
for years as they think of them The
peoples themselves are weary with war.
They have won a victory for liberty of
which none but designing politicians can
rob them.
Now the question is whether the cause
IL. l.. L
through the failure of governments unre-
sponsive to popular sentiment to estab-
lish that peace which has been won with
so much suffering.
Can any statesman stand beside the
graves in the cemeteries and the graves
in the hearts of the mourning women on
both sides of the ocean and pledge him
self to the undoing of what has been
done?
Can any statesman conspire to bring
| about such conditions that the world will
be forced to say that the dead gave up
| their lives for lost cause?
These are the questions which the peo-
ples are asking just now. And the souls
| of the dead are awaiting the answer.
They are not the dead in this war only.
There is a mighty company of them made
mn of men who have fought to stay the
march of barbarism or to establish lib
erty threatened by an oppressor. They
come from the fields of Chalons, where
they stopped Attila and saved Europe
| for Christendom. They are assembling
| from Tours. where the attempt to make
| Europe Mohammedan was checked.
| They rise from Waterloo, where the am
bition Of Napoleon had its fall. From
Sarstogs and Yorktown they are watch
ing the course Of events. They come
| from Gettysburg and the other battle