Roanoke Rapids herald. [volume] (Roanoke Rapids, N.C.) 1914-192?, 1921-11-18

| hhSWAoV Will Oli0P w Hio lOkShiSoN
in honor of this common soldier.
He will 60 to his grave through
long lines of soldiers and sailors
standing at present arms. .
The flags in all the city will come
to half mast, all the bells will
toll his requiem, and the great
guns of every fort and every
warship will thunder salutes that
will resound from the echoing
hills of Virginia.
All this in honor of one dead
doughboy and all of it a sorry
farce.
For what else but farcical can
one call this pomp and circum-
stance with which the nation
surrounds the burial Of this man,
when in its daily life the nation
shows that it despises the thing
for which this man laid down
his life? For what did he go
forth to diea Surely not to shake
a crazy emperor from his crazy
throne. Surely not for craven
fear on the part of a nation that
never showed fear before.
Most surely not in order that
our great business houses might
add untold millions to their
staggering wealth. We all
know that what he went out for
was to fight war. He was told
that the soul of his country was
sickened by the horrors that
afflicted the world, that America
had sworn before her God that
this thing should cease, no mat
ter what the cost to herself; and
in a cause like that he found it a
proud thing to stride into the
Valley of the Shadow of Death.
So they are burying him at
today, and great is
the lamentation raised by the
nation that has deserted the
cause for which he fought. Bah!
1t would have been better to have
shoveled him into a shellhole and
left him there; because at least
he freed the soil of France from
invaders, and that work not even
the vultures that gather on the
field when the battle is over can
befoul.
Then we should not nave had
this terrible burial that is taking
place at Arlington today. For
they are burying more than the
unknown soldier there. They
are burying the dead hopes of
of people who believed
the nations leaders when they
said it was a war against war.
They are burying the aspirations
Of those who sought to erect upon
the ruins that the war had left
the enduring citadel of peace, the
parliament of man that should
Danish war forever. They are
burying the belief of other ma
tions in the righteousness of
America, the belief that nerved
hem for that last desperate eff
'ort that won the victory. They
ire burying our lost ideals, they
ire burying our broken promises
And there, on the land that once
belonged to the stainless Lee,
hat amphitheater whose columns
aise its graceful architrave to
eaven is a splendid, cynical
to our honor that is
cad.
In all the stately, empty pa
eantry, there is but one small
lean of hope. Over that tomb
lso, will sound the organ-music
{ st. John: Il am the resurrec-
on and the life, saith the Lord.
lie that believeth on me, though
e were dead, yet shall he live"
Even in this nation, that
GEMS to be dead to all its great
spirations of the past, there are
nose who believe. Just now the
ED where the great fight was
ought is silent save for the
1arling of the jackals. Harvey
'aduces the dead, Hearst and
'atson the living. Yet there
e suggestions Of movement in
lie valley of dry bones that Wash
gton has become. A conference
assembling. 1t is but a shad-
Wy thing, by comparison with