In the face of a common identity of idea, they mark an essential difference in the nature of the occasion.
Thursday I went to see the people who were filing past the flag-covered coffin. It was a crowd fairly representative, I thought, of the Washington population as one sees it on the streets; all classes were represented, but chiefly it consisted of that well-dressed, healthy looking middle class sort of people who predominate in the streets of most American cities. They came to honor a national hero, the personification of American courage and loyalty. Few, I think, were actual mourners of a dead soldier. The couples and groups of people I saw hurrying up the sloping paths to the entrance of the Capitol, filing up the steps to the rotunda or dispersing on the other side were characterized by a sort of bright eagerness and approval.
They contrasted very strongly with my memory of the great column of still and mournful people under the dark London sky, eight deep, stretching all up Whitehall and down Northumberland Avenue and along the Embankment for a great distance, a column which moved on slowly, step by step, and which faded away at night to be replaced by fresh mourners on the morrow to do honor to the Unknown Warrior in London. That crowd, with its wreaths and flowers, represented the families, the lovers, the sisters and friends of perhaps a quarter of a million of dead men from London and the south and centre of England; the massed, mute tragedy of its loss was overwhelming. It reduced all the ceremony that had gathered it to comparative unimportance. But the remote distances of America forbade any such concentration of sorrow. There may have been the relations and friends of perhaps a thousand men upon the scene at Arlington. The loss to the District of Columbia itself was less than six hundred killed. A group of wounded men in the amphitheatre struck the most intimate note. The rest of the gathering at Arlington shared a less personal grief. They were sympathizers rather than sufferers.
Because of this emotional difference, the Arlington ceremony presented itself primarily as a ceremony. For most there it was a holiday, a fine and noble holiday, but a holiday. By it, America did not so much mourn the tragedy of war as seek to arouse itself to that tragedy. Everywhere the Stars and Stripes, the most decorative and exhilarating of national flags, waved and fluttered, and an irresistible expression of America’s private life and buoyant well-being mingled in the proceedings. For most of the gathering that coffin under the great flag held nothing they had ever touched personally; it was not America’s lost treasure of youth, but rather a warning of the fate that may yet overtake the youth of America if war is not to end. At Arlington, throughout the length and breadth of America, when for two minutes at mid-day all work and movement stopped and America stood still, an innumerable host of fathers and mothers and wives and friends could whisper thanks to God in their hearts that their sons and their beloved remained alive.
And I suppose it is largely because America is still so much less war-stricken than any of the other belligerents of the great war that so much more powerful a sense of will was apparent in all these proceedings. The burial of the Unknown Soldier in America was not a thing in itself as it was in London, in Paris or Rome; it was a solemn prelude to action, the action of the great conference which is to seek peace and enduring peace for all mankind. This note was struck even in the Chaplain’s opening invocation. He said:
“Facing the events of the morrow, when from the workbench of the world there will be taken an unusual task, we ask that Thou wilt accord exceptional judgment, foresight and tactfulness of approach to those who seek to bring about a better understanding among men and nations to the end that discord, which provokes war, may disappear and that there may be world tranquillity.”
And the very fine oration of President Harding, following closely upon this line.
I saw the President for the first time at Arlington. He is a very big, fine-looking man and his voice is a wonderful instrument. He spoke slowly and very distinctly, his gestures admirably controlled. He is—how can I say it?—more statuesque than any of the American Presidents of recent times, but without a trace in his movements or appearance of posturing or vanity. Men say he is a sincerely modest man, determined to do the best that is in him and at once appalled and inspired by the world situation in which he finds himself among the most prominent figures. Not only in its main circumstances but in many of its incidents is the position of the President of the United States appalling. The President stood in the apse to the right of the Unknown Soldier and to the other side of him was a black box upon a stand, a box perhaps two feet by one. This was the receiver that was to carry his voice, intensely amplified, to still greater gatherings in New York, in San Francisco and over the whole United States. Never was human utterance so magnified. Every syllable, every slip was recorded. He slipped once at an antithesis and was obliged to repeat. From the Atlantic to the Pacific that slip was noted.
I have heard much detraction of the President both before I came to America and since I have been here, but here I have found also a growing and spreading belief in him. And this address of his, rhetorical though it was in a simple and popular American way, was nevertheless a very dignified address and one inspired by a spirit that is undeniably great. Here is a fine saying:
“His patriotism was none less if he craved more than triumph of country; rather, it was greater if he hoped for a victory for all human kind. Indeed, I revere that citizen whose confidence in the righteousness of his country inspired belief that its triumph is the victory of humanity.
“This American soldier went forth to battle with no hatred for any people in the world, but hating war and hating the purpose of every war for conquest.”
We are to seek “the rule under which reason and righteousness shall prevail.” There is to be “the commanding voice of a conscious civilization against armed warfare,” “a new and lasting era of peace on earth.” And with a fine instinct for effect the President ended his oration with the Lord’s Prayer, with its appeal for one universal law for mankind: “Thy kingdom come on earth….”
Every other gossip tells you that President Harding comes from Main Street and repeats the story of Mrs. Harding saying: “We’re just folk.” If President Harding is a fair sample of Main Street, Sinclair Lewis has not told us the full story and Main Street is destined to save the world.
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