"Back to Home Land!" Removing the Casket of America’s Unknown Soldier from the Olympia, Washington, D.C.
America’s Unknown Soldier comes Home to His Native Soil.
"The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on Life’s parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead."
For him, our Unknown Soldier, it is all over; the sadness of parting from loved ones, the long ocean voyage, the grind of he training camps, the weary marches to he front, the roar of the barrage, and then that last blinding flash of a descending shell which shattered his poor body and left him, dead and unknown, on the field of battle. This nameless hero of ours is being borne home with the highest honors of the Nation to sleep forever in the great National Cemetery at Arlington, Va., as the type and symbol of the thousands of other American lads similarly slain o the poppied fields of France. His life snuffed out in he glow of youth, with all the future before him, he is a sacrifice to he cause of his country and of humanity, as were the unknown French youth who rests beneath the shadow of the mighty Arch of Triumph in Paris, and the nameless English boy whose dust now mingles with that of the greatest men of his race under the quiet aisle of Westminister Abbey.
The unknown dead of Arlington, of Paris, and of London were the sons of the common people; the common people whose composite impulses and sentiments give birth to the sentiments and the policies of their nations.