XXII
AT THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
sunday, may 13th
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I THANK you, Mr. Governor, and Mr. Mayor, for introducing me to this most distinguished gathering, in which I find intellect, grace and beauty intermingled under circumstances most charming. But, perhaps, if I were to look carefully at myself, I might find cause to regret their presenting me in such excessively kind words, for if I had to resemble the portrait that has been drawn of me, if I were expected to represent the oratory and the intellectual traditions of France, I am afraid you might detect some difference between the portrait and the reality. However, I think I realize the deep reasons that have prompted the kind words of the previous orators. Undoubtedly they wished to introduce me most favourably to this gathering, which against my own will I have disappointed (at least I have been told so) by this delay of twenty-four hours. I beg you to throw the blame on circumstances, and not attribute it to any indifference on my part. You will easily understand that it was impossible for a Frenchman to pass so near Canada and not visit a country where the shades of our ancestors are honoured and where their descendants have preserved the traditions and all the purity of the language of France. Also I knew that a part of our heart had remained behind in this city with a part of the French Mission while I was in Canada. You have had the honour and the pleasure to welcome my friend, the former commander-in-chief, Marshal Joffre, in whose company, as well as in the company of other eminent Frenchmen, I had the honour of landing on American soil. And as soon as I arrived I clearly saw that you had no grudge against me, and that nature alone was angry, and refused to add to our joy the splendour of sunshine. I knew in advance the delicacy of your feelings; and I wish I could find suitable words to express our emotion and our common gratitude for all that has been accomplished in the city of Boston, a centre of intelligence and beauty, a city where everything has a spiritual foundation. In this sacred library, as it was called a few moments ago, we have the joy of knowing that all that is best in modern and ancient books is to be found; and that the splendour of antique beauty is added to all the grace of modern beauty. It is in these wonderful surroundings that you have been kind enough to receive me; and from the very moment of my arrival, even before I passed, full of emotion and gratitude, before the innumerable committees that have heaped so many good deeds upon our wounded and upon our orphans, it seemed to me that I beheld the radiance of French genius in these wonderful frescoes which our great painter, Puvis de Chavannes, sent to your city, and which in no way diminish the merits of the decorations of your great painter. Sargent, a native of Boston, who studied art in Europe.
The illustrious population in which I find myself to-day, lives for thought, and in thought, and it was natural that it should be drawn nearer to France. And not alone for that reason, but also because it has remembered the lesson of duty that was given to it by its Puritan forefathers. It was not unmindful that it was from Boston that came the first wave of liberty which burst, not only on America, but upon the whole of Europe, in 1 776, at a time when our philosophers, by their writings, were merely preparing the way for the French Revolution. It is in this city, where by a moving contrast, power, intellect and refinement meet: in this city which thinks it is not enough for a man to attend to his business and then go home, but that men and women have only fulfilled their missions when through unremitting study they have sought to raise their consciences and their actions to a higher level: it is close to this city that stands the illustrious Harvard University, which I am afraid will always have a grudge against me for not visiting it yesterday, and not receiving from the hands of its teachers and thinkers, the degree of Doctor of Laws, which would, indeed, have been a great honour. But it was unnecessary for me to come to this city to learn what the University had accomplished. I knew it was the brains of the country; and at the same time a centre for disseminating education and patriotism at once. And I knew too it had sent its valorous students to the front when fate compelled France to fight. And from this height on which I stand, allow me to thank the University for the ambulances and field hospitals which it has given us, and to pay a pious tribute to the memory of Norman Prince and Chapman, the aviators, who have risen to the same height as the French and English aviators, but who, alas, have been hurled back bleeding to the ground after fighting, not only for France, but for America, since the two countries share alike the same ideals of liberty and right. And I am not surprised that this city with the refinement of its culture, its quick delicacy of spirit, a city which reads, and understands, and thinks, should have been a centre of burning patriotism. I do not wish to minimize in my fatherland, be it the American, the French, the English, the Russian or the Italian fatherland, the action of the great forces, of the thoughts and the traditions which enable a people to continue its existence through successive generations, and which enable it to carry unquenched through all storms the torch which will shed its light upon future generations. But I may say that in any civilized country, education and therefore universities would be of no purpose, if through the voice of thinkers, of journalists, of philosophers, even of those who belong to no profession and hold no public office, but who simply have education, intellect and conscience were not identified with the conception of patriotism. The strength of the American Universities, at any rate of our great French educational system, which as a Minister of Public Education I have twice had the honour to direct, lies in the influence of thinkers and philosophers to, little by little, develop the true conception of patriotism. Undoubtedly it is unnecessary to belong to a particular country in order to realize what that conception is in order to see its splendour shine before our eyes.
Our motherland is the soil upon which our ancestors have lived, worked, and suffered. It is the cradle in which we were born: it is the path on which our careless youth has whiled away the hours: it is the field of silence and darkness in which our forefathers lie. But it is even more; it is all the commercial and industrial wealth which has been accumulated for generations. It is even more: it is a chain of successive generations linked together, and of which the last is the better for the mistakes of preceding ones. It is the tears which have been shed by different eyes at the same time: it is the same sorrows, deep in our consciences and in our hearts: it is the same hopes, the same expectations, which dwell in all souls alike. All this is the motherland. But if that motherland arose, it was because for centuries thinkers and philosophers have gathered together to give it a means of expression. In our country, in France, this common means of expression, a wonderful instrument of national unity, has been our admirable language; a language which all turn to, since it is suited to the expressions of feelings and interests, emotions and realities, the language of law and diplomacy, which, from Descartes and Voltaire up to Victor Hugo, every century has enriched, until it has become the real creator of French National Unity. It is to it we owe the intellectual and moral France of to-day.
And it is to this France that Harvard University justly sent its American professors in return for our French professors; and that an exchange took place, which I hope will increase after the war between French and American students. To further the relations between our universities and yours is our warm desire, and to that end my friend Hovelaque here has been entrusted with a mission to which I wish all success. Already many of our teachers have come here and received the most cordial welcome: Brunetiere, Gaston Deschamps; our great poet, Henri de Regnier; our professor of literature, Lanson; others besides have brought to your shores the different aspects of French thought. And in France, too, we were honoured by the visit of some of your most distinguished professors. Not to speak of your illustrious president, Mr. Lowell, I need only mention Professor Wendell who dedicated to France his wonderful book, "The France of To-day," a book which he had full authority to write, for he had taught both literature and history in the Sorbonne. He has thus done much to make America better known in France, and France in America. I shall never forget his lessons.
May I be allowed here to relate an anecdote which was told to me by one of your professors from Harvard, and which shows how useful these exchanges are? He had spent some time in the Sorbonne, and then taking advantage of a few days of leisure he went to Berlin where he had seen wonderfully trained troops go through their manœuvres. Although an American, he was a Frenchman at heart, and the powerful machine which is called the German Army filled him with uneasiness for the future of France. He greatly feared that the French Army would never be able to hold its own against it. But from Berlin he went to Nancy; and there he saw our wonderful Twentieth Corps, which we have christened the Iron Division. When he saw our valiant soldiers march erect and cheerful under our banner, when at the hour of rest he saw the officers drawing near the soldiers like old friends, as should always be between men serving in the same democratic army, his heart was relieved: he then realized that when the hour of fate struck the French Army would rise to the height of the occasion. And our wonderful Twentieth Corps did not deceive the hopes of your Harvard Professor. Everywhere, in Lorraine, in Ypres, in Flanders, in Verdun, it has hurled itself forward with the rest of the French Army and shown what French valour is, to wrest from the invader even a few yards of French territory.
And now let me thank you for these reassuring testimonies to our worth, for the proofs of friendship which you have given us and for the enthusiasm which surrounds us. I ask myself at times how, in the face of such generosity, I can find words which, through my feeble voice, will pay France's debt of gratitude. But I wrong you. You do not conceive yourselves to be creditors exacting their due from a debtor. You fully realize what you are doing. You do not do this for France alone, out of love for her, but, because in your minds France and civilization are one; and because you know that our noble country holds in its hands the flag of justice. For three years we have been facing the worst onset that ever burst upon men. However proud we may be of the past glories of our annals, never before did our love for our country shine forth more magnificently; never was courage, patience, endurance more manifest than in our children, our sons, who from the age of eighteen to forty-five rushed to the flag, side by side, father and son, uncle and nephew, Jew and Gentile; all creeds, all religions, all opinions, gathered under the common flag of the motherland. And now the French Army and the allies are fighting together. They fight for the ideals of justice; and this American Republic which was founded by its own children but to whom Lafayette, the grandfather of my colleague, the Marquis de Chambrun, brought his help: this American Republic which has twice fought, once for independence, and once again, at the peril of disruption, for the victory of the great principle of equality for all human beings: this American Republic which acknowledges only the principles of right and justice, has never once given me any reason to doubt it would be with us. Even in that remote time (how many centuries ago I wonder?) of American neutrality, I knew that your souls, your hearts and your consciences, could not without shuddering witness the German atrocities, of which we, with the Belgians, were the first victims: cathedrals burnt to the ground: priests shot, women bestially brutalized: orphans spiked with bayonets on their mother's bodies: devastated homes: murder: rape: all the crimes known to the penal codes of civilized nations. Was it possible that all this could take place without sending a thrill through the hearts of your mothers; of your men and women? It is for this reason, whatever is said to the contrary, that you have risen. You have risen to avenge your dead, because you could not allow your flag to fall to the level of the German standard. But mainly, as your President, Mr. Wilson, put it: "for humanity, for right, for democracy, and for liberty."
And indeed if it were possible for Germany to be victorious in this war, of what use (I beg your pardon for expressing my thought so freely) would be monuments like this? Of what use this marble, the pictures, the luxury, the ancient and modern books which, in a few minutes, bring back to our minds all past centuries, together with all the deep and regenerating elements of ancient and modern thought? Of what use were all this if democracy were to perish? Of what use if we were forced to bow to German soldiery and Prussian militarism? To the being who seems to have been created in order to trample brutally under his heavy foot human conscience and thought?
No. The temples where we have hitherto gone to seek modern science and beauty will yet stand! Our souls will remain exalted, our conscience clear, for we shall be victorious! And when we come back from the bloody battlefields where, alas, many of ours are lying forever in silence and darkness, when we visit our wounded, when we respectfully bow before the mourning veils of our valiant French womanhood, behind which, through their sorrow, we behold the pride of sacrifice, when we do this we shall feel more valiant and more free. We shall return to our studies, after having saved the world; it will then be our task to regenerate it through liberty and democracy. Then let your hearts and ours be one. You are remote from the battlefield. You do not hear its roar. You do not witness with your own eyes the evil that comes out of war. But none the less you realize its hideousness, for your hearts and your consciences would not be what they are if you did not realize it. In spite of distance and time, draw nearer to us, ever nearer. Suffer with us. Uphold the truth. Fight with us. And together let us save civilization, democracy, and liberty.