This ceremony today at Suresnes is one of the saddest, and one of the noblest in which I am privileged to participate as American Ambassador to France. It is sad because we are reminded that the cost of freedom is often painfully high -- that our fathers had to die to preserve the freedom we now enjoy. Yet these crosses and stars remind us also that our follow Americans -- when freedom required it -- were willing to pay the highest price with courage and with honor. The memory of their sacrifices makes this truly a moment for introspection and reflection.
Can we repay them for their sacrifice? I think not. Can we attempt to repay them? I think we should. While we cannot repay the supreme debt we owe them, I think we are obliged, nevertheless, to attempt some payment. For what they ask us is little compared to what they have given. First of all they ask us to remember. They ask us to reject cynicism, to reject tyranny, to reject enslavement of man’s spirit as well as his body, wherever and whenever it occurs. For if we do these things, then their sacrifice will not have gone for nothing.
And they ask us one thing more. They ask us to substitute action for talk -- to do today what they did yesterday -- that is, to put our bodies and our minds and our hearts into the fight for freedom -- not just our mouths.
Words, words, words -- we are constantly besieged by words. We are assaulted by the most sophisticated communications system in the history of man. The printed word, the electronic word and the spoken word swirl about us so that sometimes it becomes difficult to sort out the meaningful from the trivia - the thoughtful from the bombast.
A part of the anger of our age arises because the prose of our promise has outstripped the substance of our performance. Students the world over are angry because often they hear only talk. Poor people - people in underdeveloped countries - men yearning for opportunities long denied these men are angry because often they too hear only words, soothing, flowing sentences which conjure up images that have yet to become reality.
In our own declaration of independence, it is written that all men are created equal. But we often act as if men were not created equal. On memorial day at home in the USA and in places like this around the world it will be said that young men of today should not, must not, die again. Die -- despite our efforts, our talk. But they do. In a few weeks when they celebrate our Fourth of July, speaker after speaker will talk - rightly and justifiably - about a heritage of freedom.
But in the background there will be the strident, sometimes angry voices saying: we want freedom now. Freedom is neither achieved nor mentioned by law alone. Freedom is beyond the pronouncements of the rights of man. The task of maintaining it, of nurturing it and sharing it is a task of every man. It is sustained in small acts and in large, in one’s family, in one’s baseness, on behalf of a neighbor, or of a friend, or on behalf of men we never met and will never know.
As we stand here with our private thoughts, it is not our view of these contradictions in this place - among the stars and the crosses - there should be a sparsity of words. For these men matched the most heroic words. They matched them and exceeded them with the ultimate deed man can give his fellowmen. And this is what we should remember at a time when men cry out for deeds in far too many places in this world.
Few of us are called to die for freedom. But all of us are called to work for freedom. Enough to think of the past - it is not enough to think of the tragedy and the glory that this field represents. Each of us must decide to serve freedom - again and again, to serve our follow men in peace as well as war. Then our resolve will match our relations. Then this truly will become a day of memorial, for those who lie beneath these crosses and beneath these stars, -- for all of us will be one with them -- in body, in heart, in soul.
