Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
In these divisive times, one constant for all Americans has been the hallowed work of the American Battle Monuments Commission, the small and sometimes unheralded federal agency created in 1923 to establish, operate, and oversee foreign cemeteries of American war dead, largely from the First and Second World Wars, as well as a number of commemorative sites.
I was a board member of the commission in 2008 and learned of its remarkable history and the American icons (John J. Pershing, George C. Marshall, Jacob Devers, Mark Clark, etc.) who have directed the commission. Now, Thomas Conner, the well-known military historian at Hillsdale College, has written the first history and comprehensive account of the commission — War and Remembrance: The Story of the American Battle Monuments Commission — how it originated, grew, and now cares for the graves of American war dead abroad. The result is a superb scholarly account that is riveting and again reminds us how much we owe to past generations, who envisioned and developed the unique commission, and who left to us, the current generation, to continue their sacred work.
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It is essential for us as a nation to pay homage to the "un-honored dead" that we might preserve our dignity as a nation. ~> (2) Vouchsafe the visions of fulfilled desire Lurking only one trivial sin away; Nor fret about what the soul might require What might have been shall stay never shall be, The footnote to cold, heartless history: Never are we far away from heaven Thanks for the blessings from sins forgiven!! (3) Memorial Day honors lives heroic And/or deaths unheralded right or wrong Yet living dead drowned in vain rhetoric Or reputations mortgaged for a song Like politicians on the trough too long: Corrupts our faith that human elements Can save ourselves from life’s predicaments!!
Dr Hanson, I've just read about your contribution to John Keegan's 1993 book on warfare. Whadda read! Only a figure of his stature and scholarship could diminish Clausewitz. I met you while I was working at ABMC, an institution of classical stature. Now retired in Panama City Beach, safe out there. I'm also the author the The Lost Battalion of Tet.
How ironic that Democrats want Civil War monuments, that originally were a concession to the Southern Confederacy, removed or symbolically toppled, when the South was the Democratic Party.