Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 83.djvu/939

 PROCLAMATIONS

Proclamation 3880 VETERANS DAY, 1968 By the President of the United States of America

October 23. 1968

A Proclamation

Fifty years ago this fall, on November 11, 1918, America and her allies won a great victory after hard and cruel combat. That Armistice Day half a century past ended history's first World War, and struck in the world's hearts the hope of enduring peace. After little more than a generation, that fragile hope was extinguished in the flames of World W a r II. And hardly had its guns been stilled when another conflict—in Korea—revealed in anguish that aggression could threaten the community of men in 1950 no less than in 1917 or 1941. Today, Pershing's young doughboys are living in the golden years of their retirement. The warriors of World W a r II and Korea are slipping into middle age. A thousand battlefields, stretching in time and place from Chateau-Thierry to the slopes of Suribachi to the streets of Seoul are consecrated ground, where Americans fought—and many fell—to defy aggression, to preserve freedom, to protect the security of their people. Now America's sons are waging that same bitter fight anew. They stand on alien land, as their fathers and their grandfathers stood before them, to deny aggression its hope of conquest, to keep freedom from dying under an invader's heel, to give us all the priceless right to live secure and safe. They are trained and equipped better than any American force before them. But their stand is no less harsh and lonely. Their courage and their spirit are the equal of any generation's. And their sacrifices, in our name and in the cause of all we cherish, are as hard as men have ever made on the battlefields of war. We provide material benefits to the veterans of all our wars. We have continually extended and improved those benefits to meet more fully the debt we owe them. But each year we also pause to pay them another kind of tribute. I n our prayers and thoughts and ceremonies, we honor the men to whom we owe our safety, our freedom, and the continued existence of 911

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