Henry Wayland Hill

“ A solid mass of masonry, a crown of columns bearing a terrace, and above all the lantern of the lighthouse, these are from base to summit the members of this powerful architecture. From the mass of masonry rises a rostrum, beneath which Champlain stands like a pilot.
What can France do? What should she do? What stone worthy of her can she bring to the monument? There is but one solution. It is that this stone must be precious.... We are at the house of Rodin. It is known how popular his name is in America. The great sculptor whose renown extends over the world has nowhere more ardent admirers. ”

“ Be assured that our hearts beat in unison with yours, and will ever remember with gratitude what is now being done to honor a son of France by the states of New York and Vermont, and by that generous, hospitable, tireless committee, the Champlain Committee.
The ancients used to place amulets as harbingers of good luck in the foundations of their great buildings. The figure of France to be placed on the base of the Champlain monument is being offered to you, not merely as a thing of beauty, but also as an amulet to bring luck to a nation whom we have never ceased to love. ”

“ Labor!—There is the true basis of American civilization, as founded by those pioneers who understood, such was their common sense, the great things that could be done in the land where they had come to stay.—Labor, the Father of Liberty, [49] the Father of Independence, the Father of Equality and of Justice; in a word the only solid basis of Society.
This, then, is the characteristic—henceforth unchangeable—of your American civilization. Everybody works, and there is work for every one and for all, but there is no room for the idle. The ceaseless activity of your lives shows it. ”

“ Ce que l’humanité veut faire connaître d’elle-même à l’avenir, elle le confie à l’art.
Et c’est pourquoi, comme un symbole de l’amitié franco-américaine, nous avons choisi une belle oeuvre d’art due à notre grand sculpteur Rodin.
A bord d’un bâtiment nouveau et qui s’appelle “La France,” une délégation française est venue pour vous remercier de célébrer un Français.
Par la pensée, par le commerce, par le goût du grand, du beau, du juste, par une foi identique dans la paix entre les hommes, les deux grandes démocraties que l’Océan seul sépare, sont faites pour s’aimer, se comprendre et s’unir. ”

“ So far as I know, I am the only man in New York, if not in the United States, who has ever made a pilgrimage to Champlain’s birthplace. And no man in America is more grateful to France for his own birthplace. It is not permitted me to speak my devotion to Champlain and my gratitude to France. I will let this silent stone speak for me—this fragment of rock from the coast of France, which was once a keystone in the arch over the doorway of the home in Brouage in which, by tradition, Champlain was born. ”

“ Louis; to Joliet, to d’Iberville, to Hennepin and Duluth, and to many others who, on Lake Champlain, on the Ohio, on the Great Lakes, or on the Mississippi, were the pioneers of a dominion, which should come to be realized some day, but far after them and otherwise than they would have conceived. Doubtless America honors herself in honoring and adopting our glories. With this act of courtesy mingles a strong sentiment of pride. It costs us nothing, however, to associate ourselves with an homage which concerns us, and from which we can draw a sense of consolation. ”

“ The measure of success we have reached is, I hope, founded on no less stable a basis. What this success has been and whether we are or not worthy compatriots of Champlain, let those determine who have recently visited our colonial empire; and I for one would gladly abide by the judgment of such American travelers as Edgar Allen Forbes, in his Land of the White Helmet.
By this delegation an image is brought to you, the image of France. More than once before, under one form or another, when the struggle was for independence or for greatness, it appeared on these shores, and was a good omen. ”

“ There seem to be moments in the life of every man, when he pauses in his career to recall the past and seeks to peer into the future, and so it is appointed for us to do to-day. While the daily rush of the outer world passes us by unheedingly in appearance, it is yet not truly so. From the day of the first visit of the white man, the eyes of the enlightened world have been upon the Champlain valley and the attentive good will of all well-wishers of their kind who are with us now. ”

“ Admiring to-day this beautiful statue of Champlain, this splendid embodiment of genius and patriotism, it seems as if one were gazing upon it through the vista of a beautiful parkway. The statue, in all its edifying beauty, is here before us, and yet its influence and its meaning carry the mental eye adown three centuries of visualization of civilizing events—sad and happy, depressing and gladdening, horrible and glorious, all necessary in the foliage of the avenue of progress through which the mind perceives and tries to understand the character of the man whom we here honor. ”

“ All through the critical periods of our history the French people and their Government have been our friends. They join us to-day in memorializing our past. They have the right to do so, for France and America have suffered and triumphed together for the same high cause and the memory of our debt to this liberty-loving people can never be forgotten. It is fitting that they place the Memorial Tablet here. It expresses to us love and friendship and they may be assured that we will guard it with proud and zealous care. ”

“ To one and all of you, America extends a welcome. And in the name, and on behalf, of the President of the United States I accept this bronze relief of France, which will be erected on the lighthouse at Crown Point, as a perpetual reminder of the good will of that people who are united with us by the memory of many evidences of disinterested friendship in the past and of a common devotion to Republican principles in the present. ”

“ A man of action, he was a man of imagination. He dreamed of the establishment for the benefit of France, of an immense dominion covering the American continent from Canada to Louisiana and Florida, through the valley of the Mississippi. This was neither more nor less than the idea of the future Republic of the United States, but in Champlain’s thought it was a matter of a French America. ”

“ In the struggle for supremacy of the Lake Champlain district men fought not only for the glory of France and her religion, the glory of England and the spread of her institutions, the independence of the Colonies and the abrogation of unjust taxes, but also, and chiefly, as settlers, for the protection of their homes and the validity of their land titles. They struggled, nevertheless, blindly, as all men do, and were the instruments of forces and the larger design of which they could have no vision. ”

“ The Tercentenary tributes to the God-fearing Champlain, whose noble qualities of mind and heart and whose unrequited services to mankind afford the occasion for the intermingling of the two races and the interchange of expressions of good will and cordial greetings, touched the hearts of the French people as nothing else had done, since the time when the people of this country bestowed their tributes on that other distinguished Frenchman and patriot, Marquis de Lafayette, whose services to this nation have ever since provoked the praises of our countrymen. ”

“ For all this we owe a debt of gratitude to France, hardly less than the debt we owe it for its unselfish and priceless assistance in our struggle for independence.
In the three hundred years since the discovery of the lake and region identified with the name of Champlain, the world has witnessed a greater advance in intelligence, in human progress, in the principle of liberty and in the recognition and protection by governments of the rights of the ordinary man, than in any similar period in recorded history. ”

“ Thinking of France, they have outlived the grandeur of the United States. Since by commemorations and by monuments, America honors herself by reminding us that in her eyes, as happy inheritor, a part of her present grandeur is the work of Frenchmen of other days, it becomes us to take her at her word. In the work of civilization, as it evolves, each bit of metal which the old nations throw into the crucible adds a quality and communicates its own resonance to the ingot which comes out. ”

“ How many illustrious French names are written in the history of this continent, from the earliest days of struggle with the miseries of rigorous climate and savage aborigines, down to the cession by Napoleon of the vast territory of Louisiana! What a roll of noble names of men who sacrificed all that makes life pleasant, in the pursuit of ideals in which no thought of self entered, save the hope and vision of that day when they should be greeted with the words:
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ”

“ Indeed, the ties uniting France and America have always been popular with us, and our public men have ever justly prized their great and valuable importance; but, in the present instance, the Prime Minister of the French Republic has desired to be personally represented. He, also, a patriot and a man of letters, cannot refrain from emotion when he recalls that page of our common history, when a countryman of ours with scanty means, but with vast courage and genius opened new lands and new prospects to the achievements of humanity. ”

“ Whether as pioneers in the northern and western dominions, at a remote period when these lands were yet unknown, or later on, in time of need, when the United States sought freedom and independence, was it not Frenchmen who came again with helping swords in a new American cause, where, as volunteers and soldiers, their hearts became enlisted.
But on the other hand, we citizens of France do not forget that it was upon your virgin soil that free institutions were first sown of which we in turn were able to fully harvest. ”

“ From pre-historic times the Champlain valley has been one of the thoroughfares of successive nations occupying the region, inviting alike to discoverer, trader, pioneer, warrior and traveler. It was but natural that its circumjacent shores and beautiful islands should become the homes of sturdy men, breathing the ozone of the mountain air wafted down into the valley, and possessing an independence and resolution found in such men as the Allens, the Warrens, the Bakers, and the Chittendens. ”

“ Here in New York, in this Empire City, where so much of past effort and present energy are concentrated, where five millions of human hearts beat in unison for the greater glory and ultimate triumph of humanity, we have met with a touching, affectionate and splendid reception which speaks to us of the warm-heartedness of the Great American Republic. ”

“ American hospitality, he said, which surprises and charms the French, whenever they cross the ocean, is but an expression of a constant memory. “As Monsignor Ireland so well says: ‘The United States forget nothing. In learning the history of his own country, an American learns to love France. The Past has not ceased to be felt in the Present. American sentiment is unable to detach itself from France. Emigrants, it is true, arrive in vast numbers on our soil; but there is a something, I know not what, in the air we breathe, that assimilates them in less than a generation. ”

“ We are friends of the great American democracy; we come toward it with outstretched hands, saying: Accept this friendship that is offered you and in return grant us yours. We have nothing more to offer you than this image of that which we love best in the world, France; and we ask nothing more of you than to understand how lively, spontaneous and sincere this sentiment is.
Since the American democracy is at the head of the great human civilizations, since it always marches forward, without, however, forgetting the bonds that bind it to the past ”

“ And you have raised up to Champlain this monument, which does honor both to the initiative of your Commissions and to the talents of your architects. You found that there was in the life of Champlain, as in those of the other French pioneers, of whom your historian, Parkman, so well wrote the lives, lessons which should not be lost. The example of their ingenuity, which nothing could rebut, of their energy, which nothing could daunt, of their faith, which never was discouraged, is still a lesson of confidence and optimism. ”

“ We have become the richest nation in the world, but every day of our existence we should give thanks to the Almighty that our standing among the nations rests upon another basis than the mere possession of great wealth. We are the most populous among the nations of advanced civilization, but we should thank God that the gauge of our power and our greatness does not lie merely in superiority in point of numbers. ”

“ On behalf of the state of New York and its upwards of nine millions of inhabitants, for whom I have the privilege and honor to speak on this occasion, I extend to our distinguished guests from France a most cordial and heartfelt welcome.
And, if I may be permitted to anticipate a little, I will convey to them in [43] advance and, through them, to their country, the appreciation and gratitude of our state and its people for the gift they bring and the honor they do us. It is the conception of a great artist, admirably typifying the ideals and aspirations of a great nation. ”