What's a flag? What's the love of country forwhich it stands? Maybe it begins with love ofthe land itself. It is the fog rolling in with thetide at Eastport, or through the Golden Gateand among the towers of San Francisco. It isthe sun coming up behind the White Mountains, over the Green, throwing a shiningglory on Lake Champlain and above the Adirondacks. It is the storied Mississippi rollingswift and muddy past St. Louis, rolling pastCairo, pouring down past the levees of NewOrleans. It is lazy noontide in the pines ofCarolina, it is a sea of wheat rippling inWestern Kansas, it is the San Francisco peaksfar north across the glowing nakedness ofArizona, it is the Grand Canyon and a littlestream coming down out of a New Englandridge, in which are trout.It is men at work. It is the storm-tossedfishermen coming into Gloucester and Provincetown and Astoria. It is the farmer ridinghis great machine in the dust of harvest, thedairyman going to the barn before sunrise,the lineman mending the broken wire, theminer drilling for the blast. It is the servantsof fire in the murky splendor of Pittsburgh,between the Allegheny and the Monongahela, the trucks rumbling through the night,the locomotive engineer bringing the train inon time, the pilot in the clouds, the riveterrunning along the beam a hundred feet inthe air. It is the clerk in the office, the housewife doing the dishes and sending the children off to school. It is the teacher, doctorand parson tending and helping, body andsoul, for small reward. It is small things remembered, the littlecorners of the land, the houses, the peoplethat each one loves. We love our country because there was a little tree on a hill, and grassthereon, and a sweet valley below; becausethe hurdy-gurdy man came along on a sunnymorning in a city street; because a beach or afarm or a lane or a house that might not seemmuch to others were once, for each of us,made magic. It is voices that are rememberedonly, no longer heard. It is parents, friends,the lazy chat of street and store and office,and the ease of mind that makes life tranquil.It is Summer and Winter, rain and sun andstorms. These are flesh of our flesh, bone ofour bone, blood of our blood, a lasting part ofwhat we are, each of us and all of us together. It is stories told. It is the Pilgrims dying intheir first dreadful Winter. It is the minuteman standing his ground at Concord Bridge,and dying there. It is the army in rags, sick,freezing, starving at Valley Forge. It is thewagons and the men on foot going westwardover Cumberland Gap, floating down thegreat rivers, rolling over the great plains. It isthe settler hacking fiercely at the primevalforest on his new, his own lands. It is Thoreau at Walden Pond, Lincoln at CooperUnion, and Lee riding home from Appomattox. It is corruption and disgrace, answered always by men who would not let theflag lie in the dust, who have stood up inevery generation to fight for the old idealsand the old rights, at risk of ruin or of life itself. It is a great multitude of people on pilgrimage, common and ordinary people, chargedwith the usual human failings, yet filled withsuch a hope as never caught the imaginationsand the hearts of any nation on earth before.The hope of liberty. The hope of justice. Thehope of a land in which a man can standstraight, without fear, without rancor. The land and the people and the flag—theland a continent, the people of every race, theflag a symbol of what humanity may aspire towhen the wars are over and the barriers aredown: to these each generation must be dedicated and consecrated anew, to defend withlife itself, if need be, but, above all, in friendliness, in hope, in courage, to live for. |
