From the front page
of the Chattanooga News, June 14, 1918
The Flag, Our Flag, the Oldest Flag That Flies
One hundred and
forty-one years ago there appeared on the face of the globe a new flag. It was
the flag of a new nation, a state dedicated to freedom, liberty and justice. It
floated over a people at war in a country undeveloped but rich in hope and
purpose. It floats today over the sons and daughters of those peoples and over
all the other human beings who have sought safety and freedom beneath its folds.
It is the Stars and
Stripes, floating on this anniversary of its birth over millions of homes from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada’s border to the gulf, and—what is
newest and so superbly grand—it floats this day on the battlefields of Europe
where the hosts of democracy are fighting the hordes of autocracy!
Our flag has a
history rich in deeds and glorious in hope. It is the oldest of all the flags
that now fly in the whole world. The flags of our allies are younger. The
present tricolor of France appeared in 1794, fully 17 years after Old Glory had
come into existence. Italy’s flag was born in 1870, the British flag in 1801,
Portugal in 1815, Belgium, 1831, and our South American allies even later. The
flags of Japan and China of today are not as old as the Stars and Stripes.
But it is not
because our flag is the oldest of all flags that we love it so well and honor it
so truly. Our flag stands for the things we love and admire and hope to attain
in the most wonderful measure. Our flag is the emblem of the highest ideals any
nation has set out to reach. There is something great and good back of our flag:
liberty, justice humanity and equality. However, let us not be misunderstood.
It is not he cloth of which our national emblem is made that we love and for
which our sons gladly storm the heights of fame and death. We honor and respect
it and died for it because—
“A thoughtful mind,
when it sees a nation’s flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself,” said
that great preacher and American, Henry Ward Beecher. “And whatever may be its
symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the
principles, the truths, the history, that belong to the natin that sets it
forth. The American flag has been a symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it.
“The stars upon it
were like the bright morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams
of morning light. As at early dawn the stars shine forth even while it grows
light, and then as the sun advances that light breaks into banks and streaming
lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together, and ribbing
the horizon with bars effulgent, so, on the American flag, stars and beams of
many colored lights shine out together. And wherever this flag comes and men
behold it they see in its sacred emblazony no embattled castles or insignia of imperial
authority; they see the symbols of light. It is the banner of dawn.”
And today, on this
anniversary of our flag’s birth, the Stars and Stripes float in France—the banner
of dawn to the peoples whom the iron heel of German military might seeks to
crush into cruel and heartless slavery as it demolishes their homes, ignores their
rights and destroys their lives.
All along the
battleline, from the channel to the Alps, this flag—Our Flag—is the flag of
hope and promise, the emblem which adds strength to the arm and courage to the
heart of liberty’s fighters. God speed the day when we make good this hope and
promise. For until that day has arrived the power of the Huns cannot be
overcome and civilization will continue struggling in the grasp of her worst
enemies, the Teuton and the Turk.
We Americans ourselves
must carry that banner of dawn to the trenches “over there.” To do this means carrying
the heaviest portion of the war burden in the battlefields “over there” and in
the homes and fields and shops here at home. We must not only fight but we must
help our allies to carry on their end of the war. It is a wonderfully large
piece of war we have set out upon, greater than that attempted before by any
nation, but we can do it if we concentrate our war so that all business, all
pleasures, all hopes shall meet in the one undertaking—War—winning the war!
We must win or our
flag ceases to be the Banner of Dawn.
We can only win by
putting every ounce of our energy and our every thought into the fight. Any
effort less than that places our flag, our country, ourselves in peril.
“Then conquer we
must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our
motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the
Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of
the free and the home of the brave.”
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