[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 47 (Wednesday, March 24, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S3291]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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    CONFERRING OF THE FRENCH LEGION OF HONOR ON WORLD WAR I VETERANS

 Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise today to salute our 
veterans of the First World War as the French government confers the 
Legion of Honor, its highest honor, on those living American veterans 
who served on French soil during World War I. I salute these brave men 
and women for their courage and for their sacrifice. For the past 
eighty years, they have taught several generations of Americans what it 
means to be a hero and what it means to be an American.
  Our World War I veterans fought because they believed in something 
beyond themselves, a greater good. They fought to preserve the best of 
humanity--democracy, compassion, and liberty. Unfortunately, their 
fight exposed them to the worst of humanity, the first modern war, with 
its machine guns, its trenches, its very inhumanity.
  ``The Great War,'' ``The War to End All Wars'' is what they called 
it. It was so terrible, so inhuman that we believed that a calamity of 
that magnitude could never happen again. But it did. The Great War 
became known as World War I as a second inhuman war consumed our world.
  Today, we owe it to those who fought in World War I, who we promised 
that it would never happen again, that we will make sure that it 
doesn't. These medals and this promise are for our World War I veterans 
and for everyone who fought alongside them in the trenches.
  I offer this promise to our veterans, but I also ask for their help 
in keeping it. I ask them to teach their grandchildren and their great-
grandchildren about what it meant to fight for such a great and costly 
cause. Together, we can make sure that our children and our children's 
children never have to fight another Great War. 




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