Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others,
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

© Cam Cardow - Ottawa Citizen - 05.26.2006

The quote above was written in 1914 and is the fourth stanza of "For The Fallen" by Laurence Binyon.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

~~~~~~

From KnowledgeNews:

Today, America's Memorial Day tends to be more beach-and-barbecue than reflection-and-remembrance. But Memorial Day still exists to commemorate the sacrifice of the more than 1.1 million American service members who have died in battle - and to remember why they gave up their lives.

No one has ever done that better than Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address. Even before Americans began decorating Civil War graves to give Memorial Day its start, Lincoln's short speech pointed the way to the greatest memorial of all.

On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln visited Gettysburg to help dedicate a new national cemetery. The president was not the event's main speaker. That honor belonged to Edward Everett, a Massachusetts statesman and perhaps the best-known orator of the time. As was customary, Everett delivered a lengthy oration, speaking for two hours straight. Lincoln spoke for just two minutes

The day after the ceremony, Edward Everett wrote to Lincoln, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." Today, the central idea of the occasion remains the same. As Lincoln points out, we honor the sacrifice of soldiers for freedom and self-government best by carrying forward the work of democracy. We dedicate memorials by dedicating ourselves.

- Steve Sampson

The Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

- Abraham Lincoln