History: Flag Day, 6 Jun 1918

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----Source: Powell Leader no. 34 Jun 20, 1918, page 5, Newspaper Name: Powell Leader, Powell WY, 6 Jun 1918, pg. 5

OLD GLORY'S BIRTHDAY--1918

(By Ellis Park Butler of the Vigilantes.)

I have a small boy—a four-year-old —and the other day I made him a I "boat" out in the hack yard, with a sail that he can raise and lower, and at the top of the mast I tacked a "flag" to flutter in the breeze that blows continuously here in Long Island. The "flag" like the sail, is a piece of old canvas. It flaps in the breeze like any flag, but it does not mean a thing! I can look out of my window and see that "flag" fluttering and not feel the slightest emotion of any sort. I made it. I know it is nothing but a piece of old canvas, ripped from a larger piece and nailed there.

Some day—but God forbid any such day—that "flag" might have a meaning for me. I might look out of my window and see it fluttering there and know that my boy would never again look up at it in his play and the sight of the poor rag might fill my heart with agony. If any neighbor then came into my yard and laid rough hands on that flag and tore it down and trampled on it, I think I would kill him. The poor rag would be sacred because of the memories they clung to it.

It is because it means so much, is the symbol of so much, that our nation's flag is so sacred that the man who defiles it, deserves to be shot down in the act.

A flag is a symbol, a sign, as the cross is a symbol and as the triangle is a symbol. The mere silk or bunting of the flag are nothing. A burial squad tramps through the woods bearing the body of a dead comrade, and digs his grave and covers him over in his last bed. On the ground lie two bits of wood. They are nothing but bits of wood, to be burned, or to be left to decay. The dead man's comrades pick them up and bind one across the other and plant the cross thus made at the head of the grave. Now the bits of wood have become a sacred sign and whoever destroys that cross, or defiles it, or throws it down is indeed a dog. The bunting and the silk of our flag are nothing, not until they are assembled in the stars and stripes of our flag and thrown to the breeze as the symbol of Loyalty and patriotism do they demand our reverence.

We honor the flag because of what it stands for. Those who dishonor our flag dishonor all it stands for. In days like these when our nation is at war, there might be placed under the dome of the Capitol at Washington a great book of a thousand pages. On the first page might be inscribed the American's creed, proclaiming a belief in national honor, national justice and national honesty and a belief in free government for this free American people. To Washington then might be called all the people of the nation, to sign, one after another, their names in the great book so that all America and all the world might know how each man and woman and child stood, until all our millions are enrolled. There is no need of this. The American's Creed is written in the stars and stripes of our flag. Our flag stands for all that could be written in the great book at Washington. It stands for honor, justice, national honesty and a free government, and when the time of stress comes, as at present, the flag is at hand, ready to be raised in twenty million homes, a proclamation of loyalty as valid as a signed and sealed book. Our flag is not a gaily colored decoration to brighten our towns and villages; it is a creed; and I "Believe"—to tell our neighbor, our nation and the whole world how I we stand.

It is remarkable to what an extent flags, even to the simplest, tell the national stories. I chanced upon the flag of the little Grand Duchy of Luxemburg a few day ago for the first time.  I had long been familiar with the Luxemburg coat of arms, which is a standing lion on a bared shield, surmounted by the ducal coronet, and I had imagined the flag of Luxemburg would be I something like that. It is three straight bars, or stripes, of red, white and blue. These are the colors of France, but they are arranged on the flag of Luxemburg as are the red, white and black of Germany, and not perpendicularly as in the French flag. The flag tells its own story. The a people of Luxemburg speak German; their sympathies are entirely French.

In something of the same way the flag of Great Britain tells its story, with the St. George's cross of England, St. Andrew's cross of Scotland and St. Patrick's cross of Ireland combined.

The true story of Prussianism and its brutal aggressions is told by the German flags. The German empire, so much boasted, is shown by its flag to be but a foot-stool on which the king of Prussia wipes his feet, for In its center is the black eagle of Prussia, crowned, and the black cross of Prussian is smeared all over it. The German empire is Prussia, and nothing but Prussia; a military autocracy holding. Bavaria,, Württemberg, Saxony and all the other states in pawn, just as the king-kaiser would like to hold New York, California and all of America, and as he now holds helpless Luxemburg and brave Belgium. The black in all the German flags is the black of Prussia and black is the color that was chosen by the pirates and cut-throats.

Everyone knows the story of our own flag, with the thirteen stripes that signify the thirteen original states of our union, and the stars, one for each state in the union today. Whether Betsy Ross or another firm sewed together the stripes and stitched the original thirteen stars in place on their blue field, matters little, for flags are not made in that way. Our flag was made when the wise fathers of our nation decreed that this should be a union of sovereign states and that no kingly crown or imperial eagle should appear on our banners. The long deliberations and deep wisdom of the founders of the nation made possible a flag of thirteen stripes when they decreed that each state should continue its individual existence under the national government, and in effect decreed the many-starred blue field when they said that new states, as they became worthy, might enter the union.

Even then our flag was not a flag. It had to win a place for itself and a right to existence. It was as if the stripes were not yet welded together or the stars riveted in their places. Through the long years of the Revolutionary war the American fighting men gave their lives and shed their red blood that the flag might become a permanency. Each dying soldier by his death gave life to the flag. It was born of their blood.

There was no "separate peace" made by Massachusetts or New York or Virginia to tear one of the thirteen stripes from the flag or to rip one of the thirteen stars from the blue field. Year after year, cold, hungry, half-clothed, beaten about and buffeted, retreating and advancing, Revolutionary heroes who had at first fought under a dozen different flags, fought under the Stars and Stripes, making it a flag. When the struggle ended at Yorktown the flag was already sacred, made so by the blood of those who died for the freedom of their fellow countrymen. Our flag was not made by those who worked with needle and thread but by those who died for high ideals. The slackest traitor that ever betrayed our country might sew silk or buting together; our flag was made by Washington and his men, Jackson and his men, Lincoln and his men. The great minds and great hearts and brave men und women of the past made our flag a real flag. They made the flag for us; today we are making it for those who will come after us.

I say we are making it, because you and I, I hope, are doing all we can to help our army and navy win the fight against the blood reeking autocracy that wishes to unmake half the flags of the world and put the modern flag of piracy in their places. For this is true: Each flag that is a real flag must be made again and again with the passing years. It is true our flag has been made and perpetuated. In times of peace it has been a flag of peace and a truer symbol of peace than the white flag of submission. It has also been a war banner as glorious as any I that ever floated above the heads of armed men. Again and when brave men fought for what they believed to be right and justice, our flag has been torn by shot and shell and drenched with blood. It has gone forth at the heads of armies to come back torn and tattered but with a more splendid ensign of liberty than it had ever been before. It has left our ports floating from proud ships and has sunk beneath the waves when the battered ships went down and was a greater flag then than it had been. Like the phoenix it has arisen from every fire of trial in renewed glory.

Today, this Flag Day, it will float from the staffs of a million American homes, perhaps from ten million or twenty million, but its greater glory— the greatest glory of its 140 years— , is that it will float in the breezes of France and Flanders beside the flags of France, Belgium and Great Britain, and on the seven seas of the world, in the world's greatest combat against autocratic brutality. No longer the flag: of a group of colonies, Old Glory has become the banner of a world power, the emblem of the mightiest free people that existed.

Never were the stripes of our flag brighter or the stars more brilliant on their field of blue than they are today. In field, in mine, in factory, in home, in garden, in camp, on ship, in trench and in battle line the men and women and the children of our vast free empire are united in one great cause, and the free flag of a free people floats over them, unstained and unspotted.

From generation to generation since Old Glory was born, flags have died, but Old Glory has had new birth. From generation to generation our flag is born anew, re-created in our hearts, ever betted loved and more sacred in our eyes, because it is the flag for which our heroes have died and because it is the symbol of the only government that can endure — a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is the flag of no king or czar or emperor, but your flag and my flag and the flag of the brave boy who has gone with a song on his lips to die that we May remain free. Earth has no greater glory today than Old Glory. For a century and a half it has floated above our soil a sign that we are free. Today it floats on alien breezes, in foreign lands not for conquest but as an earnest plea that all nations that desire freedom shall henceforth be free.

1. The original script read: "forefend"

2. heraldry : a coronet ornamented with three strawberry leaves and often used as a crest coronet

3. To maintain confidently, as if making a bet.