Message to the Daughters of the American Revolution.

My dear Mrs. Pouch:

During times of peace there are intervals when it seems difficult to keep alive the outward manifestations of patriotism. As a result we sometimes wonder whether the new generation has forgotten the sacrifices and heroism of our forefathers, whether the inheritors of this America are confused in purpose and soft in deeds.

The war is now five months old and we have had our answer. Two million men have been called to arms. In far places and near, our soldiers, our sailors, our air pilots, the beleaguered men of the merchant marine, have shown the stuff of heroes. Everything we have asked of them they have delivered. Everything- and more. There was no confusion of purpose, no softness in deeds, in Bataan. There were heroes at Wake Island and Pearl Harbor and in the rice paddies of Java.

Our men in uniform have proved worthy of America. Now it is up to us at home to prove worthy of them. They have set us an example of sacrifice, of unity, of singleness of purpose that we on the home front must emulate if the Nation is to survive.

There is a message that I wish every delegate to the fifty-first continental congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution would carry home with her, carry home to her townsmen, her friends, her neighbors. It is in the words of Thomas Jefferson. One hundred and thirty-three years ago Jefferson wrote:

"The times do certainly render it incumbent on all good citizens, attached to the rights and honor of their country, to bury in oblivion all internal differences and rally around the standard of their country."

Very sincerely yours,

Mrs. William H. Pouch,

President General,

Daughters of the American Revolution