My earlier post about Milwaukee's Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War being banned from Milwaukee's Vaterans Day parade, which I also posted nationally on Daily Kos, has brought this observation from a Dkos reader:
All these quotes are gleaned from The Department of Veterans Affairs
Wison's speech from 1919
To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those
who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations...
From Congress in 1926
Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and
An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday - - a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as "Armistice Day."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower 1954
Whereas it has long been our customs to commemorate November 11, the anniversary of the ending of World War I, by paying tribute to the heroes of that tragic struggle and by rededicating ourselves to the cause of peace; and
Veterans Day has a long proud history of being about rededicating ourselves to peace and understanding.