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Show The Flag's birthday. Not every American knows that June 14 is the birthday of the American flag, but it is, and there is to be a concerted movement this year to give the day a significance never before given it by making a general display of the flag on house tops, in public and private pri-vate ways, by having every child in the schools carry 2, flag. A request has been sent to every post of the Grand Army to observe ob-serve the day. It is a good thought. There is no other such flag, especially'not since its retirement from Cuba. That act gave to it a new sanctity. sanc-tity. It symbols the glory of the Republic, and more, it is to this land what the blood on the lintel and the door posts was to Israel in Egypt, a notice to the nations that every home is safe, that the humblest home is the concernment of the whole people, and the flag represents the protection which the nation na-tion offers to its children. There is more even than that to it. When in the ports of kings it flashes out from some mizzen mast, -he eyes of those on shore read upon it a promise that if they will go to the land whose sovereignty it reflects, all their immemorial shackels will fall off and they will stand religiously, personally, politically free and that every opportunity of the great land will be theirs. When on the ocean it is dipped in salute to some passing ship, all those on Taoard of that other ship know that its highest significance sig-nificance is that it stands for freedom and a square deal at home and abroad. Why should not its birthday be celebrated? Who is so poor that he cannot display a flag on the 14th of June, the great standard's birthday? |