We have in the past looked back to the pages of the old Freehold Transcript, the forerunner of our sister paper the News Transcript, for commentary on issues that are still topical today. Last week, we came across the following editorial from May 1906.

An unknown author discusses the topic of Memorial Day in his commentary, saying:

"The determination of those having the matter in charge to hold the next Memorial Day services on the coming Sunday, instead of the day set apart for that purpose by law has a sound reason in this matter in which the day has come to be observed in these later years.

"The original idea of the day was that it would be observed as a grateful memorial of the men who had laid down their lives to maintain the Union of the States, and in the years directly after the war this idea was carried out. But a new generation, or more correctly speaking, practically two generations have grown up since the great struggle, men and women, boys and girls, who had no direct part in it, who have only a partial or languid interest in the observance of the day as it was originally intended.

"On the other hand, everybody is interested in having a good time on this as on every other holiday that they can get, and those who cater to the amusement-loving public have no compunctions about attracting as large a crowd as possible at every center of interest.

"Of course these crowds come, as might be expected, wearing their holiday clothes, and in a holiday frame of mind, to which the funereal aspects of the day are entirely foreign and it is little wonder that the memorial services at the cemeteries and elsewhere are given but scant courtesy and little attention.

"This cannot help but be disquieting to the old soldiers who are left, and whose ranks are thinning every year, and we can but ask for them this year, as they perform their labor of love, that kindly consideration and respect which the most careless is wont to show to old age, and to the memory of the departed."

To translate that editorial into modern English, the author was lamenting the fact that by the early years of the 20th century - barely four decades after the end of the bloody Civil War - Memorial Day had become more of a day for pleasure than for reflection of what had been sacrificed on the battlefield.

It strikes us that those words that were put to paper by our predecessors should be recalled today as May 29 draws near and the United States prepares to mark its fourth Memorial Day of the war in Iraq.

The 2,500 U.S. service personnel who have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war in 2003 is a somber reminder of the cost of peace and freedom. American troops continue the battle to provide the people of a nation far from home with a future free from terror.

For the families of those who have been killed in action, Memorial Day will be a somber and painful reminder of the ultimate price their loved ones paid in service to the nation. For veterans who have fought in other American wars, the holiday will mark another year for them to remember the men who fought and died, and the struggle for survival that every day on the battlefield brought. We thank those veterans for their service.

As it was in 1906, so it is in 2006. Most people will use the holiday as a respite from work, a day to be enjoyed. We will, as our colleagues at the old Freehold newspaper requested, respectfully ask that you take a moment out of your day on Monday to honor the service and the memory of those who fell on battlefields at home and abroad in service to their nation.