The Elton Britt poem/song is populist. The words are written to appeal to surface emotion. I'm sure his song helped a lot of people thru difficult times, it reaffirmed patriotism which at the time need affirmation. It's rite in there with "O Say can you see." On a more profound level a poem which sprang from the same war which gave us our Memorial Day, is Eric Bogel's "Green Fields of France." He writes: "I can see by your graveside you were only nineteen, when you joined the glorious fallen in 1916." This pays tribute to the Allied war dead but slams the nations for making so monstrous a thing as world war. "The suffering, the dying it was all done in vain, for Willy Mc Bride it's all happening again." Elton Britt's way to to remember the fallen is to urge us to commit all, even die for our country. A better way to memoralize the dead is to question the forces at work in the world which makes this killing happen. Some hyper people out there will note some hypocricy in my celebrating an Eric Bogle song, but so be it. -- Sincerely, Harold