Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 270, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1918 — THANKSGIVING DAY HAS NEW SIGNIFICANCE NOW [ARTICLE]

THANKSGIVING DAY HAS NEW SIGNIFICANCE NOW

Washington, Nov. 17.—President Wilson in a proclamation today designated Thursday, November 28, as Thanksgiving day, and said this year the American people have special' and moving cause to be grateful and rejoic€. Complete victory, he said, has brought not only peace, but the confident promise of a new day aS well, in which “justice shall replace force and jealous intrigue among nations.” The proclamation fallows: A PROCLAMATION. Thanksgiving, 1918. By the President of the United It has long been our custom to turn in the autumn of the year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies to us as a nation. This year we have special and moving cause to be grateful and to rejoice. God has in His good pleasure given us peace. It has not come as a mere cessation of arms, a mere relief from the strain and tragedy of war. It has come as a great triumph of right. Complete victory has brought us, not peace alone, hut the confident promise of a new day as well, in which justice shall replace force and jealous intrigue among the nations. Our gallant armies have participated in a triumph which is not marred stained by another purpose of selfish aggression. In a righteous cause they have won immortal glory and have nobly served their nation in serving mankind. God has indeed been gracious. We have cause for such rejoicing as revives and strengthens in us aH the best traditions of our national history. A new day shines about us, in which our hearts take new courage and look forward with new hope and greater things. While we‘ gender thanks for these things, let us not forget to seek the Divine guidance in the performance of those duties and Divine mercy and forgiveness for all errors of act or purpose, and pray that in all that we do we shall strengthen the tie* of friendship and mutual respect upon Which we must assist to build the new structure of peace and good wiM among the nations. • Wherefore, I, Woodrow Witaon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-eighth day «f November next, as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease upon that day from their ordinary occupations and in their several homes and places of worship to render thanks to God, the ruler of nations. In witness whereof. I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of -the United States to be affiXDone in the District of Columbia, this sixteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nineteen hundred and eighteen, and of the independence of the Unated States of America, the one hundred and forty-third. (Signed) Woodrow Wilson, 1 By the President Robert Lansing, Secretary of State.