From the May 28, 1907 NYT:

Next Thursday is Memorial Day, and if you will permit me, I would like to express a little sentiment regarding the day and its observance through your columns...in an attempt to rouse a little more thought and patriotic zeal in the reverence and honor which all true Americans should feel for the American soldier, and especially for those gray-headed veterans who are yet with us of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Last Memorial Day I was struck with the absence of cheering and of enthusiasm when the veterans of one of the greatest wars in history marched past, bearing their tattered battle flags, torn by shot and shell, and stained with the blood of some of the finest, bravest, manliest men whom God has seen fit to place upon our earth.

When next Thursday comes and the street is echoing with the step of marching feet, the beat of the drum and call of the bugle, let all of us rend the air with cheers to make those blue-clad veterans realize that, although forty-two years have dawned since their leader said "Let us have peace," that we have not forgotten them who at the call of the Nation left the desk, the forge, the plow in the furrow, left mothers, sisters, sweethearts, and went willingly forward to the Nation's altar to offer their own bodies as a living sacrifice that this Nation should live, and that we are not ungrateful or unmindful of their unselfishness and sacrifice.

Yet a little while, a score of years at most, and they will no longer be with us; therefore unto the fathers of our Nation render what is of a right theirs, the appreciation of another generation who as yet have not tried, but if the time comes, pray God, as they were not, we shall not be found wanting.

CADET SERGEANT MAJOR.