This year I’m reading a book published in 1945. In this morning’s selection author Daniel Russell wondered if war was ever worth it. World War I showed that “[t]here is small place for flags and bugles.” He reviewed the horrors of the Second War that was then torturing the world. And then:
“Let us have peace.”
Since men go to war in the name of patriotism, it is well to remember what patriotism is and what it is not. Tolstoi believed that hate and contempt for others was inherent in it, and so he hated it. What he hated, in reality, was nationalism overemphasized and on the wrong track.
Patriotism is love of country.
It is the love of country expressing itself in service.
It dedicates itself to the prevention and final abolition of war.
It thrills to the war drums when they must be beaten, but it joins in the words spoken by an American soldier, words whose simplicity does not disguise the hatred of war born in the speaker’s own experience of it through the grim years of strife: “Let us have peace.”[1]
Flag Day Exercises, 1919
From the Library of Congress: General Grant; 1919 Flag Day exercises (Vice-President Marshall in dark suit with bow-tie); at the D.C. Post Office
I thought I was onto something unique, but I just found out you can buy Mr. Russell’s book on Amazon
Washington, D.C. Post-office
Flag day 1913
- [1]Russell, Daniel Meditations for Men Brief Studies of Religion and Life. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1945. Print. page 268.↩
