E tenebras, lux dormiens

Today is the day that we reminisce, mourn and honor the veterans of all the wars that they have served. War is indeed the terrible crucible that binds them. I stand in admiration at the bonds of friendship and loyalty that only they in the face of death could find. Few other groups of people can so claim such experiences as to assuage their buoyant adolescence as these veterans and to say, together as they might be, "We fought for the liberty; we fought for the justice; we fought for the inherent rights that we believed in, and incorporating them in our minds, we freed the world from the bondage of traditions, of old-school thoughts, of old beliefs, to find a new and sturdy foundations that we have brought forth to establish a way to suppress all the failings of humanity, and bring out all that which we admire of human virtues and of human actions, such as that of kindness, compassion, mercy, love, and acceptance. We may not be much different from the animals, save that we can think of death, life, love, save that we can write and save our messages as capsules for the time to come, but by God, we shall not be enslaved in fear, in the trappings that wrongful thinking perpetuates. We shall not be bound by race, by class, by intelligence, by thoughtless grouping that seeks to prove thoughtless supremacy, and using that to dissolve heretofore the rights we have worked so hard to gain, for ourselves and for others that come after us."

I can only do but to spend moments in silence, for those who to us eternal silence give. Their mouths speak nothing. Their hands move nothing. Their ears receive nothing. Their eyes see nothing.

So I mourn, and put the American flag out on the metal stand by the porch, and let these soldiers do ourselves the honor that we can do little honor to them, but pray in the diminutive sense, that they are accorded the rightful living in the hall of dignity, of valor, and of strength--that we may say to them, "Though our thanks are but breath and voice, though our signs are but handful movements, we owe to you the deepest gratitude and we owe to ourselves such virile passions the things for which you died that we will forget them none, that these memories will never fade."