No one with a heart in his breast, no American, no lover of humanity, can stand in the presence of these graves without the most profound emotion. These men who lie here are men of a unique breed. Their like has not been seen since the far days of the crusades. Never before have men crossed the seas to a foreign land to fight for a cause which they did not pretend was peculiarly their own, but knew was the cause of humanity and of mankind.

    —PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON, speaking on Memorial Day,

May 30, 1919, at the first of many US cemeteries in France dedicated to America’s fallen in the World War.