Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/208

184 of the new. He who does not revere his old mother will not truly love his bride. And so from the fullness of our German hearts we send our greeting across the sea. Proud as we are to belong, of our own choice, to the American Republic, we are also proud to be the offspring of a great nation that for a thousand years has won the laurels of victory in countless hard-contested fields where thought and labor were her only weapons—of a nation that was a mighty power for culture long before Columbus saw the shores of America. Let us proclaim loudly to-day how truly we love the country where our cradles rocked. With tender yearning we see in memory the green waters of our native Rhine, where are reflected the castles gray with age, around which legendary poetry has woven its magic—where grows the precious grape—where man is gay, often without knowing why—where German song seems doubly poetic—where the victorious figure of Germania looks proudly from the Niederwald across the border. We see again the beautiful, dear land of which every foot is precious to us, from the dark woods of the Black Forest and the Bavarian Alps, to the dunes of the North Sea, from the oaks a thousand years old, growing on the red soil of Westphalia, to the Silesian mountains and the beech woods of the Baltic.

How deeply we of the older generation felt the humiliation of the German name when the old Fatherland lay powerless and torn asunder, when Germany was only a geographical idea, when patriotic enthusiasm was being dissipated in thoughtless efforts, when the nation of thinkers appeared to be only a nation of impotent dreamers and the future of the fatherland only a dreary waste! Only we can fully understand how uplifting was the feeling that stirred our hearts when the message came across the ocean that the evil charm was broken and that Kaiser Barbarossa, according to the old legend, had arisen from