originated, not at all strangely, in France—that country of graceful imagination and gracious deeds. The unknown soldier of France lies at the head of the Champs Elysées under the Arc de Triomphe built by Napoleon after Austerlitz. The unknown soldier of England is buried in Westminster Abbey with all that glorious company, civil and military. In the land of the Cæsars they have placed the unknown soldier under the Altar of the Fatherland hard by the Forum where the Eternal City paid honor to her victorious generals upon their return from war. Our own hero rests in that grave overlooking the monuments to Washington and Lincoln and the Capitol of the country he died to save. In that narrow crypt—sanded with soil from France—he will sleep forever surrounded by those marbles of Arlington upon which are graven the names of men and battles which "touch memory to life."
But it is not as a memorial alone that this epic of "The Unknown Soldier" will justify itself. We should look backward, not only in gratitude for the past but also to get inspiration for the present. And here the ideal of the unknown soldier and the ideal of the scout movement are one. He died for his ideal; may you live for yours. The soldier stood for honor, loyalty, obedience and patriotism. So stands the scout.
