THE HARVEST OF JUSTICE M. Paul Dechanel, President of the French Chamber of Deputies Delivered in the Chamber of Deputies, 1 THE HARVEST OF JUSTICE PAUL DECHANEL The French Chamber greets with enthusiasm the verdict of the President of the Republic of the United States, who has indeed spoken for justice, and the vigorous decision of the Federal Senate accepting the war imposed by Germany. Echylus says in "The Persians": "When insolence takes root, it grows into crime; the harvest is suffering." And we can say: "The growth of the crime brings vengeance; after the harvest of suffering comes the harvest of justice!" The cry of the women and children from the depths of the abyss where hideous wickedness flung them echoed from one end of the earth to the other. Washington and Lincoln trembled in their graves; their great spirit has roused America. And is it a question only of avenging Americans? Is it a question only of punishing the violation of treaties signed by the United States? No; the eternal truths proclaimed in the Declaration in 1776, the sacred causes which LaFayette and Rochambeau defended, the ideal of pure consciences from which the Great Republic was born -honor, morality, liberty-these are the supreme values which shine in the folds of the Star-Spangled Banner. Descendants of the Puritans of New England, brought up on the precepts of the Gospel, and who under the eyes of God are about to punish the infernal creation of evil, falsehood, perjury, assassination, profanation, rape, slavery, martyrdom, and all kinds of disasters; Catholics struck to the heart by curses against their religion, by outrages against their cathedrals and statues, reaching a climax in the destruction of Louvain and Rheims; university professors, trustworthy guardians of law and learning; industrialists of the East and Middle West, farmers and agriculturists of the West; workmen and artisans, threatened by the torpedoing of vessels, by the interruption of commerce, revolted by the insults to their national colors-all are arrayed against the mad arrogance which would enslave the earth, the sea, the heavens, and the souls of men. At a time when, as in the heroic times of the American Revolution, the Americans are to fight with us, let us repeat once more: We wish to prevent no one from living, working, and trading freely, but the tyranny of Prussia has become a peril for the New World as for the Old, for England as for Russia, for Italy as for Austria, and for Germany itself. To free the world, by THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 99 a common effort of all democratic peoples, from the yoke of a feudal and military caste in order to found peace upon right, is a work of human deliverance and universal good. In accomplishing, under an administration henceforth immortal, the greatest act in its annals since the abolition of slavery, the glorious nation whose whole history is but a development of the idea of liberty remains true to its lofty origin and creates for itself another claim to the gratitude of mankind. The French Republic, across the ruins of its cities and its monuments, devastated without reason or excuse by shameful savagery, sends to its beloved sister Republic in America the palms of the Marne, the Yser, and of Verdun and the Somme, to which new victories will soon be added. 832827 |