The hoarse roar Of the monster guns; The rifles' clatter Where the bullets patter, The rattle, rattle, rattle Of the mitrailleuse in battle, Of the men who charge through hells. Where the poison gas descends, In the dim Chaos and clamor of the strife, 'Tis done At last! The victory won, The dissonance of warfare past! O Music mourn the dead Whose loyal blood was shed, And sound the taps for every hero slain; Then lead into the song That made their spirit strong, And tell the world they did not die in vain. Thank God we can see, in the glory of morn, The invincible flag that our fathers defended; And our hearts can repeat what the heroes have sworn, That war shall not end till the war-lust is ended. Then the bloodthirsty sword shall no longer be lord Of the nations oppressed by the conqueror's horde, But the banners of freedom shall peacefully wave O'er the world of the free and the lands of the brave. HENRY VAN DYKE. 42504-18- -3 Follow the Flag Follow the flag! BY Y EVERY fireside where live the love of country and the love of justice is heard a sigh of relief that our flag is not, after all, to be trampled in the mire. Now that it has been raised aloft, follow it. Follow it even to the battle front. Follow the flag! It goes on a high mission. The land over which it flies inherited its spirit of freedom from a race which had practiced liberty for a thousand years. And the daughter paid back the debt to the mother. Her successful practice of free institutions caused the civic stature of the citizen in the motherland to grow. It lit the torch of liberty in France. Then, moving abreast, these three lands of democracy imparted to it impetus so resistless that freedom is sweeping victorious around the globe. Today constitutional government is the rule, not the exception, in the world. Once more these three nations are together leading a great cause and this time as brothers in arms. Follow the flag! It goes on a world mission. If the high hope of our President is fulfilled, that flag will have new meaning. Just as the stars and stripes in it symbolized the union of free states in America, so now they may come to symbolize the beginnings of a union of nations, self-governing, and because they are self-governing making for good will and for justice. Follow the flag! It goes on a stern mission. Follow it, not for revenge, yet in anger-righteous anger against the bloody crew who, with criminal intent, have brought upon the world the greatest sum of human misery it has ever known in all its history. Follow it till that ugly company is put down and the very people themselves whom they so grievously deceived and misled, by coming into liberty, will come to bless that flag and kiss its gleaming folds. Follow the flag! Too long it has been absent from that line in France where once again an Attila has been stopped. It has been needed there, God knows! And yet, though not visible to the eye, it is and has been there from the beginning. It is there in the hearts of those fifty thousand American boys who saw their duty clear and moved up to it. Now at last it may be flung to the breeze in the front line, to be visible by day, and to remain at nightfall, like the blessings of a prayer fulfilled, in the consciousness of men. Follow it and take your stand beside the fifty thousand. Follow the flag! THEODORE MARBURG. Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State: Cheers of victory on dying lips; Days of plenty and years of peace; March of a strong land's swift increase; Equal justice, right and law, Stately honour and reverend awe; Sign of a nation great and strong To ward her people from foreign wrong: Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums; The flag is passing by! HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT. The Meaning of the Flag FRIENDS and fellow citizens: I know of nothing more diffi cult than to render an adequate tribute to the emblem of our nation. For those of us who have shared that nation's life and felt the beat of its pulse it must be considered a matter of impossibility to express the great things which that emblem embodies. I venture to say that a great many things are said about the flag which very few people stop to analyze. For me the flag does not express a mere body of vague sentiment. The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history, and no man can rightly serve under that flag who has not caught some of the meaning of that history. Experience, ladies and gentlemen, is made by men and women. National experience is the product of those who do the living under that flag. It is their living that has created its significance. You do not create the meaning of a national life by any literary exposition of it, but by the actual daily endeavors of a great people to do the tasks of the day and live up to the ideals of honesty and righteousness and just conduct. And as we think of these things, our tribute is to those men who have created this experience. Many of them are known by name to all the world-statesmen, soldiers, merchants, masters of industry, men of letters and of thought who have coined our hearts into action or into words. Of these men we feel that they have shown us the way. They have not been afraid to go before. They have known that they were speaking the thoughts of a great people when they led that great people along the paths of achievement. There was not a single swashbuckler among them. They were men of sober, quiet thought, the more effective because there was no bluster in it. They were men who thought along the lines of duty, not along the lines of self-aggrandizement. They were men, in short, who thought of the people whom they served and not of themselves. |