Page:Armistice Day.djvu/56

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34
ARMISTICE DAY
 

When Pershing stood at the tomb of Lafayette and uttered the briefest and finest war address that has been delivered, "Lafayette, we are here!" he spoke for the American spirit, to the soul of the French people. Our country from sea to sea ratified the message of a soldier unafraid. It was

"The voice of one for millions
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice."

Even so with Pershing's offer of our whole armed force at once, to beat back the tidal wave of the flagellated myrmidons of Prussia. The country that we love will send into No Man's Land, to reclaim it for God and from the Devil, its first hundred thousand, its million, and then its millions more, if they are needed, to assure the triumph of the right and the salvation of the world from the glutted maw of the Beast of Beasts, of Moloch in a death's-head helmet.

Our men, our sons and brothers, march on singing toward the fray. The Irish poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy has told us that

"Three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down."

Terrible indeed is the striking power of a singing army—as Cromwell's psalm-singing Ironsides