It calls me and ever calls me!

And vainly I reply,

"Fools only ride where the ways divide
What is from the whence and why!"
I'm lifted into the saddle

Of thoughts too strong to tame

And down the deeps and over the steeps
I and-ever the same.

I have ridden the wind,

I have ridden the stars,

I have ridden the force that flies

With far intent thro' the firmament

And each to each allies.

And everywhere

That a thought may dare

To gallop, mine has trod

Only to stand at last on the strand

Where just beyond lies God.

-Cole Young Rice.

Yesterday our colleagues stood with us on "the strand where just beyond lies God." Today they have crossed over. Today they understand. No longer do they search for explanations and for truth. They are gone beyond the veil that cloaks the answers to all mysteries from those of us who still must live. It is not in mourning that we honor them. But rather in seeing that to us is given one great duty and the opportunity and means of being true to their memory. For we can dedicate ourselves to struggling to complete the work which they began. These whose memory we honor here today, now see face to face the meaning of all life and death and sacrifice and creative love. For where they are, there the Source of Life resides.

Let us turn then with understanding to the uncompleted task of building that better world which those who have gone before have helped make possible. May the good they did upon this earth live on after them through the efforts of us who called them friends. Ours is the torch they have laid down-these Members of the House and Senate and men like them around the world today. Their memory, their

influence, their very spirit on this earth will live if we keep faith with them. May the peace of God which passeth understanding keep their hearts and minds this day and always, and may His inspiration guide and spur us on as we strive to hold high the torch they have passed on to us.

Corp. Glenn Darwin sang Abide With Me.

Hon. KARL E. MUNDT, a Representative from the State of South Dakota, delivered the following address:

ADDRESS BY MR. KARL E. MUNDT

Mr. SPEAKER: We meet today for a purpose which has the dignity and tenderness of funeral rites without their acute sadness. We are drawn together today not by a new bereavement but one which time has softened and mellowed. We are here to pay tribute to those Members of the Senate and the House who have joined the realm of the invisible since we last met here a year ago in a memorial service. It is our privilege today to honor those who have passed on. We freshen with the dew of recollection the fragrant blossoms of love and understanding wreathed about the memories of our departed. We do well to pause annually

for an occasion such as this. We approach this session with eyes undimmed by tears but with hearts filled with the tender thoughts of remembrance and retrospection. We meet here not only to honor the memory of those who have gone but to remind ourselves that soon or late each of us must hearken to the call and take our place with those preceding us in the silent halls of death, there to bivouac together in our low green tents waiting the reveille and the reunion of the resurrection.

Joseph Addison once represented humanity as a great throng passing over a bridge, having numerous secret trap doors, which unexpectedly open now and then letting the passengers pass through until toward the end of the last span no one remains to pass. What a true picture of life that represents. Some are nipped in the bud, others fall at blossom time, some fall by the wayside at mid-maturity, and few

there are who are privileged to ripen and retain their earthly functions beyond their allotted three score years and ten. We who serve together in the Congress of the United States know that each year sees the passing of a certain number of our associates into the realm beyond and above the valley. Slowly but surely our ranks are constantly thinned. We pause on the speedy highway of life today to commemorate the lives of those who have answered the distant call.

As we pause together to pay tribute to the departed, we find courage in the fact that life does not end with the lapse of mortal breath. We are buoyed by the evidences of life after death which Nature provides us in every environment. The beautiful sunset is but the beginning of a glorious sunrise. Twilight finds its inspiring finish in the dawn. The dry leaves descending in the fall provide the rich mulch to protect the tender shoots of life reappearing in the spring. When we go down into the valley of the shadow it can be said that we have finished the day's work, but it cannot be said that we have finished our lives. Our day's work will begin anew with the following morning. The tomb is not a blind alley or a dead-end street. It is a thoroughfare. As it closes on the twilight, it opens on the dawn. Edith Davis Rowe expressed it well when she wrote:

Some day our ears will cease to hear,
Our limbs will cease to walk,
Our eyes will close to mortal scenes,

Our tongue no more will talk;
Our hands will never work again,
Our heart will stop its beat,
But yet for years our work will stay
To make our lives complete.
The things we made will still be used,
The things we write be read,

The things we've said will, too, live on
In others' minds instead.

And so our lives go on and on

Through generations more,
The products of the human mind
Are tripled by the score.

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