All of us who are now living in the true spirit of liberty and union know that out of our great war of sixty years ago has come a greater peace than our nation could have ever known had we not cut away, with the sword, the great mistake of the fathers of our country. Let us pray that our sacrifices, now far back in the years, may be truly recorded, to be the living evidences of American courage--that tried and true courage which is our greatest asset, an asset of national wealth outweighing the value even of our vast material wealth. Embodied in our sons and grandsons, only a little while ago, the whole world glimpsed that same spirit of courage and patriotism on the battle fields of Europe, when the “Blue and the Gray” turned to “Olive Drab” and our boys, millions strong, crossed the ocean to defend the ideals of our country--ideals of national life which are rapidly becoming the ideals of all truly civilized peoples of the earth. I rejoice that I have lived to see the greatness of America dawn upon the world. I rejoice that when the hour struck for the flag of universal liberty to “go over the top,” it was carried there by the substance of our fields, by the power that came from our mountains of coal and iron, by the whirring wings of our liberty motors, and by the unbeaten and unbeatable soldiers of the United States. For one hundred and forty-seven years the individuality of the American soldier has defied the analysis of military critics and upset the theories of every nation that has met him on the battle field. Since his first far-off shot of Lexington, the makers of war maps have been unable to chart his power from his visible numbers, for in his unconquerable spirit there is the might of unseen legions and the unmeasured force of just and democratic purpose, as an armed host, is bivouacked in his soul. You may follow his history from his advent into the world of political contention, through his almost unbelievable and unbroken line of successes, and you will find him, always and everywhere, the one unbeatable force which cannot be weighed in the scales that determine the military values of all other peoples. If other evidences were lacking to establish these facts, certain incidents of the World War alone would prove them. In no case did he fail to meet the test of fire; and the anxious world stood aghast when the German staff reduced the question of fighting ability to an absolute test in the hope of proving the weakness of our “raw recruits” when pitted against soldiers not only trained, but bred and born, in the iron atmosphere of the “Great Empire.” The Germans, confident of their superiority, man for man, felt that such a test would weaken the morale of the American soldier and boost the waning German hope at Berlin. On April 20, 1918, at Seicheprey, in the Toul Sector, a picked German column, the product of a century of militarism, assaulted an American force of approximately equal numbers.