from tyranny and wrong. He fell and was buried in a trench, under a rude cross marked "Unknown."
"We thought it was to be the world's last great battle," he said. "There would be no more wars, no more youthful lives snuffed out, no more mothers waiting and weeping at home.
"But a century went by and there came a war beside which ours seemed a little thing. Our friend over whom the bands played to-day was one of millions who gave their lives. Men have heaped honors on him such as we never had. Do the honors mean that the hearts of men have changed, I wonder? They broke faith with us; will they keep faith with him?"
The three dim figures disappeared. The moon stood guard over the silent grave. In the East the first rays of the morning crept into the sky. They reached out vaguely, hesitatingly, touching the city of Washington where men were to gather that day to speak of peace—touching an inscription which the nation had cut in the stone above the body of its unknown soldier.
A solemn inscription; a nation's promise that he who lies there dead shall not have died in vain.
The world has made that promise before; all its unknown dead have died in that faith. And the promise has died with them.
Will it die again?
