bringing to greater numbers the blessings of more lasting peace and greater equities.

WE MUST MAKE THINGS COME RIGHT

Out in the sky-touching mountains of South Dakota-the Black Hills-lives a great American known to many of you by his literary works. I refer to the poet laureate of South Dakota, Badger Clark. In my opinion, the greatest work that Badger Clark has ever written is his poem The Job. I want to read it to you now, as typifying a theme which should help us in meeting the challenges which we confront and give us courage and hope when we feel futile in our grapple with the imponderables which lie ahead of us.

THE JOB

But, God, it won't come right! it won't come right!

I've worked it over till my brain is numb.

The first flash came so bright,

Then more ideas after it-flash-flash-I thought it some

New Constellation men would wonder at.

Perhaps its just a firework-flash! Fiss! Spat!

Then darker darkness and scorched pasteboard and sour smoke.

But, God, the thought was great,

The scheme, the dream-why, till the first charm broke,
The thing just built itself, while I, elate,

Laughed and admired it. Then it stuck,

Half done, the lesser half, worse luck!

You see, it's dead as yet, a frame, a body-and the heart,

The soul, the fiery vital part

To give it life, is what I cannot get. I've tried

You know it-tried to catch live fre

And pawed cold ashes. Every spark has died.

It won't come right! I'd drop the thing entire,

Only-I can't! I love my job.

You, who ride the thunder,

Do you know what it is to dream and drudge and throb?
I wonder.

Did it come at you with a rush, your dream, your plan?
If so, I know how you began.

Yes; with rapt face and sparkling eyes,

Swinging the hot globe out between the skies,

Marking the new seas with their white beach lines,

Sketching in sun and moon, the lightning and the rains,
Sowing the hills with pines,

Wreathing a rim of purple round the plains;

I know you laughed then, while you caught and wrought
The big, swift, rapturous outline of your thought,

And then

Men.

I see it now.

O, God, forgive my pettish row!

I see your job. While ages crawl,

Your lips take laboring lines, your eyes a sadder light,

For man,

the fire and flower and center of it all

Man won't come right!

After your patient centuries,

Fresh starts, recastings, tired Gethsemanes

And tense Golgothas, he, your central theme,

Is just a jangling echo of your dream.
Grand as the rest may be, he ruins it.

Why don't you quit?

Crumple it all and dream again! But, no

Flaw after flaw, you work it out, revise, refine—

Bondage, brutality, and war, and woe

The sot, the fool, the tyrant, and the mob-
Dear God, how you must love your job!
Help me, as I love mine.

Friends, what a challenge the patience and perseverance of the Creator provides for each of us as we hew to our jobs. In a world wicked and weary with war, we can take fresh hope that out of it all will come something better. We labor today under the grim red shadow of an awful war because men will not come right. Or should we say, more hopefully, that we struggle on through carnage and conflict because up to now men have not come right? What of tomorrow? And the day after? Men must come right. A kind Providence has given us the tools for success. We can think and reason. We can work and laugh and sing. We can talk and write and pray. We can remember and we can plan ahead. Men must come right, and with them must come a rightly acting world.

We who are here today cannot do it all. But we can do something. We in America cannot reform the world. But we can help. We in our legislative seats cannot refashion human nature here at home to make all things come right. But we can help to provide an environment which will encourage rectitude and make equity a permanent guest. We who now serve in Congress are not the only Members of the House and Senate in our Nation's history. Others have been here before and others yet will follow us. But we are the only ones who hold office here today. Thus, in a very real sense we are the head of the temple. We cannot do the job alone, but without our help the big job can never be done rightly.

For the next 7 months at least we must love our job and to it give our very best. If the 13 absent ones whom we honor today could speak to us from out of the vast beyond, their message would be to carry on for freedom, for America, for humanity, in the name of our colleagues who have gone, and of our fighting heroes scattered throughout the world.

For 1 month and half a year, at least, we are the fire and flower and center of it all. We must make things come right. With God at our side and our eyes on the stars, let us work at our job to the end that a fair chance for a free people may be the earthly heritage of every babe that is born in this and every other country. We mortals who have so badly bungled the universe of the Creator now face our greatest opportunity. As God gives us the wisdom to see what is right let us master our jobs in a manner to do honor to those who are gone and to bring honor to those who are here.

Musician Edward Masters, United States Marine Band Orchestra, sounded Taps.

The Chaplain pronounced the following benediction:

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace, both now and

on

Ulysses Samuel Guyer