HER Official Organ Of The Slavonic Benevolent Order Of The State Of Texas. Founded 1897. BENEVOLENCE
VOLUME 54 — NO. 24
HUMANITY
BROTHERHOOD
Postmaster: Please Send Form 3579 with Undeliverable Copies to: SUPREME LODGE, SPJST, P. 0. Box 100, TEMPLE, TEXAS
JUNE 15 1968
FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK WHAT IS A FLAG? Flags everywhere — on public buildings -- in private homes -- pictured in stores — fluttering and billowing in the soft, summer breeze — flags everywhere — American Flags! Passers-by, on the busy streets of the city, hurry on their way, minds intent on their own small affairs. They look idly at the flags — but do they really see them? That oblong piece of cloth, with its bright dyes, in the visible symbol of America today — an America more precious, more wonderful than ever before, because the gifts it has given us are threatened, as never before, with loss and destruction! It is the brilliant heart of America — the sign of our inheritance — the presence of all we hold most dear. The courage and strength of the pioneers — the pathfinders who met trial and hardship dauntlessly, in the days when we were beginning to be a nation — are in the red of the stripes. The high and stainless purity of mind and motive — the whiteness of the souls of great men — Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and many others, who strove selflessly to hold high their beliefs in the greatness of this nation, and who dedicated their lives to its service — are in the white of its stripes! The truth that will not stoop to
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gift to man, to be guarded sacredly forever! It is the soul of America — and it shall never die! DISPLAY OLD GLORY PROUDLY! •
FLAG DAY IS FOR "FLAG WAVING"
OLD GLORY Hats off! Along the street there comes A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, A flash of color beneath the sky; Hats off! Our flag is passing by! lie — the integrity of the principles, that underlie our commonwelth the unshakeable faith and trust in God, that has come down to us from those long gone before, who have held high the light, that we might walk safely — are in the blue of its field of stars! And everyone of those stars shines with a new splendor of meaning — the symbol of a free people, living their lives in the blessing of freedom — freedom to worship God as they choose, freedom to work, to laugh, to love, to live — God's most precious
June 14 is for letting your kids help you hoist theflag over your front porch . . . for noticing other flags along your route to work and being thankful for their owner's right to fly them . . . for humming along with the "Star Spangled Banner" when it swells out from between a newscast and a soap commercial on your radio. June 14 is a good day. It has been National Flag Day since 1916 when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed it so. Back in 1885, it was like any other day — except that it was the last day of school in Fredonia, Wisconsin. Bernard J. Cigrand, the 19-year-old schoolmaster for Fredonia's Stony Hill School, wanted his pupils to carry their lessons of Americanism throughout their summer vacation. So before dismissing them, he gathered them into a quiet circle in the schoolyard conducted a brief flag-raising ceremony. As the flag jerked up the branchless sapling that served as a flagpole, he mused that everybody should be carrying with them the lessons of Ameri-