FRANCE GIVES YOU GREETING

RENÉ VIVIANI

I AM indeed happy to have been chosen to present the greetings of the French Republic to the illustrious man whose name is in every French mouth to-day, whose incomparable message is at this very hour being read and commented upon in all our schools as the most perfect charter of human rights, and which so fully expresses the virtues of your race long-suffering patience before appealing to force, and force to avenge that long-suffering patience when there can be no other means.

Since you are here to listen to me, I ask you to repeat a thousandfold the expression of our deep gratitude for the enthusiastic reception the American people have granted us in Washington. It is not to us, but to our beloved and heroic France, that reception was accorded. We were proud to be her children in those unforgetable moments when we read in the radiance of the faces we saw, the noble sincerity of your hearts. And I desire to thank also the press of the United States, represented by you. I fully realize the ardent and disinterested help you have given by your tireless propaganda in the cause of right. I know your action has been incalculable. Gentlemen, I thank you.

We have come to this land to salute the American

Soon after his arrival in America, April 27, 1917, as head of the French Government's Commission, M. Viviani gave this statement to newspaper men.

people and its Government, to call to fresh vigor our lifelong friendship, sweet and cordial in the ordinary course of our lives, and which these tragic hours have raised to all the ardor of brotherly love - a brotherly love which in these last years of suffering has multiplied its most touching expressions. You have given help not only in treasure, in every act of kindness and good will, but for us your children have shed their blood, and the names of your sacred dead are inscribed forever in our hearts. And it was with a full knowledge of the meaning of what you did that you acted. Your inexhaustible generosity was not the charity of the fortunate to the distressed, it was an affirmation of your conscience, a reasoned approval of your judgment.

Your fellow-countrymen knew that under the savage assault of a nation of prey which has made of war, to quote a famous saying, its national industry, we were upholding with our incomparable allies-faithful and valiant to the death, with all those who are fighting shoulder to shoulder with us on the firing line, the sons of indomitable England—a struggle for the violated rights of man, for that democratic spirit which the forces of autocracy were attempting to crush throughout the world. We are ready to carry that struggle on to the end.

And now, as President Wilson has said, the Republic of the United States rises in its strength as a champion of right and rallies to the side of France and her allies. Only our descendants, when time has removed them sufficiently far from present events, will be able to measure the full significance, the grandeur of an historic act which has sent a thrill through the whole world. From to-day on all the forces of freedom are let loose. And not only victory, of which we were already assured, is certain; the true meaning of victory is made manifest. It can

not be merely a fortunate military conclusion to this struggle; it will be the victory of morality and right, and will forever secure the existence of a world in which all our children shall draw free breath in full peace and undisturbed pursuit of their labors.

THE FLAG ON THE FIRING LINE

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

I COME here to-night to appeal to the people of the great west, the people of the Mississippi valley, the people who are the spiritual heirs of the men who stood behind Lincoln and Grant.

You men and women who live beside the Great Lakes and on the lands drained by the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri have always represented what is most intensely American in our national life. When once waked up to actual conditions you have always stood with unfaltering courage and iron endurance for the national honor and the national interest.

I appeal to the sons and daughters of the men and women of the Civil War, to the grandsons and granddaughters of the pioneers; I appeal to the women as much as to the men, for our nation has risen level to every great crisis only because in every such crisis the courage of its women flamed as high as the courage of the men.

I appeal to you to take the lead in making good the President's message of the 2nd of this month, in which he

Mr. Roosevelt delivered this speech to a crowd of some thirteen thousand people at the Chicago Stockyards Pavilion, when he visited that city on April 28, 1917, in the interest of the preparedness cause.

Former President Roosevelt was born in New York, October 27, 1858. After graduating from Harvard, he entered politics and was elected to the State Legislature in 1882. In 1898 he was the popular choice for governor in the Empire state. He was elected to the Vice Presidency of the United States under McKinley and after his (McKinley's) assassination on September 14, 1901, succeeded to the Presidency. Mr. Roosevelt was again made President in 1904.

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set forth the reasons why it was our unescapable duty to make war upon Germany. It rests with us - with the American people to make that message one of the great state documents of our history.

Let us accept the lessons it teaches. Let us grasp what it says as to the frightful wrongs Germany has committed upon us and upon the weaker nations of mankind, and the damage she has wrought to the whole fabric of civilization and of international good faith and morality.

Then let us steel our hearts and gird our loins to show that we are fit to stand among the free people whose freedom is buttressed by their self-reliant strength. Let us show by our deeds that we are fit to be the heirs of the men who founded the republic, and of the men who saved the republic; of the continentals who followed Washington, and of the men who wore the blue under Grant and the gray under Lee.

But, mind you, the message, the speech, will amount to nothing unless we make it good; and it can be made good only by the high valor of our fighting men, and by the resourceful and laborious energy of the men and women who, with deeds, not merely words, back up the fighting men.

We read the Declaration of Independence every Fourth of July because, and only because, the soldiers of Washington made that message good by their blood during the weary years of war that followed. If, after writing the Declaration of Independence, the men of '76 had failed with their bodies to make it good, it would be read now only with contempt and derision.

Our children still learn how Patrick Henry spoke for the heart of the American people when he said, "Give me liberty or give me death," but this generation is thrilled by his words only because the Americans of those