African and European Addresses - Roosevelt Theodore

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perhaps as quick to detect and to laugh at cant or moral platitudes as anybody of the modern world. And yet the Sorbonne lecture, delivered by invitation of the officials of the University of Paris, on April 23d, saturated as it was with moral ideas and moral exhortation, was a complete success. The occasion furnished an illustration of the power of moral ideas to interest and to inspire. The streets surrounding the hall were filled with an enormous crowd long before the hour announced for the opening of the doors; and even ticket-holders had great difficulty in gaining admission. The spacious amphitheatre of the Sorbonne was filled with a representative audience, numbering probably three thousand people. Around the hall, were statues of the great masters of French intellectual life—Pascal, Descartes, Lavoisier, and others. On the wall was one of the Puvis de Chavannes's most beautiful mural paintings. The group of university officials and academicians on the dais, from which Mr. Roosevelt spoke, lent to the occasion an appropriate university atmosphere. The simple but perfect arrangement of the French and American flags back of the speaker suggested its international character.

      The speech was an appeal for moral rather than for intellectual or material greatness. It was received with marked interest and approval; the passage ending with a reference to "cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat," was delivered with real eloquence, and aroused a long-continued storm of applause. With characteristic courage, Mr. Roosevelt attacked race suicide when speaking to a race whose population is diminishing, and was loudly applauded. Occasionally with quizzical humor he interjected an extemporaneous sentence in French, to the great satisfaction of his audience. A passage of peculiar interest was the statement of his creed regarding the relation of property-rights to human rights; it was not in his original manuscript but was written on the morning of the lecture as the result of a discussion of the subject of vested interests with one or two distinguished French publicists. He first pronounced this passage in English, and then repeated it in French, enforced by gestures which so clearly indicated his desire to have his hearers unmistakably understand him in spite of defective pronunciation of a foreign tongue that the manifest approval of the audience was expressed in a curious mingling of sympathetic laughter and prolonged and serious applause.

      A fortnight after the Sorbonne address, I received from a friend, an American military officer living in Paris who knows well its general habit of mind, a letter from which I venture to quote here, because it so strikingly portrays the influence that Mr. Roosevelt exerted as an orator during his European journey:

      I find that Paris is still everywhere talking of Mr. Roosevelt. It was a thing almost without precedent that this blasé city kept up its interest in him without abatement for eight days; but that a week after his departure should still find him the main topic of conversation is a fact which has undoubtedly entered into Paris history. The Temps [one of the foremost daily newspapers of Paris] has had fifty-seven thousand copies of his Sorbonne address printed and distributed free to every schoolteacher in France and to many other persons. The Socialist or revolutionary groups and press had made preparations for a monster demonstration on May first. Walls were placarded with incendiary appeals and their press was full of calls to arms. Monsieur Briand [the Prime Minister] flatly refused to allow the demonstration, and gave orders accordingly to Monsieur Lépine [the Chief of Police]. For the first time since present influences have governed France, certainly in fifteen years, the police and the troops were authorized to use their arms in self-defence. The result of this firmness was that the leaders countermanded the demonstration, and there can be no doubt that many lives were saved and a new point gained in the possibility of governing Paris as a free city, yet one where order must be preserved, votes or no votes. Now this stiff attitude of M. Briand and the Conseil is freely attributed in intelligent quarters to Mr. Roosevelt. French people say it is a repercussion of his visit, of his Sorbonne lecture, and that going away he left in the minds of these people some of that intangible spirit of his—in other words, they felt what he would have felt in a similar emergency, and for the first time in their lives showed a disregard of voters when they were bent upon mischief. It is rather an extraordinary verdict, but it has seized the Parisian imagination, and I, for one, believe it is correct.

      Some of the English newspapers, while generally approving of the Sorbonne address, expressed the feeling that it contained some platitudes. Of course it did; for the laws of social and moral health, like the laws of hygiene, are platitudes. It was interesting to have a French engineer and mathematician of distinguished achievements, who discussed with me the character and effect of the Sorbonne address, rather hotly denounce those who affected to regard Mr. Roosevelt's restatement of obvious, but too often forgotten truth, as platitudinous. "The finest and most beautiful things in life," said this scientist, "the most abstruse scientific discoveries, are based upon platitudes. It is a platitude to say that the whole is greater than a part, or that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and yet it is upon such platitudes that astronomy, by aid of which we have penetrated some of the far-off mysteries of the universe, is based. The greatest cathedrals are built of single blocks of stone, and a single block of stone is a platitude. Tear the architectural structure to pieces, and you have nothing left but the single, common, platitudinous brick; but for that reason do you say that your architectural structure is platitudinous? The effect of Mr. Roosevelt's career and personality, which rest upon the secure foundation of simple and obvious truths, is like that of a fine architectural structure, and if a man can see only the single bricks or stones of which it is composed, so much the worse for him."

      Of the addresses included in this volume the next in chronological order was that on "International Peace," officially delivered before the Nobel Prize Committee, but actually a public oration spoken in the National Theatre of Christiania, before an audience of two or three thousand people. The Norwegians did everything to make the occasion a notable one. The streets were almost impassable from the crowds of people who assembled about the theatre, but who were unable to gain admission. An excellent orchestra played an overture, especially composed for the occasion by a distinguished Norwegian composer, in which themes from the Star-Spangled Banner and from Norwegian national airs and folk-songs were ingeniously intertwined. The day was observed as a holiday in Christiania, and the entire city was decorated with evergreens and flags. On the evening of the same day, the Nobel Prize Committee gave a dinner in honor of Mr. Roosevelt which was attended by two or three hundred guests,—both men and women. General Bratlie, at one time Norwegian Minister of War, made an address of welcome, reviewing with appreciation Mr. Roosevelt's qualities both as a man of war and as a man of peace. The address in this volume, entitled, "Colonial Policy of the United States" was Mr. Roosevelt's reply to General Bratlie's personal tribute. It was wholly extemporaneous, but was taken down stenographically; and it adds to its interest to note the fact that on the evening of its delivery it was the first public utterance on any question of American politics which Mr. Roosevelt had made since he left America a year previous. The Nobel Prize speech and this address taken together form a pretty complete exposition of what may perhaps be called, for want of a better term, Mr. Roosevelt's "peace with action" doctrine.

      "The World Movement," the address at the University of Berlin, was the first of two distinctively academic, or scholastic utterances, the other, of course, being the Romanes lecture. The Sorbonne speech was almost purely sociological and ethical. There are, to be sure, social and moral applications made of the theories laid down at Berlin and at Oxford; but these two university addresses are distinctly for a university audience. My own judgment is that the Sorbonne and Guildhall addresses were more effective in their human interest and their immediate political influence. But at both Berlin and Oxford, Mr. Roosevelt showed that he could deal with scholarly subjects in a scholarly fashion. It may be that he desired on these two occasions to give some indication that, although universally regarded as a man of action, he is entitled also to be considered as a man of thought. The lecture at the University of Berlin was a brilliant and picturesque academic celebration in which doctors' gowns, military uniforms, and the somewhat bizarre dress of the representatives of the undergraduate student corps, mingled in kaleidoscopic effect. One interesting feature of the ceremony was the singing by a finely trained student chorus without instrumental accompaniment, of Hail Columbia and The Star-Spangled Banner, harmonized as only the Germans can harmonize choral music. The Emperor and the Empress, with several members of the Imperial family, attended the lecture. Those who sat near the Emperor could see that he followed the address with genuine interest, nodding his

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