Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/240

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS the beauty of this great and almost superhuman figure, and the splendid words of Chateaubriand have never been surpassed:

"Search in the plains where flashed the sword of Washington. What find you there? Tombs? No; you find a World. Washington has left behind him the United States as a trophy of his battle-fields."

He did not destroy; he created. You are his handiwork. Let us unite, gentlemen, to honor his memory. Let us unite without distinction, French, Americans, all civilized nations. Washington is too great to belong to one nation only. He has served his country well, but he also served humanity. Humanity claims him, and just as you faithfully bring up your children to respect his French companions, Lafayette and Rochambeau, so we, also, teach ourselves, that the life of Washington is the most beautiful of which a good citizen can dream. And there springs up a new tradition, and this tradition, worthy of the new times upon the threshold of which we stand, arouses, in its turn, new ambitions, for the influence of great men survives them.

It is this influence that animated your representatives at the Congress of The Hague. Those who judge of things by appearances, the impatients, the restless, who want an oak to grow as fast as a blade of grass, are astonished that the conference at The Hague has not yet produced results. The present time is too near to permit