Giving Thanks on Memorial Day

"They were young, strong, enthusiastic and brave. They were fond of life, action and struggle, of honest ennobling labour that opens the ways of human destiny. But they loved still more their Motherland; they loved Justice, Liberty, Ideals without which life were worthless.

"They were told that on the other side of the world, over the immense ocean, an unprecedented tragedy was being enacted in blood and tears; that, contrary to all Justice, a small people was being enslaved; that all the nations were trembling for their liberty; that barbarians were trampling down Civilization as in the time of Attila; that henceforth there was no country that was not imperiled.

"And so at once they gave themselves; they took up arms; they sailed away, not once thinking that their sublime deed would ever receive any other reward than that of the triumph of Right." - from a speech given in Antwerp by the Belgian Minister of National Defense, M. Albert Devèze, on May 30, 1921, as the bodies of American soldiers from World War I were being sent home to America from Belgium

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Today we give thanks for those American soldiers who loved liberty more than self, losing everything to give us the precious gift of freedom.