04/14/2019
“WE MUST REALIZE THAT NO ARSENAL, OR NO WEAPON IN THE ARSENALS OF THE WORLD IS SO FORMIDABLE AS THE WILL AND MORAL COURAGE OF FREE MEN AND WOMEN. IT IS A WEAPON OUR ADVERSARIES IN TODAYS WORLD DO NOT HAVE!
IT IS A WEAPON THAT WE AS AMERICANS DO HAVE!
LET THAT BE UNDERSTOOD BY THOSE WHO PRACTICE TERRORISM AND PREY UPON THEIR NEIGHBORS.
…WE WILL NOT SURRENDER FOR IT, NOW OR EVER. WE ARE AMERICANS.
Each one of those markers (At Arlington National Cemetery) is a monument to the kinds of hero I spoke of earlier. Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.
Under one such marker lies a young man—Martin Treptow—who left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.
We are told that on his body was found a diary.
On the flyleaf under the heading, "MY PLEDGE," he had written these words: "America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."
The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.
And, after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans. God bless you, and thank you.
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