I have compared the exiled Hungarians to the great men of our own history. Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness-a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion. The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments, grows by a certain necessity to their stature. Scarce anything so convinces me of the capacity of the human intellect for indefinite expansion in the different stages of its being, as this power of enlarging itself to the height and compass of surrounding emergencies. These men have been trained to greatness by a quicker and surer method than a peaceful country and a tranquil period can know.

But it is not merely, or even principally, for their personal qualities that we honor them; we honor them for the cause in which they so gloriously failed. Great issues hung upon that cause, and great interests of mankind were crushed by its downfall. I was on the continent of Europe when the treason of Gorgey laid Hungary bound at the feet of the Czar. Europe was at that time in the midst of the reaction; the ebb tide was rushing violently back, sweeping all that the friends. of freedom had planned into the black bosom of the deep. In France the liberty of the press was extinct; Paris was in a state of siege; the soldiery of that Republic had just quenched in blood the freedom of Rome; Austria had suppressed liberty in northern Italy; absolutism was restored in Prussia; along the Rhine and its tributaries, and in the towns. and villages of Wurttemberg and Bavaria, troops withdrawn from the barracks and garrisons, filled the streets and kept the inhabitants quiet with the bayonet at their breasts. Hungary, at that moment, alone uphe'd and upheld with a firm hand and dauntless heart-the blazing torch of liberty. To Hungary were turned up the eyes, to Hungary clung the hopes of all who did not despair of the freedom of Europe.

I recollect that, while the armies of Russia were moving, like a tempest from the north, upon the Hungarian host, the progress of events was watched with the deepest solicitude by the people of Germany. I was at that time in Munich, the splendid capital of Bavaria. The Bavarians seemed for the time to have put off their usual character, and scrambled for the daily prints, wet from the press, with such eagerness that I almost thought myself in America. The news of the catastrophe at last arrived; Gorgey had betrayed the cause of Hungary, and yielded to the demands of the Russians. Immediately a funeral gloom settled, like a noonday darkness, upon the city. I heard the muttered exclamations of the people: "It is all over the last hope of European liberty is gone!"

Russia did not misjudge. If she had allowed Hungary to become independent and free, the reaction in favor of absolutism had been in

complete; there would have been one perilous example of successful resistance to despotism; in one corner of Europe a flame would have been kept alive, at which the other nations might have rekindled among themselves the light of liberty. Hungary was subdued; but does anyone who hears me believe that the present state of things in Europe will last? The despots themselves scarcely believe it; they rule in constant fear, and, made cruel by their fears, are heaping chain on chain around the limbs of their subjects.

They are hastening the event they dread. Every added shackle galls into a more fiery impatience those who are condemned to wear it. I look with mingled hope and horror to the day-the hope, my brethren, predominates a day bloodier, perhaps, than we have seen since the wars of Napoleon, when the exasperated nations shall snap their chains and start to their feet. It may well be that Hungary, made less patient of the yoke by the remembrance of her own many and glorious struggles for independence, and better fitted than other nations, by the peculiar structure of her institutions, for founding the liberty of her citizens on a rational basis, will take the lead. In that glorious and hazardous enterprise, in that hour of her sore need and peril, I hope she will be cheered and strengthened with aid from this side the Atlantic; aid given, not with a parsimonious hand, not with a cowardly and selfish apprehension lest we should not err on the safe side-wisely, of course,-I care not with how broad and comprehensive a regard to the future-but in large, generous, effectual measure.

And you, our guest, fearless, eloquent, large of heart and of mind, whose one thought is the salvation of oppressed Hungary, unfortunate, but not discouraged, struck down in the battle of liberty, but great in defeat, and gathering strength for triumphs to come, receive the assurance at our hands, that in this great attempt of man to repossess himself of the rights which God gave him, though the strife be waged under a distant belt of longitude, and with the mightiest despotisms of the world, the Press of America will take part-will take, do I say?—already takes part with you and your countrymen.

Enough of this; I detain you from the accents to which I know you are impatient to listen only just long enough to pronounce the toast of the evening: "LOUIS KOSSUTH." [Applause.]

§ 61

INTRODUCING HENRY CABOT LODGE AND

A. LAWRENCE LOWELL

By Calvin Coolidge

(Delivered at a debate on the League of Nations, Symphony Hall, Boston, March 19, 1919.)

We meet here as representatives of a great people to listen to the discussion of a great question by great men. All America has but one desire, the security of the peace by facts and by parchment which her brave sons have wrought by the sword. It is a duty we owe alike to the living and the dead.

Fortunate is Massachusetts that she has among her sons two men so eminently trained for the task of our enlightenment, a senior Senator of the Commonwealth and the President of a university established in her Constitution. Wherever statesmen gather, wherever men love letters, this day's discussion will be read and pondered. Of these great men in learning and experience, wise in the science and practice of government, the first to address you is a Senator distinguished at home and famous everywhere-Henry Cabot Lodge.

[After Senator Lodge spoke he introduced President Lowell:] The next to address you is the President of Harvard University—an educator renowned throughout the world, a learned student of statesmanship, endowed with a wisdom which has made him a leader of men, truly a Master of Arts, eminently a Doctor of Laws, a fitting representative of the Massachusetts domain of letters-Abbott Lawrence. Lowell.

CALVIN COOLIDGE. Born at Plymouth, Vt., July 4, 1872; graduated at Amherst in 1895; State Senator, Massachusetts, 1912-1915; Lieutenant-Governor, 1916-1919; Governor of Massachusetts, 1919-1921; became Vice-President of the United States, 1921.

§ 62

INTRODUCING CHARLES KINGSLEY

By "Mark Twain"

(Delivered in Boston, February 17, 1874.)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I am here to introduce Mr. Charles Kingsley, the lecturer of the evening, and I take occasion to observe that when I wrote the book called "Innocents Abroad" [applause] I thought it was a volume which would bring me at once into intimate relation with the clergy. But I could bring evidences to show that from that day to this, this is the first time that I have ever been called upon to perform this pleasant office of vouching for a clergyman [laughter] and give him a good unbiased start before an audience. [Laughter.] Now that my opportunity has come at last, I am appointed to introduce a clergyman who needs no introduction in America. [Applause.] And although I haven't been requested by the committee to indorse him, I volunteer that [laughter], because I think it is a graceful thing to do; and it is all the more graceful from being so unnecessary. But the most unnecessary thing I could do in introducing the Rev. Charles Kingsley would be to sound his praises to you, who have read his books and know his high merits as well as I possibly can, so I waive all that and simply say that in welcoming him cordially to this land of ours, I believe that I utter a sentiment which would go nigh to surprising him or possibly to deafen him, if I could concentrate in my voice the utterance of all those in America who feel that sentiment. [Applause.] And I am glad to say that this kindly feeling toward Mr. Kingsley is not wasted, for his heart is with America, and when he is in his own home, the latchstring hangs on the outside of the door for us. I know this from personal experience; perhaps that is why it has not been considered unfitting that I should perform this office in which I am now engaged. [Laughter.] Now for a year, for more than a year, I have been enjoying the hearty hospitality of English friends in England, and this is a hospitality which is growing wider and freer every day toward our countrymen. I was treated so well there, so undeservedly well, that I should always be glad of an opportunity to extend to Englishmen the good offices of our people; and I do hope that the good feeling, the growing good feeling, between the old mother country and her strong, aspiring child will continue to extend until it shall exist over the whole great area of both nations. I have the honor to introduce to you Rev. Charles Kingsley. See page 645.

§ 63

INTRODUCING HENRY WATTERSON

By Elihu Root

(Delivered at the eighty-ninth anniversary banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1894.)

GENTLEMEN: We are forced to recognize the truth of the observation that all the people of New England are not Puritans; we must admit an occasional exception. It is equally true, I am told, that all the people of the South are not cavaliers; but there is one cavalier without fear and without reproach [applause], the splendid courage of whose convictions shows how close together the highest examples of different types can be among godlike men-a cavalier of the South, of southern blood and southern life, who carries in thought and in deed all the serious purpose and disinterested action that characterized the Pilgrim Fathers whom we commemorate. He comes from an impressionist State, where the grass is blue [laughter], where the men are either all white or all black, and where, we are told, quite often the settlements are painted red. [Laughter.] [Laughter.] He is a soldier, a statesman, a scholar, and, above all, a lover; and among all the world which loves a lover, the descendants of those who, generation after generation, with tears and laughter, have sympathized with John Alden and Priscilla, cannot fail to open their hearts in sympathy to Henry Watterson and his star-eyed goddess. [Applause.] I have the honor and great pleasure of introducing him to respond to the toast of "The Puritan and the Cavalier."

See page 306.