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Please remember our fallen on Memorial Day
"So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day
is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year
to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most
impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition
of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want
something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end
worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a
course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where
you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go some whither
as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning
of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach
the rewards of victory." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Memorial Day, May 30,
1884 |