Remarks at the Veterans
Day Ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Those
who live today remember those who do not. Those who know freedom remember today
those who gave up life for freedom. Today, in honor of the dead, we conduct
ceremonies. We lay wreaths. We speak words of tribute. And in our memories, in
our hearts, we hold them close to us still. Yet we also know, even as their
families knew when they last looked upon them, that they can never be fully
ours again, that they belong now to God and to that for which they so
selflessly made a final and eternal act of devotion.
We
could not forget them. Even if they were not our own, we could not forget them.
For all time, they are what we can only aspire to be: giving, unselfish, the
epitome of human love -- to lay down one's life so that others might live. We
think on their lives. We think on their final moments. In our mind's eye, we
see young Americans in a European forest or on an Asian island or at sea or in
aerial combat. And as life expired, we know that those who could had last thoughts of us and of their love for us. As they
thought of us then, so, too, we think of them now, with love, with devotion,
and with faith: the certainty that what they died for was worthy of their
sacrifice -- faith, too, in God and in the Nation that has pledged itself to
His work and to the dream of human freedom, and a nation, too, that today and
always pledges itself to their eternal memory.
Thank
you. God bless you.
Note: The President
spoke at