long chain of islands that puts off from the Alaska coast; and, if I am to credit what I read (for I have no sources of information now except the not absolutely reliable newspaper press), there are some who believe there are wicked men who want to hitch the end of that chain into an island farther out into the sea. If that is to be done, the West would become the East, for I think the Orient has generally been counted to be the East.

I would not, however, suggest a division of the New England Society. It is well enough to keep up an association that is one, not only of neighborhood and of historical association, but of sentiment. Let the New England Society live, and I fancy it will not be long until you enjoy the distinction of being the only great subdivision of the States; for, my fellow citizens, whatever barriers prejudice may raise, whatever obstruction the interests of men may interpose, whatever may be the outrages of cruelty to stay the march of men, that which made the subdivision called "the Southern States," and all that separated them from the States of the West and of the North, will be obliterated. [Cheering.]

I am not sure, though the story runs so, that I have a New England strain. The fact is that I have recently come to the conclusion that my family was a little overweighted with ancestry, and I have been looking after posterity. [Merriment.]

One serious word, gentlemen. The New England character and the influence of New England men and women have made their impress upon the whole country; for, even in the South, during the time of slavery, educated men and women from New England were the tutors and instructors of the youth of the South in the plantation home. The love of education, the resolve that it should be general, the love of home with all the pure and sacred influences that cluster about it, are elements in the New England character that have a saving force which is incalculable in this great nation in which we live. Your civil institutions have been free, high and clean. From the old town-meeting days till now, New England has believed in and practiced the free election and the fair count. But, gentlemen, I cannot enumerate all of your virtues-time is brief, the catalogue long. Will you permit me to thank you and your honored president for your gracious reception of me to-night?

GEORGE HARVEY

CONFIRMING AN AMBASSADOR

Address by Mr. George Harvey, American Ambassador to Great Britain, at a dinner in his honor given by the Lotos Club, April 30, 1921. Mr. Harvey began by addressing the chairman, Mr. Chester S. Lord.

MY LORD AND GENTLEMEN:-I take it to be a fair inference from what your chairman has said that the reason for my occupying this honored place on his right is that I have been designated by the President to represent our country abroad. The appointment, I understand, now requires only confirmation by the Lotos Club to make it effective. I shall leave to others, if they feel so inclined, the task which, frankly, would be appalling to me, of presenting for your consideration facts and arguments designed to influence your minds in rendering a favorable decision. The utmost that I can say on my own behalf is that I have been a member of this Society for thirtyodd years, and that in the pride arising from that circumstance I find due and sufficient reason for your most gracious forbear

ance.

I have never been an Ambassador before. Consequently I am unable to depict with any degree of accuracy the obligations which, with becoming humility, I am about to assume. Happily, thanks to Mr. Finley Peter Dunne, I am relieved of the necessity of trying. "An Ambassadure, Hinnessy," said Mr. Dooley years ago, "is a man that's no more use abroad than he would be at home." Another way of putting it more concretely in the present instance is to be found in the astute observation of a friendly commentator, to the effect that I have yet to demonstrate my fitness for the position, if I have any— "an undeniable proposition," in the words quite commonly affected by Mr. Henry James, and analogued most aptly by our

old friend, Mark Twain, when he remarked that our jury sysstem would be perfect but for the difficulty of finding twelve men who knew nothing and could not read.

Other allusions bearing more directly upon the case now before your court I might adduce in profusion from the public prints, to say nothing of reports of Congressional debates duly presented by our venerable friend the Congressional Record. Nevertheless I am frank to admit, if not indeed to boast, that if I had been assigned the interesting task of recapitulating the imperfections of this appointment I could easily have surpassed in convincingness and variety any of the endeavors along that line which have been brought to my attention. But, for obvious reasons, I have come to appreciate the impropriety of criticizing critics and I reluctantly refrain.

I may, however, confess unblushingly that I have been favored to a degree by friends and acquaintances, and others, with abundance of recommendations. These written and verbal communications have taken the form, partly of criticism, and partly of suggestion. Those of the former class have resolved generally into disapproval of one expressing or at times even of holding convictions. With such I cannot fully concur.

By way of helpful hints perhaps the most striking that has reached me during the entire week of my career as a diplomat, arose from a disagreement between two rugged sons of Vermont, one of whom asserted that the safest course for an Ambassador was to "set and think," while the other, with yet greater prudence, insisted that the sure way to succeed was to "just set." The wisdom of these sage admonitions, as you will note presently, wins my complete acquiescence.

There are a few things, however, which I think I may say to you without evoking special disapprobation.

When last week, for example, I waited upon the President, conformably to custom, to receive final instructions, I was requested to remember that all partisanship should be abandoned at the water's edge. Inasmuch as I have voted four times for Democratic candidates and four times for Republican candidates for the Presidency, compliance with this injunction did not seem difficult. I might, in fact, have remarked in passing that formerly I was a Cleveland Democrat, and quite probably

would be now, if that sturdy statesman were still alive and well, but that, in the existing circumstances, I am a Harding Republican-a distinction, I beg you to observe, in a party label only, without noticeable difference in American policy.

In any case, I am wholly unable to perceive why a citizen of the United States cannot represent his country without appearing as either a sycophant or a swashbuckler, nor how, as guest, he can fail to evince appreciation of the exceptional hospitality invariably extended by a hostess such as we all know England to be.

So far as the position of Ambassador to the Court of St. James's is concerned, it is a great honor, of course; but like all other public offices, it is only what the holder makes of it; an opportunity, not a realization.

What is needed by the two countries now, as I interpret the situation, is less of tentative compromise that is so commonly considered desirable than of durable agreement-and I feel by no means certain that the latter is not quite as easy of attainment.

Mutual respect, mutual confidence, mutual tolerance-those are the essentials of that genius for coöperation which has already won for our President the hearts of our own people and is destined, I sincerely believe, to fetch the entire Englishspeaking race into harmonious relationship so nearly perfect, both materially and spiritually, that all mankind will realize in the near future that there is more power and glory in "Lead, kindly light," than in all the fighting anthems of the world.

My heart goes out to you, my friends of the dear old Lotos Club. I cannot thank you enough for this splendid tribute. I shall not try. I hold you to be my sponsors. I shall do my best to justify your kindly expectancy in the earnest hope that when I return, as now when I leave, I shall continue to be persona grata in your gracious estimation. Again my Lord and Gentlemen, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

JOHN HAY

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY

A speech delivered by John Hay, Secretary of State (born Salem, Indiana, 1838; died 1905), before the Chamber of Commerce of New York, November 19, 1901.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:-I need not dwell upon the mournful and tragic event by virtue of which I am here. When the President lay stricken in Buffalo, though hope beat high in all our hearts that his life might be spared for future usefulness to his country, it was still recognized as improbable that he should be able to keep the engagement he had made to be with you to-night, and your committee did me the honor to ask me to come in his place. This I have sometimes done in his lifetime, though always with diffidence and dread; but how much more am I daunted by the duty of appearing before you when that great man, loved and revered above all even while living, has put on the august halo of immortality. [Applause.] Who could worthily come into your presence as the shadow of that illustrious shade?

Let me advert, but for a moment, to one aspect of our recent bereavement, which is especially interesting to those engaged, as you are, in relations whose scope is as wide as the world. Never, since history began, has there been an event which so immediately, and so deeply, touched the sensibilities of so vast a portion of the human race. The sun, which set over Lake Erie while the surgeons were still battling for the President's life, had not risen on the Atlantic before every capital of the civilized world was in mourning. And it was not from the centers of civilization alone that the voices of sorrow and sympathy reached us; they came as well from the utmost limits of the world, from the most remote islands of the sea; not only from the courts in Christendom, but from the