From Gettysburg To Germany

Cue (NZERS), Issue 23, 15 May 1945, Page 15

From Gettysburg To Germany

’’That from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” On November 19, 1863. Abraham Lincoln uttered these words on the battlefield of Gettysburg1 — that today apply so aptly to the task confronting the .people of the world. . Here is his famous address:

- ’’.Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new .nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men arc created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We arc met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a unal resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense ( we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate. we cannot hallow this ground.

The brave men, living and dead, who (struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

”It is for us, the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation,' under God. shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Eighty years after Lincoln’s speech, the United -States of America has shown that she can and will endure and keep aloft the torch of freedom.