him, he was ours “by that unshaken sentiment of gratitude for ...
services which is a precious portion of our inheritance; ours by that
tie of love, stronger than death, which has linked” Lafayette’s “name
for the endless ages of time with the name of Washington.” In 1916
the old Château of Chavaniac, Lafayette’s birthplace, one hundred and
fifty miles to the south of Paris, was put up for sale by the owner,
a grandson of George Washington Lafayette. Patriotic Americans bought
it, desiring to make a French Mount Vernon of the historic castle and
grounds. At first it was intended to convert the château into a museum,
to be filled with relics of Lafayette and Washington and the American
Revolution, but the great needs that were facing France led to a change
of plan. The castle should become more than a museum; it should be a
home and school for as many children of France as could be provided
for. This would have been Lafayette’s own wish, and in doing this the
American society known as the French Heroes Lafayette Memorial has paid
the noblest tribute to the great patriot. And the people of France, the
most appreciative people in the world, have welcomed the gift and the
spirit that underlay it.
Anatole France, the great French writer, has summed up the sentiment
of his nation in glowing words. “American thought,” he says, “has
had a beautiful inspiration in choosing the cradle of Lafayette, in
which to preserve memoirs of American independence and to establish
an institution for the public good. In preserving in the Château de
Chavaniac d’Auvergne the testimonies and relics of the war which united
under the banner of liberty, Washington and Rochambeau, and in founding
the Lafayette museum, ties which have bound the two great democracies to
an eternal friendship have been commemorated. But this was not enough
for the inexhaustible liberality of the Americans. It went further,
and it was decided that upon this illustrious corner of France, the
children of those who died in defense of liberty, should find a refuge
and home, and that, deprived of their natural protection, some of these
children should be adopted by the great American people, while others of
delicate constitution should recover health and strength on this robust
land. It is a large heart that these men reveal in preserving a grateful
remembrance of past services, and in coming to the assistance of the
orphaned of a past generation who fought for their cause a hundred and
forty years ago. May I venture, as an aged Frenchman and a lover of
liberty, to proffer to America the tribute of my heartfelt homage?”
And so the castle where Lafayette was born and the fields and woods he
knew so well in his boyhood among the Auvergne Mountains are now to be
the home of generations of French children whose fathers gave their
lives that the world might be set free from tyrants and war cease to be.
What could be more fitting! It is one of the beautiful things of history
that Americans could do this for France. It is in such ways that the
spirit of brotherly love may some day encircle the earth.
For all wise men know that it is not riches, nor material possessions
nor great territories that make either men or nations noble. The United
States might cover half the globe, her wealth be beyond what man has
ever dreamed of, her population run into the hundreds of millions, and
yet our country be only hated and feared by other peoples. That was the
future the rulers of Germany had been planning for their nation; so
they might possess material things they were willing, nay, they were
glad that the rest of the world should hate them. They had no wisdom at
all; they had forgotten all the lessons of history. Christ might never
have taught, churches never been more than bricks and stone, patriots
and poets never have striven to show men their ideals, so far as these
rulers, and through them their people, were concerned. Lafayette knew
the truth, but the spirit of Lafayette was what Germany and Austria most
hated; they are trying to-day to imprison that spirit just as they did
imprison the man himself when they had the chance.
Nations, like men, live to serve, not to conquer for the lust of power.
Only when nations have learned that are they worthy of admiration.
Had America drawn her cloak about her, said “I am safe between my two
oceans,” made money out of the sufferings of other peoples, held fast
to safety and ease, then America would have betrayed every ideal of her
founders, every hope of the men who have loved and worshipped their
“land of the free.” Only when America said there were greater things
than ease and safety, that the liberty of all peoples was indissolubly
bound up with her own freedom, did she show herself as the great
republic in spirit as well as in name; only when she was willing to
serve others did she rise to the true heights of her national soul.
One of our poets, James Russell Lowell, has written the beautiful line,
“‘Tis man’s perdition to be safe, when for the truth he ought to die!”
The truth of that was known to the farmers of 1775 who took their guns
and at Lexington and Concord fired “the shot heard round the world.” And
the same truth was known to the men of 1861 who went out to keep the
republic their fathers had given them. For we have all received a great
legacy from those who have gone before, and now we know what it is, and
have again gone forth to fight for truth.
We know that this is the greatest of all crusades. We know that men must
be set free. Tyrants, whether they be emperors and kings or governments
that place greed above justice, must be cleared from the earth. This
last and greatest of tyrants, this league of the Hohenzollerns and
Hapsburgs, has by its very brutality and injustice opened men’s
eyes and let loose a new spirit in the world. Russia was autocratic,
her ruling house of Romanoff was in many ways true brother of the
other tyrants, but the people of Russia felt the new spirit and have
already driven their Czar from his throne. When we think of the French
Revolution, the Reign of Terror, Napoleon, and all that France had to
endure on the hard road to liberty we may well imagine that dark days
lie before the Russian people, but in time France rose like a phœnix
from the ashes of revolt, and when we see what France is to-day we may
look confidently to the future of this other great people.
For the spirit liveth! The truest words that were ever spoken! And the
spirit that fills France to-day, the spirit that fills England and
Belgium and America and all the allies, yes, even that same spirit in
Russia, will carry mankind a long way on the road to liberty. For no one
can conquer that spirit; it is the immortal part of man.
Let us read again the glorious lines of Julia Ward Howe in “The
Battle-Hymn of the Republic,” lines as true in this crusade as they
were in the crusade against slavery for which they were written.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
“I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening’s dews and damps;
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.
His day is marching on.
“I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
‘As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.’
“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
“In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”
America heard the call; America saw that there were no limits to the
evils of the powers of darkness unless the powers of light should fight
them; and on April 6, 1917, America declared her purpose to do so. As
the small American republic once heard with rejoicing and confidence the
word that Lafayette and Rochambeau were to bring aid westward across the
Atlantic, so now the great French republic heard with the same emotions
the declaration that American soldiers were to bring succor to them
eastward across the same sea. The last great neutral nation, immense in
power of men and wealth and energy, had cast in its lot with the forces
that were fighting for freedom. The Allies, weary and worn with more
than two years of fighting, looked to this fresh, great people to bring
them victory.
A month after we joined the cause of liberty French generals and
statesmen came to America. At their head was Marshal Joffre, the hero
of the Marne. He visited Mount Vernon and laid a wreath on the tomb of
Washington; he traveled through the country and everywhere he found
statues of Lafayette and Joan of Arc and memories of great Frenchmen.
To America Joffre stood for the ideals of France, courage, endurance,
nobility of thought and action. Not since Lafayette’s visit in 1824 had
the people of the United States welcomed any visitor with such love and
admiration.
The tour of Marshal Joffre was the outward symbol of the new union.
Instantly the United States, a peaceful nation with a very small
standing army, an insignificant merchant marine, its farms devoted
to supplying its own needs, its factories busy with the commerce of
peace, changed to a nation at war. It faced a stupendous problem. From
its untrained men it must create great armies, fitted to cope with and
defeat the fighting machine that the enemy had spent years in building.
It must have the ships to carry those millions of soldiers to Europe and
it must supply them in Europe with the food, the clothing, the guns,
the ammunition they would need. That in itself was a task beside which
the greatest military achievements in history paled into insignificance.
Napoleon crossed the Alps, but he could feed his army on the supplies
of the countries on the other side of the mountains. We must supply
everything, must transport America into Europe, and then keep America
there by an unending bridge of boats.
More than that, we must do our part in building ships to provision our
allies, ships that should replace those the pirates of the sea were
sinking daily. And we must feed not only our own people, but the people
of starving countries, and particularly the people of Belgium, whom
we had helped since the war began. Here in the broad and fertile land
that lay between the two oceans was to be the granary and factory and
training-camp that were to make liberty victorious. The nation turned
to its new task with the same indomitable energy that had conquered the
wilderness in the days of the pioneers.
At the call of the love of country men instantly volunteered. Congress
passed the Conscription Act, and young men who had dreamed of peaceful
occupations went to be trained as soldiers. Ceaselessly, tirelessly
the great work went on. Americans landed in France to reinforce the
volunteers who were already there as engineers, as motor-drivers, as
aviators. Railroads had to be built, and docks and factories; the most
skilled men in every line of work hurried to be in the vanguard. Then
General Pershing reached France as commander-in-chief of the vast
American army that was to come. As we had received Joffre so France now
welcomed Pershing. And he went to Lafayette’s tomb and laid a wreath
upon it, declaring that America had come to the aid of France.
Great armies are not built in a day, nor are gigantic fleets of merchant
ships. Mistakes must always be made, and there are always critics. But
in spite of critics and mistakes the American government, and under it
the people, went on with the work in hand. Men became skilled soldiers
and ships were launched, and at the end of the first year after our
entrance into the war our troops were in the trenches, fighting side by
side with their allies, and a steady stream of more troops flowed day
by day from west to east. America had already thrown the first part of
her power into the conflict and given earnest of the greater power to
come.
Americans have already given their lives for freedom. First there were
the eager, intrepid young spirits who volunteered as flying-men, in the
French Foreign Legion, in the regiments of England, in the driving of
ambulances at the call of mercy. How gloriously their sacrifices will
live in the pages of history and in the hearts of their countrymen! And
then there have been men of the first American army, such men as the
private soldiers Hay, Enright, and Gresham, above whose graves in France
is the inscription “Here lie the first soldiers of the Illustrious
Republic of the United States who fell on French soil for Justice and
Liberty November 3, 1917.” Truly have they proved the truth of the Latin
motto, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
What is the lesson of Lafayette, of Washington, of Lincoln, of all men
who have put the ideal of justice and liberty above their material
wants, of the men who have fought in France and in all parts of the
world for the cause of freedom? The lesson is simply this, that service
and self-sacrifice for others is the noblest goal of man, that life is
given us not to keep but to spend, and that to follow the teachings of
Christ is the only road to happiness for men or nations.
“Where there is no vision the people perish.” History is filled with
instances of the truth of that; the greatest empires of the world became
decadent, were defeated by enemies, and vanished from the earth when
their rulers and people saw no vision beyond wealth and power. Nineveh
and Babylon and Troy, Byzantium, Persia, the Macedonia of Alexander the
Great, Carthage and Imperial Rome all fell because gold and possessions
had blinded their eyes. Material power, and the wealth that often goes
with it, has been as dangerous to nations as it has been to individual
men. It is only too apt to lead to the greed for greater and greater
power, to bend other peoples to its will, to magnify itself at the
expense of everything else in the world. It is easy for power to make
nations forget their dreams of nobler things, of freedom and justice,
of the rights of men everywhere to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.” Strength is a splendid thing, but it must be used to help
other and weaker people, not to aggrandize oneself.
That the great nations of the ancient world forgot, and that such
empires as the Ottoman Turks and Austria-Hungary have never known.
Has the Turk ever held any vision of helping other peoples? Have the
rulers of Austria ever cared for the welfare of their subject races?
The history of both empires shows that the men in power have thought
only of themselves. And what vision those countries have ever known has
been that of a few devoted patriots who struggled for liberty and were
suppressed.
Now in the past century Germany has been blinded by her growing
power. Her rulers lost their vision, they made might their God; then
her people were tempted, as Satan tempted Christ with a prospect of
the world’s dominion, and the people fell and were blinded, and so
the spirit perished in them as it has perished in other and greater
peoples. They talked of German “culture,” of the blessings of German
civilization; and they wanted to thrust it by force on the rest of the
world, not for the good of that world, but for the glory of Germany
alone. Their God became the God of the savage tribe, a God who belonged
to them and to them only.
There are times when all peoples are apt to forget the vision, times
when ease and plenty wrap them about. Few men are like Lafayette, who
from youth to old age hold fast to their ideals, no matter what comes.
Then, in a time of stress, the question is put to them: What will you
do? Take the easy road of blindness or follow the rough road of vision?
Belgium had her choice; she chose to lose all her worldly possessions
rather than lose her soul. France had her choice, and England and Italy:
to each the vision of liberty was greater than safety of life. And as
each has had to pay in countless suffering so the soul of each nation
has risen to greater heights. Their people do not perish like the blind;
they have seen the vision of a more Christlike world when the tyrants
have been destroyed.
America had her choice. Under all the power and wealth that her hundred
years and more had brought her she had kept her vision; she too knew
that liberty is priceless, immeasurably above all things else in the
world. And this is the America that we all love. For unless we would go
the way of the great nations of the old world, the nations that have
perished in their blindness, we must have ever in mind the sacred duty
to set and keep all men free. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
And lasting peace comes only with liberty to men and nations.
We cannot read the story of Lafayette without feeling that in his
generous youth he gave us the best he had, his love and devotion, his
courage and perseverance, his dauntless spirit that would not be denied
its purpose to fight for liberty. All this Lafayette gave us because
he saw in us the hope of the world. And now our precious opportunity
has come to repay that great debt. It is for us to give the land of
Lafayette all that he brought to us, and we do it for the same reason,
because we see in France and her allies the present hope of the world.
It is for youth to fight, for age to counsel and help youth in the
combat. Glorious is the opportunity that lies before the youth of our
country now; as glorious as was the opportunity that called to the boy
of seventeen in the days of Louis XVI. We may not all accomplish as much
as he did, but we can all thrill to the same generous impulses, see the
same great vision, resolve that we will do all that lies within our
power to win the crusade of freedom against tyrants. Every boy and man
in America should learn the lesson of Lafayette’s life and then go into
the struggle with the feeling that he is following in the footsteps of
that great idealist, that great patriot whose country was not limited to
his own nation but to all men who yearned for liberty. The greatest gift
of patriots is not the material things they may build, but the devotion
to ideals they show to other men. We may each be Lafayettes in our own
way.
“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and
beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.”
So is liberty built; founded upon a rock; as unconquerable as the soul
of man. Liberty must win after floods and storms; its beacon-light must
in the time to come illumine the whole world. Its enemies are strong and
well-prepared; they call to their aid all the powers and devices of
darkness; but as truth is greater than falsehood so is liberty greater
than all the oppressors of man can bring against it.
America answers France and her answer is clear and dauntless. It is
as ringing as the Declaration of Independence, the rock upon which
America built her house. The power of Prussia, the power of the Hun,
the power of tyrants, must be utterly crushed before the world can be
free. Germany sought this war in all wickedness and greed; to satisfy
her ambition she has pulled down all the piers that support the house of
civilization that men have been building for ages; she would destroy the
world in her purpose to dominate it. And America intends that Germany
shall have war until all the devils are driven out of her.
America can do it. America came to this conflict with clean hands and a
clean soul; no selfishness was in her; she fights for no ends of her own
save the highest end to make the world safe for democracy. And as she
has truth and justice on her side she fights with a spirit unknown to
the servile bondsmen of autocracy. She is young and immensely strong,
she is still the land of freedom. And when she rises in full, relentless
might, thrice armed in that she has a just cause, she will destroy the
serpent and cast him from the earth. The greatest page in our history is
being written; we shall write it so that the better world to come shall
call us blessed.
“We are coming, Lafayette!” What a call to victory is that! We have
already come. We have joined with the descendants of that youth of
France who came to us in our hour of need. The spirit of Washington must
glory in that fact. The great Father of our country loved the Frenchman
as his son. To what nobler end could Washington’s children dedicate
themselves than to help their brethren? And the spirit of Lafayette must
rejoice to see his dreams fulfilled, his dreams of the great republic
and of the dawn of the brotherhood of men!
Lover of liberty and justice, we salute you! The time has come for us
to show that what you hoped of us we now are, and to show it to the end
that liberty shall not perish from the earth, that all men be free,
and that in truth man was endowed by his Creator with the inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This text has been preserved as in the original, including archaic and
inconsistent spelling, punctuation and grammar, except as noted below.
Obvious printer’s errors have been silently corrected.
Illustration notation has been moved to below any enclosing paragraph.
Text in italics in the original work is represented herein as _text_.
Small capitals in the original work are represented herein as all
capitals.
End of Project Gutenberg's Lafayette, We Come!, by Rupert S. Holland