Our fathers ordained that in this Republic there should be no distinctions; but human nature is stronger than laws and nothing can prevent this people from showing honor to all who have deserved well of the country. Every man who has borne arms with credit has earned and is sure to receive a special measure of regard. And it is our peculiar privilege to remember that our armies and navies, regular and volunteer, have always been worthy of esteem ... the Grand Army of the Republic--soldiers and citizens whom the Republic delights to honor. _John Hay_ Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations, that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of a free and undivided Republic. _John A. Logan_ We honor our heroic and patriotic dead by being true men, as true men by faithfully fighting the battles of our day as they fought the battles of their day. _David Gregg_ AFTER THE GREAT COMPANIONS! The race has not run out. We are still men, and worthy of our fathers. That is what Memorial Day 1919 says to us. Not in pride nor vain boasting but in fearful and solemn humility we speak, for it is our dead that prompt us. They, our kin and blood, were not afraid to die. When the Destroyer came, the obscene Dragon, with breath of poison gas, eyes of hell fire, and teeth of steel, they did not shrink, our brothers, but played the man, and struck, and dying struck again, and flung their shredded bodies into the breach, and "filled the gap up with our English dead." We are of such. We put our arms around our dead, and hold them proudly up to God, and glory before all men that this is our breed. The lies of the Accuser are disproved. His slanders fall from us. We are not slaves of greed, money grubbers, soft and lily-livered. We know how to suffer and to die. We, too, can follow the gleam. O Greeks of Marathon, room for us! Through Chateau Thierry and the wood of Argonne we have come up to stand by your side, and dare to call you Brothers. You Five Hundred of Balaklava, meet these boys from Kansas and New York, who also rode blithely into the valley of death. They are your kind. You men of Bunker Hill, of Gettysburg and of San Juan, place! place for these, our neighbors' sons, our friends and playmates! For them also the laurel, and the royal requiem! For them the Cross of Honor, and the Divine Halo! They are ours! Ours! Dear God, we will be worthy of them. Thus cries the poet of America: "Allons! After the great Companions, and to belong to them! "Allons! through struggles and wars! "Have the past struggles succeeded? "What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?