In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened on that day in 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. On June 14, 1917, one must remember the world is at war. The United States' entry into World War I came in April 1917, after two and a half years of efforts by President Woodrow Wilson to keep the United States neutral. Americans had no idea that war was imminent in Europe in the summer of 1914, and tens of thousands of tourists were caught by surprise.
United States President Woodrow Wilson's address to the nation's public came on the annual celebration of Flag Day as the soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) travel to join the Allies on the World War I battlefields in France. This was only a little over one month after President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation on May 9, 1914, recognizing the first national Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May "as a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of our country."
In the words of President Woodrow Wilson, June 14, 1917
My Fellow Citizens: We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honour and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us,—speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away,—for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? American armies were never before sent across the seas. Why are they sent now? For some new purpose, for which this great flag has never been carried before, or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution?
These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. We are accountable at the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve... Continued @Woodrow Wilson: Flag Day Address, 14 June 1917
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which she stands
and to the republic for which she stands
one nation under God
indivisible
with liberty and justice
for all
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