XVI
AT INDEPENDENCE HALL
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
wednesday, may 9th
Gentlemen:
IT is not the first time in France or in foreign lands that my companions and I have visited some shrine. Many a time have we been in houses, palaces, temples, where the history or the pride of the peoples we were among found its symbolic monument. But I am sure that I express our feelings when I say that never, with a deeper, simpler emotion did we penetrate into any palace. This Independence Hall is the point from which American history has issued. Here it was that the American people attained full consciousness of itself and that, gathered together, so to say, in one spot, it rose to the dignity of a nation. Here it was that American independence was proclaimed, and in a few moments I trust your Mayor, when we leave this room, will allow us to admire the proud original document, a facsimile of which we see here. Here it was that in 1 787 the first Constitution of the Government and people of the United States was promulgated. Need I say that to the hearts of Frenchmen and republicans, to the sons of France, of the French Revolution, which by its effects freed our genius and gave it scope to say and to think all things, your homage to our land profoundly touched us? It is to France, Mr. Mayor, you speak when you address us: it is of France you spoke when you recalled our common history and said that Lafayette and his soldiers brought you help, and that it was well that in the tragic hours we are traversing we, too, should come to you, as the free representatives of a free and powerful, but attacked nation, criminally attacked, and that rose to defend its independence and its territory at once. And once more the two things were one: by defending its territory the French nation defended the independence of the world. And it is because you understood that, because the republic of this country understood, that after three years of war, after having attempted to remain faithful to your peaceful ideals, the American people, torn away so to say from its dreams of peace by the violent or underhand aggressions of Germany, was obliged to take up arms. And it will be its glory to have seized them not only in self-defence, to avenge the insults heaped on it, but, as your illustrious President said, in order to preserve the rights of humanity which for three years France has been defending.
I thank you, Mr. Mayor, I thank you in the name of the Government of the Republic, in my companions' names. And since you said just now that only a few words of welcome were to be spoken here, and that your real address was made to France, allow me, too, to be brief and end here. Allow us to go forth and salute the admirable troops which we saw on our way, and which gave France a greeting worthy of her. I thank you, Mr. Mayor, and to express my gratitude to you allow me to shake your hand and in you to salute your whole nation.