XV
AT COLUMBUS, OHIO
TUESDAY, MAY 8TH
I SHALL above all remember the first words of your Mayor, who reminded us that our train awaits us and that our moments here are counted. Nor do we need long hours to express the sentiments which rise in all our hearts, and, if I needed to seek words of gratitude and friendly thanks, the speech made by your Mayor, and before him by the Governor, would have furnished me with a theme to develop.
Your Governor said that a common glory united us in the past and that our history was common. He saluted the great shade of Lafayette, so majestic and imposing that its shadow is cast over not America, not France alone, but over the whole liberated world. And, too, alluding to the tremendous events of which we are at once the actors and the witnesses, he said: "We do not know what the future has in store for us." I will tell you what the future has in store for us. We are confronted by two futures. The immediate future. citizens, mark well, is a future of strife and struggle. Nothing is built up in the history of humanity, no liberty can rise, without strife, sorrow, struggle. In strife and struggle, we Frenchmen have lived for three years: for three years with our allies we have held in check the most formidable of armies, organized for no other end than to oppress free peoples. And now free America has risen to rally to our side, bringing help, material and moral.
The first future is strife and struggle. There is
no other means of securing final victory. And
next, another future awaits us; when victory is
ours; when free citizens now clad in uniforms shall
have regained their homes; when after accomplishing their duty on the firing line, they shall return
from the long, long fight for liberty and their
native land. For the work of l beration is never
over. From generation to generation we transmit
it to our children, like a flaming torch to illuminate
the world. And our labours can cease only when
we shall have built up full guarantees that no
such war shall ever again repeat the crimes of
which we have been the victims.
So, fellow citizens listen well to my words. Up!
to fight and struggle to-day. Up! at the call of
duty, all, whatever form it may take: to the fight,
however hard, however terrible. And to-morrow,
citizens, free, united, the Republic of France, allied
nations all, whose institutions are founded on democracy and liberty, we will find means to
break once for all the sword of militarism and to
prevent Prussian militarism from ever again returning to oppress the world and destroy the
liberty of the people.