V
AT THE CHICAGO CLUB
Gentlemen:
IN SPITE of what you may think, if I perfectly understood the last speech—that of Mr. Green, because it was in French, I also understood the general drift of the speech delivered by the Lieutenant Governor. I understood them both because it is impossible for a Frenchman, after the hearty welcome extended to us and for which I especially thank your Mayor, Mr. Thompson, not to understand also that all the words pronounced came from the heart: and between hearts there is a mysterious language which is more eloquent than words.
You said a moment ago that this was not the first occasion on which Frenchmen had come to American soil. The first orator who spoke, Mr. Payne, recalled the fact that General Lafayette, one of whose descendants, the Marquis de Chambrun, accompanies us, had come in arms to help your great Washington. He might have added that the profit was mutual since Washington taught him more than one lesson. And on the day they met was born the brotherly friendship which, throughout the long years of the last century, yet more in this century, has united France and the United States.
I also thank Mr. Payne for having so clearly marked the attitude of invaded France, subjected to an aggression against which it was forced to rise, an aggression which you have rightly said was silently prepared for the last forty-five years. And I also thank Mr. Green who, because he long lived in France, never lost faith in her. If he has shed tears over her, as he said he did in his speech, he was right in saying they were not tears of despair.
For France is not a weak and oppressed nation, and, though for three years she has borne the brunt of the most terrific onslaught in all history, she is still strong, she is still valiant, she is still fighting: she is still ready with her allies to meet any destiny in store for her.
I thank you for receiving us here so simply in this banquet where the American Flag greets us, and where by a delicate attention, we are placed, Marshal Joffre and myself, under the folds of the French Flag. Look well at it: here it hangs motionless and still. It is otherwise on our fighting line, where it is shaken and torn by shot and shell. Yet it remains in the brave hands of those who bear it not only a symbol of French courage, but that of free democracy and of civilization. Under it our admirable army, led by the glorious chiefs whom the illustrious warrior seated beside me directed, stayed the avalanche which threatened not only France, but all the democratic institutions of every land. And I am happy to say, without excess of pride, that, faithful to its mission, France in those heroic days of which the memory cannot die, fulfilled its duty, the duty conferred on it by humanity, which has been nobly to fight for weaker nations and to defend the dignity of man.