Evening star., 1927-05-29
LUCRETIA Il. REMINGTON.
.ROM the meadow-land Of Mara
- thon through the forest depths
of Belleau Wood, rise in end
less succession memorials to

l. thon through the forest depths
of Belleau Wood, rise in end.
i less succession memorials to
the slain in battle-here a
mound above the dead. there a
columned shaft, a cenotaph, or tomb.
wrought in simple grandeur by a re-
membering people.
A fitting thing, this, vet one won.
ders whether the thing their sacrifice
preserved is not, after all. their flaw
less tribute.
Standing on the field Of Gettysburg,
Lincoln seemed burdened with the
consciousness Of his inability to add
to or detract from, by any words he
might utter, the deeds of the men
who had offered their all on that
memorable ground. Words, to one
who knew SO unerringly the full, deep
mea aning of words, seemed strangely
inadequate in the face Of their sac
rifices. To him their most perfect
eulogy lay in an awed silence and
their consummated memorial in the
reunion Of a once divided country.
One knows that Lincoln, standing
some clear night on Capitol Hill, and
beholding for the first time the surg.
the halls of Congress, white as carved
ivory against the sky, and the
pIangent streaming of the Stars and
Stripes above the Library. the colors
strangely intense and vivid against
that same sky, would have felt in
his sensitive, poetic heart that there
lay the perfect tribute, the established
Union, symbolized in waving banner
and in vaulting dome. That starry BAN
ner, so wind-whipped and free; that
mounting dome, ethereal as builders
dream, yet substantial rs reality
itself, upgather into themselves the
full value Of the unapproachable Civ
ing Of those men whose measure or
devotion was death on the field Of
war.
Monument and eulogy, poem and
song in their honor cannot do more
than embroider the hem of the gar
| ment of their glory, fair though that
pattern of memory may be. Yet how
nobly are the monuments wrought
from imperishable marble and bronze,
and what a goodly number of them
is within the confines of the Capital,
| whose safeguarding was their peculiar
duty.
From the simple, unmarked stone
amor;' the serried ranks of marble
that mark those who sleep in the
wooded groves of Arlington to the i'm
pressive Tomb of the Unknown that
sentinels the city built below, along
the Potomac, blossoms the flower of
memory, and its petals are the wreaths
and the garlands and the blooms and
the little flags that wave in every
breeze above the graves. The hands
that scatter the tributes are the hands
of little children. of family, of COM
rades. all gratefully remembering.
And in that requiem service sounds
th> tramp of marching feet, young
feet, eager and buoyant: young feet,
weary and worn, but feet that march
forward, ever forward, till the span of
| lif is folded up into a few brief years
of living-glorious living, whose starry
close is bright with endless remember.
ing. For the great host Of those who
! pass this way but once comes com.
plet oblivion, while for those whose
path was the way Of the flag there re-
| mains a living glory in the hearts that
remember. So, seeing them, we ap.
praise them as the chosen few whose
names shall be long in the land.
1t was Lincoln again whose subtle
spirit caught the full value Of a ma
tion's common memories, memories
which. as he said in his first inaugural
address, like mystic cords stretched
from every battlefield and patriot
grave to every living heart over this
broad land" for those cords bind in