Tuesday, July 4th
The people who went to that church were proud, they were very proud of him, he had died so beautifully. Each one of them was proud to say, "He was my friend," or "I knew his people," or "I saw him once," or just, "He was an American." He had died for an ideal they all had sight of.
It was only a memorial service. There were only the two flags, the flag of France and the Stars and Stripes, in the aisle before the altar. He was lying somewhere inside the enemy lines, as he had fallen.
They of the air, they go so far; and if they fall, it is perhaps a little more sad and lonely because it may be where no one of their own can go to them. Perhaps the enemy have laid a wreath there on the place where he fell, as they do sometimes, those men of the air, to honour one another's memory. They say on the inscription of the wreaths sometimes: "To our enemy who died for his country." For this boy they would need to say another thing, "To our enemy who died for his ideal." I think that we, in the church, were not sorry, but were glad for him, that we were envying him—we who only live.