Fraternity-Testvériség, 1965 (43. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1965-05-01 / 5. szám
2 FRATERNITY JOSEPH KECSKEMETHY: ITEMS OF INTEREST YOU AND YOUR FLAG You and your Flag. Whether it flies in Viet Nam or over a bombed embassy or in front of your county courthouse, it stands for you as an American. It is your valor in facing the Cold War and the new income tax that keeps the red stripes red; it is the liberty of your ballot and your Letter to the Editor that keeps the blue field blue. White represents purity and sincere patriotism is a part of it. You are your Flag; and what’s more, your Flag is you. You may have become part of it at Ypres, Omaha Beach, Guadalcanal or Pork Chop Hill, or perhaps it happened some otherwise ordinary day when you sat back for a moment and thought about being an American. It is important to feel as well as to be a part of the Flag; America can be Amei’icans only as long as Americans believe in America. As a nation we always have. How the Revolutinary War came to be fought beneath banners bearing pine trees, anchors and rattlesnakes explains how the lives of the colonists gave meaning to their flags just as their flags gave meaning to their lives. It is to this meaning that National Flag Day, June 14, is dedicated. As a special activity of Fraternal Week, June 13-19, the fraternal benefit societies of the United States seek to refurbish this feeling for the Flag in every American. This feeling comes with the understanding of our Flag’s history. ★ ★ ★ Sheltering Hanover Square, Boston, meeting place of the Sons of Liberty, was a fine old elm known as the Liberty Tree. Citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, gathered beneath a massive live-oak to hear the Declaration of Independence read for the first time. All the money minted by the Colony of Massachusetts bore on one side a tree. Because trees were so much a part of colonial life, the colonists made them a part of their flags. A white maritime flag bearing a green pine tree and the inscription, “An Appeal to Heaven”, became the ensign of cruisers commissioned bv Gen. Washington. That same pine emblazoned the flag that flew at Bunker Hill and the Continental Flag of the Sons of Liberty. Early in 1776 Benjamin Franklin’s “Pennsylvania Gazette” suggested turning loose a cargo of rattlesnakes in Lond parks
