African and European Addresses. Theodore Roosevelt

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 head, or smiling now and then with approval at some incisively expressed idea, or some phrase of interjected humor, or a characteristic gesture on the part of the speaker. In one respect the lecture was a tour de force. On account of a sharp attack of bronchitis, from which he was then recovering, it was not decided by the physicians in charge until the morning of the lecture that Mr. Roosevelt could use his voice for one hour in safety. Arrangements had been made to have some one else read the lecture if at the last moment it should be necessary; and the fact that Mr. Roosevelt was able to do it himself effectively under these circumstances indicates that he has some of the physical as well as the intellectual attributes of the practised orator.

      Mr. Roosevelt's first public speech in England was made at the University of Cambridge on May 26th when he received the honorary degree of LL.D. His address on this occasion was not, like the Romanes lecture at Oxford, a part of the academic ceremony connected with the conferring of the honorary degree. It was spoken to an audience of undergraduates when, after the academic exercises in the Senate House, he was elected to honorary membership in the Union Society, the well-known Cambridge debating club which has trained some of the best public speakers of England. At Oxford the doctors and dignitaries cracked the jokes—in Latin—while the undergraduates were highly decorous. At Cambridge, on the other hand, the students indulged in the traditional pranks which often lend a color of gaiety to University ceremonies at both Oxford and Cambridge. Mr. Roosevelt entered heartily into the spirit of the undergraduates, and it was evident that they, quite as heartily, liked his understanding of the fact that the best university and college life consists in a judicious mixture of the grave and the gay. The honor which these undergraduates paid to their guest was seriously intended, was admirably planned, and its genuineness was all the more apparent because it had a note of pleasantry. Mr. Roosevelt spoke as a university student to university students and what he said, although brief, extemporaneous, and even unpremeditated, deserves to be included with his more important addresses, because it affords an excellent example of his characteristic habit of making an occasion of social gaiety also an occasion of expressing his belief in the fundamental moral principles of social and political life. The speech was frequently interrupted by the laughter and applause of the audience, and the theory which Mr. Roosevelt propounded, that any man in any walk of life may achieve genuine success simply by developing ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree, was widely quoted and discussed by the press of Great Britain.

      Next in chronological order comes the Guildhall speech. In the picturesqueness of its setting, in the occasion which gave rise to it, in the extraordinary effect it had upon public opinion in Great Britain, the continent of Europe, and America, and in the courage which it evinced on the part of the speaker, it is in my judgment the most striking of all Mr. Roosevelt's foreign addresses.

      The occasion was a brilliant and notable one. The ancient and splendid Guildhall—one of the most perfect Gothic interiors in England, which has historical associations of more than five centuries—was filled with a representative gathering of English men and women. On the dais, or stage, at one end of the hall, sat the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress, and the special guests of the occasion were conducted by ushers, in robes and carrying maces, down a long aisle flanked with spectators on either side and up the steps of the dais, where they were presented. Their names were called out at the beginning of the aisle, and as the ushers and the guest moved along, the audience applauded, little or much, according to the popularity of the newcomer. Thus John Burns and Mr. Balfour СКАЧАТЬ