Correction: An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that the Peace Cross is located west of the District. The cross is located east of the District. This version has been corrected.

A TOWERING, rose-hued cross on a highway median strip a mile east of the District, in the Maryland suburbs, is a symbol of several things — of Christianity, certainly; of the sacrifice of soldiers from Prince George’s County who died in World War I, in whose honor the cross was erected in the 1920s; and of the tangled jurisprudence and fervent debate regarding religious displays in the public realm, which has flummoxed the Supreme Court and other tribunals for years.

The fact that the cross, at least to its advocates, is not only a symbol of faith but also a historic site and a patriotic memorial — to the fallen soldiers’ valor, endurance, courage and devotion, words chiseled on the monument’s base — is at the heart of the dispute now facing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Should the cross, which sits on public land, be removed or altered, because as a religious symbol it runs afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition on government endorsing any particular faith? Or should it be tolerated as a tribute to the dead that has stood unmolested for nearly a century?

A cross is no less a symbol of Christianity than a Star of David is of Judaism, or a crescent moon and star of Islam. It is senseless to pretend otherwise. It is equally foolish to suppose that the display in Prince George’s, on a busy highway in Bladensburg, cannot do double or triple symbolic duty. In this instance the Peace Cross, as it’s known, is at once exclusionary and inclusionary.

That’s why the question of whether to leave or remove religious symbols from public space has yielded so many split decisions, from the Supreme Court and elsewhere. On the very same day in 2005, the high court disallowed a Ten Commandments display in a Kentucky courthouse and upheld a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas statehouse.

In the case of the Peace Cross, it is sensible to take into account the intent, history and details — and leave it be.

It matters that the names of the 49 Prince George’s men who died in the war appear on a bronze plaque at the cross’s base. It matters that the cross has stood at its present site since 1925, a fixture in the landscape for so many decades. It matters that to the American Legion and the local families who erected it, on land owned by a Maryland state agency, the cross was largely a remembrance of heroism and sacrifice. In that context and at that time, the cross was mainly meant to honor the dead, not extol Christianity.

No one should forget that Jewish and other non-Christian soldiers volunteered, fought and died in U.S. wars. Several thousand Jews perished in World War I, probably a disproportionately high number relative to their share of the population. The cross excludes but does not dishonor them. It’s not what we would like to see erected as a war memorial now, in a much more diverse era and nation. But to remove it today would not rectify a wrong; it would erase a piece of the past. Let it stand.