Page images
PDF
EPUB

620

LEON MICHEL GAMBETTA

should place the gymnast and the soldier, to the end that our children, our soldiers, our fellow-citizens, should be able to hold a sword, to carry a gun on a long march, to sleep under the canopy of the stars, to support valiantly all the hardships demanded of a patriot. We must push to the front these two educations. Otherwise you make a success of letters, but do not create a bulwark of patriots.

Yes, gentlemen, if they have outclassed us, if you had to submit to the supreme agony of seeing the France of Kléber and of Hoche lose her two most patriotic provinces, those best embodying at once the military, commercial, industrial and democratic spirit, we can blame only our inferior physical and moral condition. To-day, the interests of our country command us to speak no imprudent words, to close our lips, to sink to the bottom of our hearts our resentments, to take up the grand work of national regeneration, to devote to it all the time necessary, that it may be a lasting work. If it need ten years, if it need twenty years, then we must devote to it ten or twenty years. But we must commence at once, that each year may see the advancing life of a new generation, strong, intelligent, as much in love with science as with the Fatherland, having in their hearts the double sentiment that he serves his country well only when he serves it with his reason and his arm.

We have been educated in a rough school. We must therefore cure ourselves of the vanity which has caused us so many disasters. We must also realize conscientiously where our responsibility exists, and seeing the remedy, sacrifice all to the object to be attained--to remake and reconstitute France! For that, nothing should be accounted too good, and we shall ask nothing before this; the first demand must be for an education as complete from base to summit as is known to human intelligence. Naturally, merit must be recognized, aptitude awakened and approved, and honest and impartial judges freely chosen by their fellow-citizens, deciding publicly in such a way that merit alone will open the door. Reject as authors of mischief those who have put words in the place of action; all those who have put favoritism in the place of merit; all those who made the profession of arms not a means for the protection of France, but a means of serving the caprices of a master, and sometimes of becoming the accomplices of his crimes.

BOOK IX.

Orators of Southern and Central Europe

TH

HE countries of Europe aside from Great Britain and France-with which we have so far chiefly dealt-have had their orators; men equipped by nature and education to control the opinions and move the feelings of mankind; but, seemingly, in no great numbers. Certainly the paucity of names of distinguished public speakers leads to the conclusion that oratory of a high order has not flourished in those countries. Greece in modern times has produced no rival of Demosthenes, nor Italy of Cicero, nor even any orators worthy to be compared with those of minor fame in classic times. The same is the case with the remainder of Europe. Take Germany, for instance, that land of thinkers and philosophers-where are its Burkes and Gladstones, its Mirabeaus and Hugos, its Websters and Clays? The fact would seem to be that the long division of Germany into minor kingdoms has checked the growth of forensic or political oratory in that country, there being little opportunity afforded for the cultivation. of the art of eloquence. The same may be said of Italy. Moreover, despotic institutions have certainly had a limiting effect upon oratory wherever they have existed, and the fine oratory of the world is limited to the republics of Greece and Rome, the revolutionary periods of England, France and the United States, and the free institutions of these countries in the nineteenth century. As a result, modern Europe, outside of France, has not been rich in oratory, and we are not able to present an extended or very notable list.

621

LOUIS KOSSUTH (1802-1894)

THE ELOQUENT ADVOCATE OF HUNGARY

N

EVER was there a more vigorous effort made for national independence than that of Hungary, under the leadership of her great patriot, Louis Kossuth, in the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1849. The devoted struggle for liberty went down in blood and horror when Russia came to the aid of beaten Austria. The hand of the allied autocrats fell with cruel weight on the crushed nation, and Hungary seemed fallen never to rise again. Yet the Hungarians still undauntedly wrought for their ancient liberty, and the vanquished patriots had the satisfaction of seeing within twenty years their beloved country virtually independent, the equal associate of Austria in the combined kingdom of Austria-Hungary.

Kossuth, though an exile from his native land, wrought earnestly to win for it the sympathy of foreign countries, and aided to his utmost in keeping up its unyielding demand for home rule. Taking refuge in Turkey, he was released from prison there in 1851 by the united effort of England and the United States, and afterward traversed those countries, making speeches in the English language.

THE HAVEN OF THE OPPRESSED

[Never has a visit by a refugee from the tyranny of Europe excited so much sympathy in the United States as when Louis Kossuth visited its shores and eloquently pictured the wrongs and sufferings of his native land. Everywhere he was received with enthusiastic popular demonstrations and excited the warmest sentiment. The following selection is from his address at a Congressional banquet in his honor at Washington on January 11, 1852.]

Sir, as once Cyneas, the Epirote, stood among the Senators of Rome, who, with an earnest word of self-conscious majesty, controlled the condition of the world and arrested mighty kings in their ambitious marching,

[blocks in formation]

thus, full of admiration and of reverence, I stand before you, legislators of the new capitol-that glorious hall of your people's collective majesty. The capitol of old yet stands, but the spirit has departed from it and come over to yours, purified by the air of liberty. The old stands a mournful monument of the fragility of human things; yours as a sanctuary of eternal rights. The old beamed with the red lustre of conquest, now darkened by oppression's gloomy night; yours beams with freedom's bright ray. The old absorbed the world by its own centralized glory; yours protects your own nation against absorption, even by itself. The old was awful with irresistible power; yours is glorious with having restricted it. At the view of the old, nations trembled; at the view of yours, humanity hopes. To the old, misfortune was only introduced with fettered hands to kneel at the triumphant conqueror's heels; to yours, the triumph of introduction is granted to unfortunate exiles, invited to the honor of a seat, and where kings and Cæsars will never be hailed for their powers, might and wealth, there the persecuted chief of a down-trodden nation is welcomed as your great Republic's guest, precisely because he is persecuted, helpless and poor. In the old, the terrible va victis was the rule; in yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction to ambitious. oppressors, and consolation to the vanquished in a just cause. And while out of the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common confederative interests of a territory larger than the conquered world of the old. There sat men boasting their will to be sovereign of the world; here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge the laws of nature and of nature's God, and to do what their sovereign, the people, wills.

Sir, there is history in these parallels. History of past ages and history of future centuries may be often recorded in a few words. The small particulars to which the passions of living men cling with fervent zeal-as if the fragile figure of men could arrest the rotation of destiny's wheel,-these particulars die away. It is the issue which makes history, and that issue is always logical. There is a necessity of consequences wherever the necessity of position exists. Principles are the Alpha; they must finish with the Omega; and they will. Thus history may be told often in a few words. Before yet the heroic struggle of Greece first engaged your country's sympathy for the fate of freedom in Europe, then so far distant, and now so near, Chateaubriand happened to be in Athens, and he heard from a minaret raised upon the Propylæan ruins a Turkish priest in Arabic language announcing the lapse of hours to the Christians of Minerva's town. What immense history in the small fact of a Turkish Imaum crying out: "Pray, man, the hour is running fast, and the judgment draws near."

[blocks in formation]

Sir, there is equally a history of future ages written in the honor bestowed by you to my humble self. The first governor of independent Hungary, driven from his native land by Russian violence; an exile on Turkish soil protected by a Mohammedan Sultan against the blood-thirst of Christian tyrants; cast back a prisoner to far Asia by diplomacy; rescued from his Asiatic prison by America; crossing the Atlantic, charged with the hopes of Europe's oppressed nations; pleading, a poor exile, before the people of this great Republic, his down-trodden country's wrongs, and its intimate connection with the fate of the European continent; and with the boldness of a just cause claiming the principles of the Christian religion to be raised to a law of nations;—and to see, not only the boldness of the poor exile forgiven, but to see him consoled by the sympathy of millions, encouraged by individuals, meetings, cities and States, supported by operative aid and greeted by Congress and by the Government as the nation's guest, honored out of generosity with that honor which only one man before him received-and that man received it out of gratitude,—with honors such as no potentate can ever receive, and this banquet here, and the toast which I have to thank you for—oh, indeed, sir, there is a history of future ages in all these facts. . .

I dare confidently affirm, that in your great country there exists not a single man through whose brains has ever passed the thought that he would wish to raise the seat of his ambition upon the ruins of your country's liberty. If he could, such a wish is impossible in the United States. Institutions react upon the character of nations. He who sows the wind will reap the storm. History is the revelation of Providence. The Almighty rules by eternal laws, not only the material but the moral world; and every law is a principle, and every principle is a law. Men, as well as nations, are endowed with free will to choose a principle; but that once chosen, the consequences must be abided. With self-goverment is freedom, and with freedom is justice and patriotism. With centralization is ambition, and with ambition dwells despotism. Happy your great country, sir, for being so warmly addicted to that great principle of selfgovernment. Upon this foundation your fathers raised a home to freedom more glorious than the world has ever seen. Upon this foundation you have developed it to a living wonder of the world. Happy your great country, sir, that it was selected by the blessing of the Lord to prove the glorious practicability of a federated Union of many sovereign States, all conserving their State rights and their self-government, and yet united in one. Every star beaming with its own lustre; but all together one constellation on mankind's canopy!

« PreviousContinue »