Decoration Day [pp. 442-444]

DECORATION DAY
By AUSTIN LEWIS
llE reputedly most unmilitary of great salvation. It is the day on which
modern nations devotes one day in the personal predominates over the social,
the year to the memory of its dead on which the parent or the wife rises in
soldiers. The appropriateness of the ad- protest against the citizen. For years the
jeet~ve "unmilitary" is open to doubt, in people sustained themselves in t~e -~
spite of the constant repetition of the cx- struggle, with a fierce enthusiasm for libpression. Nowhere does the youth respond erty and with unhesitating patriotism.
with greater ala.'crity to the call to arms, The mother sent her young son, the wife
and nowhere is the pomp and circum- her husband, to the war, and reeked not
stance of war more ad~uired and eulti- of the price while the blood was hot and
vatea-at least, unofficially-than in pride was high. But natural feelings
America. Be that as it may, our political necessarily asserted themselves over civic
mentors are continually informing us that devotion, and when the sacrifice had been
we are a peaceable folk, in spite of the completed the fires of pride were extinfact that we have been for two years ac- guished by tears of anguish. So with the
tive%v engaged in war. The original rca- nation-Decoration Day is the homage
sons for Lhis war appear to have lain paid to sentiment, a sacrifice to the human
chiefly in our desire to fight, and the end in the nation, the reassertion of the heart
of it is as yet by no means visible. of the individual over the spirit of the
On this particular day the nation under- collective mass.
takes a great pilgrimage to the graves of The celebration of victories leaves out of
its dead soldiers. Old men who bore the eonsiderat~on the sufferings of those by
hardships and the dangers of the war near- whose sacrifice the victories were won.
ly forty years ago hobble painfully through This elimination of the memory of suffer~~e streets of our cities to do honor to the ing is essential to the right celebration of
memory of comrades in arms who have a victory. The dead must be hidden out of
gone only a little time before. The youth sight; the very wounded must be carefully
also marches, and wagons laden with me- tucked away in hospitals. The dirty unimentos of broken friendships and withered form~ must be exchanged for bright new
loves labor towards the cemeteries. The ones; and the eye must only rest upon
flags fly at half-mast, and the funeral what is fair and inspiring. Victories,
dirges swell out from military bands. In therefore, can only be fully and successmany households, too, sacred old swords fully celebrated by dynasties. A democand rifles are decorated with the fresh an- racy can never perpetuate with unadulternual wreath. The teguments of time are ated joy the celebration of a victory, for it
drawn aside, and memory causes the scars is the mass of the people who have to pay
of old wounds to bleed afresh. the price. One may give his best for the
It is true that the observance of the day possession of a treasure, hut he never
is falling off to some extent, particularly afterwards contemplates that treasure
in the newer cities of the West where the with equanimity. Not that there is any
majority of the population, having no per- real regret that the price has been paid;
sonal interest therein, but languidly oh- the payment could not have been avoided. -
serves it. There is an increasing tendency But the glory of the possession recalls the
to make merry on the part of the younger price, and reminds one that to gain the
generation, and it may be that the course treasure the next best thing to it has been
of time will convert an occasion of sad parted with. So on Decoration Day, the
memories and national grief into a time flag which floats so gaily on other days
of May merrymaking and open-air festiv- droops half-mast around the staff and the
ity. In the main, however, the day re- bands play slow, solemn music to the acmains what it was intended to be, one of companiment of the shuffling feet of the
national mourning for the price paid for a aged veterans. When the veterans have ail