618 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



that made of this country a nation in the eyes of the world, and there 

 democracy spoke from Versailles. And then nearly another hundred years, 

 of the wheel of time turned around, and the helmets of the Prussian 

 lancers were raised in the palace of Versailles, and Bismarck and von 

 Moltke and Roon spoke, and the voice was the voice of autocracy and 

 absolutism. In that palace at Versailles around a table Bismarck, von 

 Moltke and Roon, and all the representatives of absolutism, stood up and 

 holding their glasses aloft declared the formation of the German empire, 

 the united German state, the empire of blood and iron, and there again 

 we heard the voice of absolutism speaking from Versailles. But there 

 came another turn of the wheel of time, and then at "Versailles met the 

 representatives of all the world, with absolutism crushed to earth, and 

 democracy — democratic principles vindicated almost unanimously through- 

 out the world, and then again democracy spoke from Versailles. Let's 

 hope that was the last great message, in that treaty and in the situation 

 there at Versailles, for that historic occasion. 



But I have taken too much time in talking to you about Versailles; 

 how it bristles with interest in the light of the great happenings that 

 have occurred there. And so after our nation was launched there was 

 the pre-war period. Yes, how wonderful it was! With this great nation 

 to exploit; with all its resources; why, all a fellow had to do, if he didn't 

 like his job, was to take a team and drive a little farther, go into the 

 woods for food, and he was master of his own home. And then began 

 that great march, first to the AUeghenies, then across the AUeghenies, 

 then down into Kentucky, into Indiana, Missouri, Illinois — hardly yet into 

 Iowa, just a little into Iowa — the most beneficent movement, that home- 

 loving, homeseeking movement of which your father and my father and 

 mother were a part, a great movement, but that time held in solution an 

 irrepressible conflict, and you all know the irrepressible conflict came, 

 and it came up to be settled by the arbitrant of the sword. We lawyers 

 know this, that the truth has a way of thrusting itself up through the 

 crust of the most careful schemes and plans and statements. If you 

 allow the truth to come up, as through this table, and stand there, you 

 will have to reconcile all of your case with that fact. That is the truth; 

 the divine might of the truth; and the great truth that thrust itself up 

 to the gaze of society before the civil war is this, that no man has a 

 right to profit or sell the labor and the service of another. That was 

 the great truth, and that truth came for settlement to the arbitrant of 

 war, and your father and my father went out in '61 and '65 at the call of 

 their country. One day father came home in April of '61 and he said 

 to mother, "Clara, have you heard the news?" "Yes," she said, "I have 

 heard the news, James," and she said, as she carried her first bom in 

 her arms and myself, expected in August, "Yes, James, I have heard the 

 news, and I want you to go!" There was the spirit of the mothers, the 

 sweethearts, the sisters of '61 to '65, and when I think of that T pray 

 that it may come true what I saw on a monument on Lookout Mountain: 



"May the heroism which dedicated this lofty field to im- 

 mortal renown be as imperishable as the Union is eternal!" 



