MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS Hon. Woodrow Wilson. Delivered at the National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, May 30th, 1917 WOODROW WILSON The program has conferred an unmerited dignity upon the remarks I am going to make by calling them an address, because I am not here to deliver an address. I am here merely to show in my official capacity the sympathy of this great government with the object of this occasion, and also to speak just a word of the sentiment that is in my own heart. Any Memorial Day of this sort is, of course, a day touched with sorrowful memory, and yet I for one do not see how we can have any thought of pity for the men whose memory we honor to-day. I do not pity them. I envy them, rather, because theirs is a great work for liberty accomplished and we are in the midst of a work unfinished, testing our strength where their strength has already been tested. There is a touch of sorrow, but there is a touch of reassurance also in a day like this, because we know how the men of America have responded to the call of the cause of liberty, and it fills our mind with a perfect assurance that that response will come again in equal measure, with equal majesty, and with a result which will hold the attention of all mankind. When you reflect upon it these men who died to preserve the Union died to preserve the instrument which we are now using to serve the world -a free nation espousing the cause of human liberty. In one sense the great struggle into which we have now entered is an American struggle, because it is in the sense of American rights, but it is something even greater than that, it is a world struggle. It is a struggle of men who love liberty everywhere, and in this cause America will show herself greater than ever, because she will rise to a greater thing. We have said in the beginning that we planned this great government that men who wish freedom might have a place of refuge and a place where their hope could be realized and now, having established such a government, having preserved such a government, having vindicated. the power of such a government, we are saying to all mankind, "We did not set this government up in order that we might have a selfish and separate liberty, for we are now ready to come to your assistance and fight out upon the fields of the world the cause of human liberty." In this thing America attains her full dignity and the full fruition of her purpose. No man can be glad that such things have happened as we have witnessed in these last fateful |