From the Archives: Celebrating Memorial Day in the midst of war in 1944

Sunday

May 25, 2014 at 9:00 AMMay 25, 2014 at 9:43 AM

When editorial writers sat down 70 years ago to write tributes to those who died in war, they had no idea that D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy and the key to ending World War II in Europe, was a week away. 

In those days, Memorial Day was celebrated May 30 no matter what day of the week it fell on.  The Uniform Holidays Act, passed by Congress in 1968 and implemented in 1971, moved Memorial Day from a fixed date to the last Monday in May.

Below are editorials published in 1944 from two Rockford newspapers.  Original grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation was retained. 

They died for us

Today we celebrate another Memorial day in the midst of war.  The list of those who have fallen lengthens.  Their resting places are in many lands, in many seas.  Leaving us, each took his portion of what we are as a nation; in death, he made it part of the place where he fell, of the place where he sleeps.  Because of these dead we cannot give way to cynicism, to despair of hope, to lack of faith in what we asked them to die for. 

We have laid our sons to rest in alien soil not with aggressive aim, nor with selfish purpose, nor proud self-will, but to strike down what we held evil and what they themselves knew was evil to the degree that their own lives were shields they raised against evil so that it might not come upon us.  And thus we have given our sons in all our wars, not aggressively, but in faith that the sacrifice would right the wrong. 

Those who have gone from us to die, each with his portion of that most sacred flame of our nationhood, the upholding of the right as God gives us to see the right are, wherever they lie, spiritual hostages.  We have given those hostages in order that no cynical gain, no selfish personal ambition, no despair for humanity or righteousness shall keep us from spiritually reclaiming each plot where the dead lie, under whatever alien skies. 

And does this dream seem far and unachievable, clouded with complexities and doubt, seamed with divisions and cross-purposes?  It was what we asked them to die for. 

— Rockford Morning Star, Tuesday, May 30, 1944

Holiday for all states

Even the young men and women among us can recall the years when civil war veterans appeared at school assemblies and marched or rode in Memorial day parades.  Now in the whole country there is only a handful of men who fought for preservation of the union in 1861-65. 

When the civil war veterans were still with us in large numbers and participated actively in Memorial day exercises the holiday was regarded mainly as a tribute to the departed warriors of the war between the states. 

As ranks of union veterans thinned, however, Memorial day developed a broader significance.  It came to be recognized more and more as a day for tribute to all war dead.  In Rockford, for example, there was organized five years ago the In Memoriam association, which plans the Memorial day observance on that basis.  Veterans and descendants of veterans of all wars are represented on it. 

After the present war ends, there will be a wish to have a holiday applying to all states to honor those who gave their lives on the battlefield of the world.  That should be Memorial day, May 30, now observed in 42 of the 48 states. 

Federal action should not be necessary to accomplish this.  The six states, five of which are in the deep south, that do not now set aside May 30 for decoration of graves could determine to do so.  They need not hesitate because of any sectional feeling carried over from the civil war because in the north the holiday is associated as much with the Spanish-American and the two world wars as with the strife between the states. 

Fifty years ago, even 25 years ago, such a suggestion would not have taken well in either north or south.  But time and association dilute prejudice and ill-feeling.  When the boys come home from this war, in which Illinois soldiers are fighting next to Alabamans, Wisconsin troops next to Georgians, there should be no remaining bars to a 48-state Memorial day on May 30.