Peace Requires Strength, Reagan Asserts in Memorial Day Address

In a Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, President Reagan on Monday invoked memories of the 1.2 million Americans who have died in the nation’s wars and counseled his fellow citizens: “If we really care about peace, we must stay strong.

“We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and be strong enough to protect it where it does. That’s the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day,” Reagan said as he ended a solemn five-minute talk to about 5,000 veterans and military personnel, who, with their families, filled the cemetery’s neoclassic white marble Memorial Amphitheater.

Reagan cited a galaxy of military heroes but reserved special tribute for those who died in Vietnam, fighting “a terrible and vicious war without enough support from home; boys who were dodging bullets while we debated the efficacy of the battle.”

The President called attention to the Vietnam Memorial across the Potomac from Arlington, with its black granite wall engraved with the names of more than 58,000 Americans who died in Southeast Asia and its statue of “three rough boys walking together,” armed against an unseen enemy.

“It was the unpampered boys of the working class who picked up the rifles and went on the march,” Reagan said. “They learned not to rely on us. They learned to rely on each other . . . . They chose to be faithful. They chose to reject the fashionable skepticism of their time. They chose to believe and answer the call of duty.

“They had the wild, wild courage of youth. They seized certainty from the heart of an ambivalent age. They stood for something. And we owe them something . . . first, a promise that, as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither ever will we.”

The President, accompanied by Mrs. Reagan, began his visit to Arlington by placing a wreath of red, white and blue flowers before the marble Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as an honor guard in dress blues stood at attention.

In opening his talk, Reagan called the cemetery, with its gentle green slopes flecked with marble markers and little American flags set out to mark the day, “a fitting place for some remembering.”

Among the “men and women who led colorful, vivid and passionate lives” who now rest at Arlington, Reagan recalled Adm. William F. (Bull) Halsey, Adm. William D. Leahy and Gen. Omar N. Bradley, leaders of victorious U.S. forces in World War II; Gen. John J. (Black Jack) Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I; champion heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, who forsook the ring for the Army after Pearl Harbor, and Audie Murphy “of the wild, wild courage,” the most decorated serviceman to survive World War II.

Reagan recalled the “mature and measured courage” of Challenger astronauts Michael J. Smith and Francis R. Scobee, who were buried at Arlington after they died Jan. 28 in the disastrous explosion of the space shuttle. Reagan closed the roster with the name of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a thrice-wounded captain in the Union Army before he served 30 years on the Supreme Court.

“All of these men were different,” Reagan said, “but they shared this in common: They loved America very much. There was nothing they wouldn’t do for her, and they loved with the sureness of the young . . . . It’s the young who do the fighting and dying when the peace fails and a war begins.”

Southern Californians mark the holiday with tributes, parades and parties. Part II, Page 1.