Good deeds survive the human trail; kind words never die. Our bodies may vanish from the scene of action, but the influence of our lives, well lived, continues with the endlessness of eternity. Yea, verily, in the words of the beautiful song we have heard this morning, there is no death. By our everyday deeds as we work along we determine in part our individual grasp upon eternity. Wise King Solomon expressed it rather tersely, albeit truthfully, when he said in Proverbs x: 7: "The memory of the just is blessed, but the name of the wicked shall rot."

A poet whose name has been lost in anonymity although his words have attained immortality put it this way:

Not-how did he die?

But how did he live?
Not what did he gain?
But what did he give?
These are the units

To measure the worth
Of a man as a man
Regardless of birth.

Not what was his station
But had he a heart?

And-how did he play

His God-given part?

Was he ever ready

With a word of good cheer

To bring back a smile

To banish a tear?

Not-what was his church?

Nor what was his creed?
But-had he befriended
Those really in need?
Not what did the sketch

In the newspaper say

But how many were sorry
When he passed away?

Those of us who knew personally the 3 Members of the Senate and the 10 Members of the House who have passed away since last we met in memorial services realize that the genuine sorrow and fond memories which followed their departure

give eloquent testimony to the high measure of worth which attached to each of those no longer able to respond to the calling of the roll. In a very real sense these Senators and Representatives gave their lives in the service of their country. Their passing left the Nation poorer but their services here in Congress helped to shape its course toward greatness.

In this particular memorial service, held as it is during the anguish of a great and awful war, we who gather here meet with a full appreciation of the fact that each day and night hundreds of new white crosses are being erected to American military heroes who have gone to sojourn with our departed associates in the realms of eternity. As we honor our own absent Members today, let us, therefore, add to their lists in our praise and our prayers all of their predecessors in the Congress and the men and women of America who have died and are yet to die in the service of their country.

THESE ARE DIFFICULT DAYS IN CONGRESS

American history has recorded no more difficult or important time to serve in Congress than the present. The Seventyseventh Congress which tussled with the pre-war problems and the tasks of rearmament and the Seventy-eighth Congress which provides the sinews of war and the legislative support for the most costly and calamitous conflict in human history have been the most trying and exacting Congresses in the years of our Republic. The pressure of long hours and multitudinous tasks, the strain of anxious decisions on momentous problems, the worry of responsibilities pregnant with significance for all time to come, have taken their toll among our associates in Congress as they have on the fields of battle.

Only a knave or a fool could wear lightly the heavy obligations which are his as a Member of Congress in this desperate juncture of our national history. The combination of nights made sleepless by reflection upon what would comprise the best decision on the morrow and of days made restless by the torturing turmoil of our times has not limited its demands

by exacting the lives of those whom we are met here today to commemorate. We can also read its heavy toll in the faces and the bodies of those with whom we are presently associated in the mighty decisions of our daily lives. Truly, these are not easy times in which to serve in Congress.

GOVERNMENT BY BENEFIT OF CONGRESS IS BEST

If those who see Congress only from the outside and judge it only by its errors and its weaknesses could but follow its individual Members to their homes and live with them, sharing their thoughts and emotions for just a single month, the carping criticism of writers and speakers which has sometimes risen to almost a crushing crescendo would be projected with the moderation of a better understanding. It is an ancient truism that the water is never missed until the well is dry. Even the most brazen and hyperbolic critics of Congress whose pens and words sometimes drip with the hateful brine of personal venom would retire into silence if the alternative of no Congress at all were substituted for either a good Congress, or an indifferent Congress.

A hasty glance at the conditions in countries where there are no legislative bodies on the national level of where such bodies simply serve to reenforce the edicts of the vain men who dominate their countries convinces the severest skeptic that government by benefit of Congress at its worst is far superior to government bereft of Congress at its best.

While the hearts and minds of our colleagues, both alive and dead, have been saddened and burdened at times by unconscionable and unjustifiable attacks upon their patriotism, their purposes, and their personalities, the Nation itself has cause to rejoice that its Congress had stood up to these attacks, fighting back at times and at others simply turning its back to the storm, but ever and always fixing its eyes on its standards and refusing to surrender.

If I were a minister of the gospel and were going to select a text to weave into this address, I would go to the Psalms 118,

and use the twenty-second verse, "The stone which the builders rejected has become the stone of the corner."

The gradual evolution of Congress to its present position as the keystone of freedom and self-government in this Republic is in harmony with the Biblical admonition which I have just cited. In his struggle to master the art of government, man was slow to turn to an assembly of his associates as the device through which to maintain order, protect the weak, and regulate the strong. He experimented down through the ages with sages and savants, with tyrants and despots, with medicine men and potentates. He turned to princes and kings, to queens and dukes and lords. Only after losing his faith in the rule of hereditary houses and regal men down through the sad experiences of centuries did man finally turn to himself and his fellows as the source from which sound government could best be sought.

Even in the founding days of this Republic, the position of the great institution of Congress came only as a compromise between those who feared the people and those who were suspect of the king.

Now after over 150 years of self-rule and of congressional control over purse and sword, this great legislative stone-the Congress-which the builders of government for ages rejected has truly become the head of the temple of self-government in America. And as the keystone of freedom in this Republic, it has become the lodestone of freedom for all the world. Men and women, wan and weary with war, turn yearning eyes in our direction and vow to themselves in their despair that in the glad days of tomorrow, they will erect governments in which they, themselves, can be the rulers as well as the ruled.

Strangely enough, in the uncertain happenchance of life across the years, many of those who have dealt most unfairly and unjustly with Congress have had occasion to seek assistance or protection from the very branch of Government which they so callously condemned. In truth, these men

and groups have been rescued from a fate which might well have been theirs had their vicious sneak attacks been more successful. Thus, these constant critics many times have secured dividends as a result of their own impotence. I think Ralph Waldo Emerson must almost have had Congress in mind and must have envisaged some of the smear attacks directed at it in modern times when he wrote his poem, A Nation's Strength. Permit me to quote a verse or two

from it:

What builds the nation's pillars high

And its foundations strong

What makes it mighty to defy

The foes that round it throng?

Not gold, but only men can make

A people great and strong;

Men who, for truth and honor's sake,

Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep

Who dare while others fly

They build a Nation's pillars deep

And lift them to the sky.

We who are here today may well thank our eternal God that men of the type of whom Emerson wrote have been so numerous in America. In peacetime and in war, on the battlefield and on the home front, in public and in private life, a great and good God has blessed this Republic with enough men and women willing to stand fast and suffer long to build this Nation's pillars so deep and lift them so high that today the beacon light which is the United States signals to all the world to join us in attaining nobler objectives by employing the precepts of brotherly love and by following the teachings of the Man of Galilee. It is men of this type whom we are gathered here today to honor. It is men of this type who must carry on at home and abroad during this tragic era. It is men and women of this type who must seek communion with their God in the shaping of a world after the war which will get civilization back in gear and help in