Edwin Cameron: 'The biggest problem is stigma. Stigma, stigma, stigma, stigma!'21st Annual AIDS Conference - 2016

17 July 2016, Durban, South Africa

I'm really very, very pleased to be here today and I'm very, very pleased that this has taken place. This is an issue which should have a greater prominence in this conference.

We know that the central issue in this epidemic- we know medically and socially, what to do. We know what to do. We know that HIV can be medically managed. I've been on antiretrovirals for almost 19 years. I'm fitter and healthier than I was in 1997. We've got the world's biggest antiretroviral treatment program publicly provided in South Africa. We know that if we can get to enough people, the algorithm showed, if we can get everyone tested and everyone treated, in South Africa, we've committed from September to two important things: Which is to treat everyone with HIV and secondly, as importantly, to give sex workers pre-exposure prophylaxis. Are there any sex workers here?

Audience member: Yes!

Well done, ma'am!

I'm so proud of you. And I'm proud of our country. I'm proud of our country, that we're going to be providing people whose work is one of the most difficult and dangerous, and despised occupations, and one that deserves our support and our respect and our love with pre-exposure prophylaxis.

All of that we know. We even know how we can try to persuade people. Prevention is more difficult. We don't know what to do about prevention, ladies and gentlemen. I always refer to the fact that by 196 1- 10 year after Sir Richard Doll published his ground breaking articles inThe Lancet and the British Journal of Medicine about the link between cancer and cardiopulmonary disease and smoking - by the end of that decade, the governments of North America and Western Europe had accepted that smoking causes cancer. Smoking in the United States - 44%. Where is smoking in the United States now, anyone tell me?

Eighteen percent

So don't tell me ... Don't come to Africa and say, "Why don't those girls in the townships just use condoms? 'Cause we're talking about health seeking behaviour, we're talking about health seeking choices. So, I accept prevention from the broad mind that we know how to manage it, but medically and otherwise, physiologically, virologically, we know exactly what to do.

The biggest problem is stigma. Stigma, stigma, stigma, stigma. Stigma remains a barrier to prevention, it remains a barrier to behaviour change, it remains a barrier to people accessing treatment. Stigma is causing deaths, we know that. Because people are too scared to test. We, in this country, still have between 150,000 and 180,000 deaths from HIV every year, linked often with TB, also an intractably hard disease, much more medically difficult to deal with than HIV. But the cause of the undiagnosed cases of HIV, the cause of the untreated cases of AIDS is stigma.

Beyond Blame has offered today a rare and a crucial opportunity to build the movement that tackles that stigma frontally. Back in 2008, on the final day of the International AIDS Conference in Mexico, I called for a sustained and vocal campaign against HIV criminaliation. Along with many other activists, I hoped that that conference eight years ago would result in a major international resistance movement to misguided criminallaws and prosecution. And I want to credit Edwin J. Bernard, have you got credit today, Edwin? Come and stand in the front. Have you got credit?

Edwin Bernard:

Thank you.

The difference between me and activists like Edwin is that they don't get the judicial salary and the free car. So you take all the credit, Edwin. I really, really honestly mean that. And you working with us, you, ladies and gentlemen, are working with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I bring honour and credit to you for doing that in difficult circumstances.

The work of HIV Justice Worldwide, who put together this conference, shows how far we've come. The fact that you had such a successful meeting is itself, a signal of our success.

The movement against these laws and prosecutions, which started a decade ago, is really gaining strength and some heartening outcomes. As you've heard today, laws are being repealed, they've be enmodernised, they've been struck down. From Kenya to Switzerland, from the state of Victoria in Australia, to the state of Colorado in the United States.

I've been living with HIV for over 30 years, ladies and gentlemen. It is especially fitting for me to be able to note that much of the necessary advocacy for this, has been undertaken by civil society. Can I ask, how many government officials are there in the room today? Put up your hands. There, we've outed you, sir!

We're very proud of you. One government official; we pay honour to you. Thank you for coming. And you too, ma'am. Three. Yep, three government officials. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, you are civil society activists ... every single major breakthrough for treatment, for governmental action against criminal laws, against stigma, has been driven by civil society activists.

Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic 35 long years ago, policy makers and politicians had been under sore temptation to punish us for the fact that we have HIV. Sometimes they have been propelled by public opinion. Sometimes they themselves have not justly propelled public opinion. But they've tried to find, in punitive approaches, a quick solution.

There's no quick solution, ladies and gentlemen. And one way has been this particularly hyper stigmatising way of HIV criminalisation: criminal laws against people living with HIV who don't declare that they have HIV, or to make potential or perceived exposure or transmission that occurs, when it is not deliberate, criminal offences.

Most of these laws are appallingly broad. I've been working this week with Section 79 of the Zimbabwe Criminal Code. Where are our Zimbabwean brothers and sisters?

Is there anyone here who was involved in the case of Pitty Mpofu? I'll come to it in a moment. But appallingly broad. If you do anything that puts anyone at risk of HIV exposure, you are guilty of deliberate transmission of HIV. We've heard today on the panel, I believe, very moving accounts, deeply moving accounts about people who have survived the hyper stigmatsing assault of these laws. We also know a very helpful fact, ladies and gentlemen, that scientific evidence about how HIV is transmitted and how low the risk of transmitting the virus is, is the key way.

People come to South Africa and they speak about President Mbeki, who disregarded evidence, who would not accept the overwhelming scientific proof that HIV caused AIDS, and much more importantly, that if AIDS was virally caused, if its aetiology was viral, that you could treat it. And they look condescendingly at President Mbeki - but Western governments all over, Australia, North America and the rest of Africa, African governments, in equal measure to President Mbeki, are ignoring scientific evidence.

The last 20 years has seen a massive shift in the management of HIV. It is now completely medically manageable, as I've said. I was dying of AIDS 19 years ago in November 1997. I had access to antiretroviral treatment.

Nineteen years later, as I've said, I'm stronger than I was as a younger man then. Despite thisprogress, despite the progress in prevention, treatment, and care, that overwhelming issue remains, which is stigma. And I want to mention a difficult issue and an important issue, which is the internalised form of stigma.

I'm glad that there is going to be quite a lot of attention here. Ladies and gentlemen, internalised stigma is when we as people with HIV or at risk of it, take deeply within,to the recesses of our own consciousness and subconsciousness, the hatred, the ostracism, the fear, the rejection, the prejudice, the discrimination of the external world, and that often is a causative effect when people don't get treatment, when they don't get testing. It's a hard phenomenon to describe. It's hard to act against but its powerful effect on our epidemic must be recognised.

The enactment and enforcement of laws that criminalise HIV, even the threat of their enforcement, fuels the fires of stigma. It fuels the fires of internalised stigma. It reinforces the idea, both externally and internally of those with HIV and at risk of it,that HIV is shameful, that it is a contamination, that it is disgraceful, that thosewho have it are criminals, that they're vectors for passing on the disease. And by reinforcing stigma, HIV criminalisation makes it much more difficult for those at risk of HIV to access testing and prevention. It makes it more difficult for them to talk openly about living with the virus and to be tested and to be treated and to be counselled to behavioural change. I know that I'm preaching to the converted here, but HIV criminalisation is profoundly bad policy. There is no evidence that it works. Instead, it sends out misleading and stigmatising messages. It undermines the remarkable scientific advances and proven public health strategies that we know are effective in dealing with this epidemic.

In 1997, the Chair of the Justice Portfolio Committee in South Africa's Parliament, Mr. Johnny de Lange , called for laws to criminalise HIV. Our epidemic was burgeoning. Treatment was not yet available except to the privileged few like me, who fell severely ill at the end of that year. And of course, you take the easy fix. You pass a law. You pass a law that targets those with HIV. Mr. De Lange was a powerful man. He steered a lot of laws through Parliament at that time, including our version of minimum sentencing laws, which are now being reconsidered in America but not yet reconsidered here. He steered unbailable offences laws through Parliament. He did a lot of legislative steering.

But very fortunately, the matter was referred to a committee of the South African Law Reform Commission, which was chaired at the time by Justice Ismail Mahomed. He asked me to chair the committee, and one of our projects was a project on the criminalisation of HIV. It's worth getting the report, ladies and gentlemen. I don't say this in vanity, because most of the work was done by a superb lawyer and researcher at the Law Reform Commission called Anna-Marie Havenga, so I claim no credit for the report. I claim credit for editing it and for steering it. But that report is worth downloading. It's a 200 - page report that exhaustively looks at all the options. It's 20 years old now, 18 years old, but we decided against criminalisation.

You know what was the pivotal breakthrough? We had a two-day conference where we called all the civil society organisations together in Pretoria to debate this issue. We called especially the organisations dealing with women and with children's rights. We called those who sought protection for women, who sought the prevention of paediatric HIV, and we realised by the end of the second day, we had a unanimous consensus that these laws were bad for women. They were bad for children. That those targeted by these laws are the women themselves, and it's been borne out. Many of the first prosecutions in Africa had been prosecutions of women. The first prosecution under Section 79 of the Zimbabwe Criminal Law Amendment Act, which I've mentioned before, was of a woman, when her partner went and laid a charge against her.

So we decided against it Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to be rude about Canada. Let me summarise. Where's Richard? It's so nice to be rude about Canada. Even though Richard [Elliot, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network] tried to make Canada sensible,

There's been a decision recently of the Zimbabwe Constitutional Court, a full panel of seven judges where they refused to declare this appalling law .... It's an appallingly broad and vague law. They said they're not going to rule it unconstitutional. And the premise is that everyone with HIV has got to disclose. I want to give you the quote. Paragraph 12 of the judgement:

“Public policy requires of a person with HIV that he make full disclosure to his intended partner, in order to afford that partner the opportunity to make an informed decision." Ladiesand gentleman, I ask why? Why? Why does someone with HIV, either who's on treatment or who's going to take appropriate prevention measures, have to disclose? That's the premise. And that - Richard Elliott, I won't make you stand - is the premise of[the] Mabior [decision].

Obviously it's shameful. Did I say shameful? A bad, bad, bad, bad, bad unanimous decision of the Canadian Supreme Court, which I equate with the judgement andthe reasoning in State vs Pitty Mpofu. Pitty Mpofu's challenge failed. And Mabior ... Mr. Mabior did not transmit HIV. He was on successful antiretroviral therapy. He did not disclose his HIV. He was found, in effect, guilty of rape, because he didn't disclose.

Richard, you argued the case; I honour you and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network for your valiant attempts. I was in Canada just before the case was argued. Was it 2012? And you were full of hope. You werefull of hope. We now know there's been a study released last week, which shows that 58,000 instances of serodiscordant intercourse have not led to a single transmission of HIV. That was known to the nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada at the time, but the evidence has been mounting up even more incontrovertibly, since then.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me wrap up. I want to congratulate you for being at this conference today. I want you to feel energised. I want you to feel informed and empowered and energised to take out into this conference today the message of today's meeting. And when Edwin and I were debating what I should say, I wanted to add something to his suggestions for my speech. And what I wanted to add was the fact that we must not let our administrators and officials and politicians arrive at this conference. They arrive, ladies and gentleman, with cars. And they arrive with delegations. And they go back to their countries, 30 of them in Africa, with criminal laws that target us irrationally, unscientifically, stigma enhancingly, stigma magnifyingly.

We must not allow them that peace and comfort. We must challenge them.

We must take the message of this conference out of your meeting today into the halls, into the podiums, and into the individual meetings with those people. Find the ministers and the officials from the African countries that target. We have suffered no harm in this country, because we didn't stigmatise. We did the right thing.

Those countries must do the right thing. They must repeal those laws. And your energy today, your vision, andyour activism, will make sure that that happens. Thank you

Oliver Wendell Holmes: "In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire", Memorial Day speech - 1884

30 May 1884, Keene, New Hampshire, USA

Speech delivered before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic

Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth--but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.

So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south--each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As it was then , it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side.

But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.

So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhpas a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.

When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right-in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek to know the secrets of philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs? I cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.

But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.

Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak Swamp, or Antietam, or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself, The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls the moment that you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and freedom--Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means to stop me? Will he get his carbine free before I reach him, or can I kill him first?These and the thousand other events we have known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten.

But as surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least--at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves--the dead come back and live with us.

I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours.

I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and wondering how many of those who gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what was then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny reserved. I remember, as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say, "He was a beautiful boy", [Web note: Lt. William L. Putnam, 20th Mass.] and I knew that one of those two speakers was no more. The other, after passing through all the previous battles, went into Fredericksburg with strange premonition of the end, and there met his fate.[Web Note: Cpt. Charles F. Cabot, 20th Mass.]

I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale. The officers were at the head of their companies. The advance was beginning. We caught each other's eye and saluted. When next I looked, he was gone. [Web note: Lt. James. J. Lowell, 20th Mass.]

I see the brother of the last-the flame of genius and daring on his face--as he rode before us into the wood of Antietam, out of which came only dead and deadly wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to his death at the head of his cavalry in the Valley.

In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil wars of England, Vandyke has fixed on canvas the type who stand before my memory. Young and gracious faces, somewhat remote and proud, but with a melancholy and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow of approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance of it. I may say of them , as I once heard it said of two Frenchmen, relics of the ancien regime, "They were very gentle. They cared nothing for their lives." High breeding, romantic chivalry--we who have seen these men can never believe that the power of money or the enervation of pleasure has put an end to them. We know that life may still be lifted into poetry and lit with spiritual charm.

But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in New England, thank God! and will live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is mother of a race of conquerors--stern men, little given to the expression of their feelings, sometimes careless of their graces, but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty. Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has known.[Web note: Unfortunately for New England, no such "conquerors" have played for the Red Sox since 1918]. I see one--grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name--who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a hut. He fell at Gettysburg. [Web note: Col. Paul Revere, Jr., 20th Mass.].

His brother , a surgeon, [Web note: Edward H.R. Revere] who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm--the next moment his ministrations were ended. His senior associate survived all the wounds and perils of the war, but , not yet through with duty as he understood it, fell in helping the helpless poor who were dying of cholera in a Western city.

I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at Petersburg. He was in command of the regiment as he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back our left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered against his iron wall. He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all for him. [Web note: Major Henry Patten, 20th Mass.]

There is one who on this day is always present on my mind. [Web note: Henry Abbott, 20th Mass.] He entered the army at nineteen, a second lieutenant. In the Wilderness, already at the head of his regiment, he fell, using the moment that was left him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers.I saw him in camp, on the march, in action. I crossed debatable land with him when we were rejoining the Army together. I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself. He was indeed a Puritan in all his virtues, without the Puritan austerity; for, when duty was at an end, he who had been the master and leader became the chosen companion in every pleasure that a man might honestly enjoy. His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg.[Web note: The legendary suicidal charge of the 20th Mass. Regiment occurred on Dec. 11, 1862.] In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side. He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death, when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground. He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also.

There is one grave and commanding presence that you all would recognize, for his life has become a part of our common history. [Web note: William Bartlett, 20th Mass.]. Who does not remember the leader of the assault of the mine at Petersburg? The solitary horseman in front of Port Hudson, whom a foeman worthy of him bade his soldiers spare, from love and admiration of such gallant bearing? Who does not still hear the echo of those eloquent lips after the war, teaching reconciliation and peace? I may not do more than allude to his death, fit ending of his life. All that the world has a right to know has been told by a beloved friend in a book wherein friendship has found no need to exaggerate facts that speak for themselves. I knew him ,and I may even say I knew him well; yet, until that book appeared, I had not known the governing motive of his soul. I had admired him as a hero. When I read, I learned to revere him as a saint. His strength was not in honor alone, but in religion; and those who do not share his creed must see that it was on the wings of religious faith that he mounted above even valiant deeds into an empyrean of ideal life.

I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among others very near and dear, not because their lives have become historic, but because their lives are the type of what every soldier has known and seen in his own company. In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by side. Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the dead sweep before us, "wearing their wounds like stars." It is not because the men I have mentioned were my friends that I have spoken of them, but, I repeat, because they are types. I speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have known such; you, too, remember!

It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. There are those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been lifted above himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle--set apart, even when surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives? I think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her children, to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal lips. The story of these and her sisters we must pass in reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by one of their own sex---

But when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion,
weaned my young soul from yearning after thine
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to shoulder--not all of those whom we once loved and revered--are gone. On this day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth and to persist-- a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread and water. On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men-- a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse.

When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves. We attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all were serving. We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.

But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

Such hearts--ah me, how many!--were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march--honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away.

But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.