afternoon to attend the principal State banquet tendered to
them under the auspices of the Lake Champlain Association and
the Tercentenary Commissions of New York and Vermont at the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in the evening of May 1, 1912. The Astor
gallery of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel where the dinner was served, was
beautifully decorated with flowers and the flags of the two nations,
intertwined, emblematic of the intimate friendship existing between
France and the United States. Elaborate and beautifully designed menu
cards with photographs of the Champlain memorials and with the names
of the French delegation were provided and all other ante-prandial
arrangements had been carefully looked after by the Hon. Frank S.
Witherbee and Percival Wilds, the president and secretary of the
Lake Champlain Association, and by Hon. Howland Pell of the New York
Tercentenary Commission, to all of whom much credit is due for the
success of the banquet.
* * * * * Just in time to banquet
The illustrious company assembled here. * * *
On the dais were seated thirty-one of the distinguished guests,
including President John H. Finley of the College of the City of
New York, the Toastmaster, Ambassador Jusserand, Attorney-General
George W. Wickersham, representing the President of the United
States, General Horace Porter, former Ambassador to France, Hon.
Robert Bacon, former Ambassador to France, Lieutenant-Governor
Thomas F. Conway, Mayor William J. Gaynor, Hon. A. Barton Hepburn,
members of the French delegation, some members of the Lake Champlain
Tercentenary Commissions and others. The other members of the
Tercentenary Commissions and the other guests were grouped around
thirty-two separate tables, and among them were General Stewart
L. Woodford, former Ambassador to Spain, Governor John A. Mead
of Vermont, Hon. Francis Lynde Stetson, General Charles Davis,
Adjutant-General William Verbeck, Hon. J. G. McCullough, Hon. Frank
S. Witherbee, Hon. Henry W. Taft, Hon. Charles B. Alexander, Hon.
McDougall Hawkes, Hon. William A. Clark, Stephen H. P. Pell, Esq.,
Philip Livingston, T. J. Oakley Rhinelander, Hon. Peter Barlow,
Hon. Francis K. Pendleton, Hon. Rhinelander Waldo, Hon. Bird S.
Coler, A. Eugene Gallatin, Hon. Edward W. Hatch, Hon. Chester B.
McLaughlin, Bashford A. Dean, Esq., Hon. John F. O’Brien, Hon. Darwin
P. Kingsley, Hon. Frederic R. Coudert, Dr. Lewis Francis, Viscount de
Jean, Count Jacques de Portales, Count Henri de Saint Seine, Count
de La Fayette, M. Étienne Marie Louis Lanel, Hon. Edward H. Butler,
William P. Northrup and others.
The three hundred guests represented many of the historic families of
France and America, which had played an important part in the history
of the two countries. It was a notable assemblage and thoroughly
representative of the official life, culture and best citizenship of
the two nations.
After toasts to the President of the United States and to the
President of France, the band played The Star Spangled Banner and La
Marseillaise. Other national airs of France and the United States
interspersed the speeches and were productive of convivial feeling.
President Finley had before him on the table the keystone taken from
over the door of the birthplace of Samuel Champlain in Brouage. It
was encircled by the French flags on the table. His illuminating and
charming articles on “The French in the Heart of America,” commencing
in _Scribner’s Magazine_ for September, 1912, and continuing in
succeeding numbers of that periodical, show the wide extent of the
French settlements in America and something of America’s indebtedness
to France.
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT JOHN H. FINLEY
My selection (by those representing the two Champlain Tercentenary
Commissions and by the Champlain Association, to whose officers
the success of this great occasion is to be credited)—my selection
for this office to-night is due to no fitness except the degree
of my devotion to Champlain and the degree of my personal debt to
France. 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. I have brought
it across the sea, in a French vessel, to rebuild it in some
monument here or in Canada, or between the two countries. To-night
it is garlanded by flowers grown in America—in tribute to that
Brouage boy who has made American wildernesses blossom as the rose.
And I pour upon its face a libation in the wine of the land for
whose glory he dared, as a man, all perils of sea and land and died
an exile beneath the gray rock of Quebec, Champlain!
This stone will speak more effectively than my strange vocabulary,
the welcome I would give this most distinguished company from
France to-day. Here is a bit of France, still unnaturalized, that
will vibrate in all its particles with joy when it hears the voices
that speak the most beautiful language on earth. (I have only a
fear that it will disintegrate in its happiness.)
What I would have this stone say will have eloquent supplement in
what will be said by those who represent the Nation, the States of
New York and Vermont and the city of New York. These, gentlemen of
France, it is my honor to present to you.
Those explorers, priests and coureurs des bois whom Champlain
started out into the West gave to the world for all time (and to
a new nation for some time at least) that most wonderful of all
the valleys in the world, the Mississippi Valley. And it is a
noteworthy fact that the three heads of the co-ordinate branches
of our government come from that valley and from the banks of
the rivers discovered by the French. The Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court comes from the River, which Sieur de La Salle with
Tonty traced to the Gulf of Mexico. The Speaker of the House
of Representatives comes from the banks of that tumultuous and
shifting flood known as the Missouri, which Joliet and Marquette
saw hurling great trees into the Mississippi. And the President
of the United States comes from the banks of a river of that same
valley, also discovered, in all probability, by the French,—the
river along which they planted their plates of discovery, the river
which they called La Belle Rivière. I propose the health of the
geographical son of France, the President of the United States,
who is represented here to-night by a member of his Cabinet,
Attorney-General Wickersham. (Applause.)
As Dr. Finley poured a few drops of champagne over the stone the
banqueters went to their feet and cheered enthusiastically. President
Finley then presented Attorney-General Wickersham, delegated to
represent the President, who spoke as follows:
ADDRESS OF ATTORNEY-GENERAL GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM
_Mr. Toastmaster, Mr. Ambassador, Members of the French Delegation,
Ladies and Gentlemen._—In July, 1909, representatives of France,
Canada and the United States, and of the several states bordering
on Lake Champlain, united in celebrating the three hundredth
anniversary of the discovery of that lake by the great pioneer,
whose name it bears. That discovery itself was but the occasion for
a savage combat between the Indians, whom Champlain accompanied
and the ferocious Iroquois whom they encountered. Only one ray of
light struggles through the miserable tale of barbaric celebration
of the victory which the French firearms enabled the Hurons to win
over their enemies. That ray was the half successful effort made by
Champlain to check the infliction by his Indian companions of the
usual fiendish tortures upon their prisoners.
Je leur remonstrois que nous n’usions point de ces cruautez,
wrote Champlain in the account of his Journeys (Voyages), et
que nous les faisions mourir tout d’un coup, et que s’ils
vouloyent que je luy donnasse un coup d’arquebuse, j’en serois
content. Ils dirent que non, et qu’il ne sentiroit point de
mal. Je m’en allay d’avec eux comme fasché de voir tant de
cruautez qu’ils exercoient sur ce corps. Comme ils virent que
je n’en estois contant, ils m’appelerent et me dirent que je
luy donnasse un coup d’arquebuse: ce que je fis, sans qu’il en
vist rien; et luy fis passer tous les tourmens qu’il devoit
souffrir, d’un coup, plustost que de la voir tyranniser.
(Voyages, Oeuvres de Champlain, III, pp. 197-8. Quebec, 1870.)
(I objected that we did not practice these cruelties, and that we
killed our enemies with one blow; that I would be content if they
would let me shoot him with my arquebuse. They said no; that he
felt no pain. I turned away from them as though angered at such
cruelty as they were inflicting upon the wretch. Seeing that I
was vexed, they called me back and said I could shoot him with my
arquebuse, which I did, without his knowing anything, thus ending
the agony which he was suffering at one shot, rather than to see
him further tormented.)
In all the history of this man we find him the same—brave, simple,
humane, unselfish; the embodiment of patriotism and piety—an
example of the finest manly qualities.
It was, therefore, fitting that in perpetual memory of Samuel
Champlain there should be erected at the scene of the combat that
signalized the discovery of this lake—that same Crown Point that
a century and a quarter later was one of the first places to fall
before the arms of American colonials in the War of Independence—a
lighthouse, whose beams shining through the darkness of the night,
even as the compassion of the good Champlain lightened the path
of Stygian horrors to the poor suffering savage whose miseries he
ended, may warn and guide the mariners on those dangerous waters,
through dark and stormy nights, to the safe haven where they would
be.
And it is, therefore, a worthy object that brings this Embassy of
the French Nation from over seas to install at that lighthouse a
bronze bas-relief of France, wrought by the hands of one of the
greatest of living sculptors—that Rodin, whose name is as well
known in America as in his native country; a token which will
remain there as an abiding symbol of the intimate part and mighty
influence which the French people have had in the history and
development of America.
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.
The names of Cartier, Le Jeune, Brébeuf, Lalemant, La Salle,
Joliet, Frontenac, Hennepin, Marquette, Champlain, and many others
rise before us. But among them all, none is more worthy to be
remembered than that of Samuel de Champlain. When, in 1640, Père Le
Jeune visited a place in the country of the Hurons where Champlain
had stopped longest in a journey he had made there twenty-two years
before, he recorded that,
sa reputation vit encore dans l’esprit de ces peuples barbares,
qui honorent mesme après tant d’années plusieurs belles vertus
qu’ils admiroient en luy, et particulierement sa chasteté et
continence envers les femmes.
(his reputation still lives in the minds of these barbarous
peoples, who honor, even after so many years, many excellent
virtues which they admired in him, and in particular his chastity
and continence with respect to the women).
And the good Le Jeune exclaims:
Pleust à Dieu que tous les François qui les premiers sont venus
en ces contrées lui eussent esté semblables. (Jesuit Relations,
Vol. XX, p. 18.)
(Would to God that all the French who came first to this country
had been like unto him.)
In 1599, several years before coming to Canada, Champlain visited
the Isthmus of Panama, and noted that if a canal were cut across
it one could pass from one ocean to the other, thus shortening
the distance from Spain to Peru by more than fifteen hundred
leagues. And as this Frenchman was the first[2] to lay that
project of the Panama Canal before the world, so another great
Frenchman, de Lesseps, was the first to put the idea into practical
application; and after proving that its accomplishment was only
possible if undertaken by a Government, to hand it over to the
traditional friend of France,—its successor in the ownership of the
great territory of Louisiana—to complete the divorcement of the
continent, which, as Champlain wrote, would divide America into two
islands: one from Panama to the Straits of Magellan, and the other
from Panama to the new lands (Terres Noeufves).
In 1878 we celebrated the centennial anniversary of the Treaty of
Alliance, and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, with France.
In 1903 we celebrated the centennial anniversary of the Treaty of
Cession of Louisiana.
In 1904 we concluded the purchase from the French Panama Canal
Company of its interests in the Isthmian Canal.
In 1909 we celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the
discovery by Champlain of the great lake with which his name is
forever linked.
To-night, in the name and on behalf of the President of the United
States, I welcome the Embassy from the French people that brings
to the American people a token of the perpetual friendship which
an indissoluble union in the past makes sure of continuance in the
future.
No more distinguished or representative Embassy has ever come
bearing the greetings of one people to another. Glancing over
the names of those that comprise it, one sees those of the
most distinguished exponents of all that is best in French
national life. History, Literature, Art, Journalism; the cause
of International Peace, and Arms, which ensure its continuance;
Industry, Commerce and Sport—all these are represented. 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. (Applause.)
President Finley then introduced Ambassador Jusserand as follows:
We welcome the special embassies that come from time to time, but
that is partly because of our affection and admiration for the
permanent Ambassador from the Republic of France. It was rumored a
few days ago that he was to be promoted to another court. Of course,
in our opinion transfer to another court is not a promotion. But in
any event, we are sure of this: that court is the most fortunate
to whose sovereign he is accredited. I propose the health of the
sovereign who has accredited him to us, the President of the French
Republic.
ADDRESS OF AMBASSADOR JUSSERAND
I have been accredited to the United States almost ten years, and
although this beats the record of any of my predecessors, from the
founding of this Republic, this space of time, spent in such a
friendly country, among a people that has never allowed me to feel
that I was not in my own land, has passed for me like a day. What
has just been said by our Chairman, an historian, a thinker, a man
of action, a scientist who has delighted the French of to-day by
his studies of the French of the past, showing to both a similar
broad sympathy, touches me deeply. I cannot imagine with the sound
of his words in my ears, what amount of time would ever seem long
to me, in a post where the President of the French Republic and his
representative are spoken of in such a fashion by such a friend.
It was my privilege, three years ago, to attend, in the society of
the President of the United States, memorable ceremonies, lasting
several days, held by the Sons of America in honor of a son of
France, Samuel Champlain. The year was a busy one for President
Taft, since it was a tariff year, yet he did not hesitate to lend
his presence to festivities for which, in every bay, on every
promontory, in every city, his eloquence, good humor and good grace
were in ceaseless request. He had been advised that one speech
would be expected of him, and I had received the same notification;
so we had each prepared one, but he had to deliver six and I five;
Ambassador Bryce had a similar fate, such being the way of the
world, and especially of the New World.
Many of you, I am sure, remember the grandeur of the ceremonies
to which a peerless landscape lent its lovely background, and the
summer sun its splendor, and the Champlain Commission the charms
of a most gracious hospitality; the visits to Ticonderoga just
rising from its ruins, to Bluff Point, Plattsburgh, Burlington; the
excellent addresses of President Taft, of Ambassador Bryce, Senator
Root, Mr. Lemieux of Canada and so many others, and you remember
too with what alacrity New York and Vermont vied with each other,
Governor Hughes and Governor Prouty making everybody welcome and
delighting innumerable hearers with the wit and wisdom of their
speeches.
But this was not enough, and with that warmth of heart so
characteristic of this nation, you have desired that permanent
memorials should, to the end of time, bear testimony to the
gratitude due to Champlain, not only for the discoveries he made,
but also for the examples he left us. When this intention became
known to my compatriots, it profoundly touched them, and they
begged permission to take part in these homages, thus evidencing
once more, the unity of feeling between the two Republics east
and west of the great Ocean. Hence the coming to these shores of
the Delegation headed by Mr. Hanotaux which you are welcoming
to-night, a representative one, where the French Academy, the
French Parliament, the French Army, French art, science, industry,
commerce, press and, let us not forget that Franco-American art,
aviation, have their spokesmen.
The news of your intentions moved the more deeply the hearts of my
compatriots that, after a long interruption, the task of Champlain,
that task so well described by our Chairman of to-night, President
Finley, in his Sorbonne lectures, has been resumed in the same
spirit by our Republic of to-day.
“The French,” wrote in the sixteenth century the great Italian poet
Tasso, “are by nature unable to stand still and do nothing. When
they cease to be in action, they wither like the mechanism of a
clock that gets rusty if not in use.” We have been in no danger in
these latter years, of rusting. If, on several continents, success
has attended our efforts, it is because we took our inspiration
from the precepts and examples left by the far-off ancestors,
Champlain and his peers. Justice, friendliness, a desire to
help and improve, must ever be among the chief articles of the
colonist’s creed. The one sense to which throughout the world, even
the lowest type of humanity responds, is the sense of Justice.
Such was the opinion of your leaders too, of Washington above all
others, who wrote to Lafayette: “The basis of our proceedings with
the Indian nations has been and shall be Justice.” And, at this
day, in the distant Philippine Islands, where schools have so
much multiplied and President Taft has left, as a Governor, such
noteworthy examples, this rule is known to be your rule.
As for our own men they felt in the same way, that the contact
with the white man ought to be a blessing, not a bane, to the less
advanced races. Champlain, Joliet, La Salle were of one mind and
opposed to the best of their ability the sale of “fire-water” to
the natives; and a similar principle continues in force to-day in
your Indian reservations. As to the development of the country by
slave labor or by that of hired servants, Charlevoix wrote those
memorable words: “I should prefer the last. When the time of their
service is expired, they become inhabitants and increase the number
of the King’s natural subjects, whereas the first are always
strangers: and who can be assured that, by continually increasing
in our colonies, they will not one day become formidable enemies?
Can we depend upon slaves who are only attached to us by fear and
for whom the very land where they are born has not the dear name of
Mother-country?”
In this, as is so often the case, interest and virtue combine: both
give the colonist the same advice; which, as mankind progresses, it
will be more and more dangerous to discard. 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. The exchange of tokens of friendship between
two nations with so much in common in the past, so much in the
future, with their similar aims, has been ceaseless. 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.
(Applause.)
In presenting the next speaker, President Finley said:
A few weeks ago I was in great peril of losing my life by falling off
the western boundary of the State of New York into the Niagara river.
I was trying to follow the path of the Frenchmen who carried from
Lake Ontario to a point several miles above the Falls, the equipment
for the first sailing vessel to navigate the waters of the Upper
Lakes. While I was climbing to a narrow ledge of rock covered with
ice, a hundred feet above the river, I appreciated as never before
the hardihood of the French explorers and the dearness of the soil
of New York to me. I have a particular satisfaction in being able to
stand here to-night and to introduce to you the Acting Governor of
this Empire State, Governor Conway.
ADDRESS OF LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR THOMAS F. CONWAY
The discovery of Lake Champlain, the tercentenary of which we
celebrate, was an event of transcendent importance. Viewed from the
standpoint of scenic grandeur, this magnificent body of water with
its setting of mountains, valleys and islands, presents a picture
of unrivaled beauty and sublimity unsurpassed upon the face of
the earth. Viewed from the standpoint of history, the Champlain
Valley was, from the time of its discovery until the close of the
Revolution, the scene of events of world-wide interest; events that
have had an important bearing upon the history of modern times.
It was upon its shores the first battle between Champlain and the
Iroquois was fought and, according to the most authentic evidence,
at this identical spot that the plaque “La France” is to be placed.
It was also upon its shores, near Ticonderoga, that the intrepid
Montcalm defeated Lord Abercromby and, for the time, stayed the
aggression of the English in their efforts to control the destinies
of the Western world. It was upon its waters the first naval battle
of the Revolution was fought, at Valcour, between Benedict Arnold,
commanding the American fleet, and Sir Guy Carleton, commanding the
British squadron. It was also upon its waters, in Plattsburgh Bay,
that the last naval battle of the war of 1812 took place between
the American fleet commanded by the brave Commodore Macdonough,
and the British by the equally intrepid commander, Downie—a battle
which is now considered one of the decisive battles of the world.