In 1921 the editors of The Farmer’s Wife Magazine meditated on the evolution of Decoration Day from solely focused on remembering the sacrifices of Union soldiers in the Civil War, to encompassing those of the South, and then by the force of a more humane logic, to thinking about all those who have suffered on account of war. Over a century old, the meditation remains profoundly moving today:
And now, in 1921, this day of annual tribute would seem to have reached a climax, for it memorializes also the lives of countless thousands in other nations—men and women and little children—who innocently perished because humanity is in the throes of greed and envy which are the begetters of unholy strife.
This evolution of Memorial Day from an observance which at first served to keep alive the old contentions of the Civil War into an observance that leads our thoughts away from our own homeland to quiet resting places in other lands across the sea is a remarkable illustration of the changeless law of change and progress. Try as it may, the human heart cannot keep its hatreds, its oppositions, its narrowness. Time, holding his hourglass, watches his worldly children climb the immortal heights of betterment. They can do no other. Whether we will or not, the quiet process of change goes right on, the wounds are healed, and the graves are grown over. We may ever so vigorously repudiate leagues, shun alliances, seek solidarity and declare ourselves forever separate from those we oppose but we and they move right on forward and upward, steadily drawing closer together, shrinking our differences, uniting our purposes, working out the divinely-implanted principle of human brotherhood.