Fight for peace; otherwise there won’t be anyone to celebrate Memorial Day

Hank Greenspun

Monday, May 25, 2015 | 2 a.m.

The Las Vegas Sun’s founding owner, publisher and editor, Hank Greenspun, reflected on Memorial Day with this Where I Stand column from 1955. We reprint it because the principles are still important today.

Every year the nation pauses for one brief day to honor those who have given their lives that this nation might live and go on to greater and more lasting freedom. And each succeeding year brings more gold stars on our flag and more brave dead to memorialize.

Fathers go to war to ensure a brighter future for their sons — to spare them the task of laying down their lives in future wars. But the sons grow up, the cycle is repeated, and just as each generation is certain that their war for freedom will be the last, so it is more certain that one war is just a prelude for another and wars may never cease.

On Memorial Day 1942, I was a sergeant, stationed in Louisiana and writing the lead stories and editorials for the Camp Livingston newspaper, the Communique. Rummaging through old Army files, I came across some newspapers with front-page editorials with my byline and all can think is I must have been a person of illimitable illusions. Of course, I was a good deal younger then, and young people seem to have more room in their hearts for ideals, courage and hope. In World War II, we were told we were fighting to make the world safe for democracy. We believed it just as our fathers believed during World War I.

I must have had stars in my eyes when I penned these words in the Communique on Memorial Day 1942:

“Soldier dead of the past wars, you have not died in vain. The torch of freedom that you so bravely carried has not been extinguished. It has just lain smoldering in your tombs. Throw us the torch so we may continue the march — a march to victory with freedom for all.

“Many of our buddies have found hallowed grave beside those of their fathers who gave their lives for the same cause a generation ago. They have died so their children will not be defrauded of the inheritance, which their fathers, in turn, have received from fathers before them. An inheritance dimmed by the years following World War I shines like a beacon today, due to the foresight and leadership of our commander in chief. For though the former war heroes died for freedom, it was a freedom ill defined. Its principles were awry, its platform scuttled by rapacious greed.

“Today, our path is clear — our principles defined. We are ready to sacrifice our lives because we know the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. Our president has given us a symbol, which makes a repetition of this conflict 20 years hence an impossibility. By winning the war, we will also win the peace that follows. A peace based on the principles of the Four Freedoms, our guarantee against future wars.”

I then go on to tell about the Four Freedoms and say how this declaration of human rights will sound the death knell of tyranny, oppression and greed. That freedom of thought, freedom to worship God, freedom from fear and freedom from war is truly a world worth fighting for and that the Four Freedoms is our answer to all future wars, our safeguard for a just and lasting peace.

The duties of soldiers are then outlined in the article, and I end my editorial with:

“How best can we achieve this goal? How can we make certain that our children will not have to take up the cudgels a generation hence to finish the task that is our mission to complete? Our duty is to finish the wars started in the past and end it for all time. Evils that attended the aftermath of past wars must not be visited on our world, else our children must suffer. Wars are not separate and distinct. They are all part of the same pattern. The intervals between are merely to create a breathing spell so man can pause and take inventory to determine whether the evils they have set out to abolish are still attendant to their generation.

“Never before has man had the opportunity to understand his mission in life the way we have today. Our leadership in this enlightened age can and will prevent future world catastrophes. We must not fail our destiny.

“We must therefore meet these duties in order to gain the freedoms, for if we fail, not only do we blast the hopes of liberty-loving people of this continent, but we condemn the world to barbaric slavery, to utter darkness until the end of time.

“To our brothers in arms who have made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes: Your lives have been a reveille of freedom to a world in chains. Let us who in the flesh fight on take them by the hand and march forward.”

Thirteen years, the Korean and Indo-Chinese wars, and the continuing threat of war poised by the ruthlessness of the communist world has changed my thinking somewhat. I have come to the realization that winning wars is not half as important as fighting for peace. In war, there are no winners. With peace, everyone benefits.

There are factions in Congress today who are war-mongering and agitating the peace just as their predecessors did generations ago. The McCarthys, Jenners and Knowlands are scuttling the principles of Memorial Day and mocking the dead who made the sacrifice so that wars could come to an end.

Although I have been disillusioned since my war years, I am still young enough to have some room in my heart for hope of a better world.

We are now living in a hydrogen age — an age of supersonic speeds and hydrogen explosions. The force of TNT has been multiplied a million times. “Megatons” is the term used to measure the power of the hydrogen bomb. Another term that has come into use is “megadeaths,” which means millions of deaths. That’s how casualties will be counted in the hydrogen war, by megadeaths.

In former wars, bombs contained pounds of TNT. Today we deal in terms of 60 million tons of TNT for one bomb.

The war dead must be allowed to rest — to sleep in the nation’s heart, entombed in the nation’s love. War as a means of settling differences between nations must cease, because if war should happen again, there will be no one left to pay honor to the dead when future Memorial Days roll around.