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YALE UNIVERSITY
AUG 4 192§
¦ ' LIBRARY.
Speech by
Hon. Chauncey M. Depew
On His Eighty-ninth Birthday at the
Montauk Club, Brooklyn, N. Y.,
April 28th, 1923, Being the
32d Annual Dinner
Given Him by
This Club

'A

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comPlim£nts of

speech by
Hon. Chauncey M. Depew
On His Eighty-ninth Birthday at the
Montauk Club, Brooklyn, N. Y.,
April 28th, 1923, Being the
32d Annual Dinner
Given Him by
This Club

Speech by Hon. Chauncey M. Depew on His Eighty-
ninth Birthday at the Montauk Club, Brooklyn,
N, Y., April 28th, 1923, Being the 32nd Annual
Dinner Given Him by This Club,
My Friends : Only the unusual at present interests. It is
a peculiar condition of our times that we care so little for
what formerly we cared so much. The tragedies, local or gen
eral or universal, which formerly thrilled and horrified us,
create now only the mildest sensations. If they happen far
from home, they produce no sensation at all. Apathy has been
succeeded by numbness. We do wonderful things in the way
of contributing millions to the rehef of suffering humanity
here and in other countries. Happily the spirit of helpful
ness is still very much alive.
The Present State of Numbness
I recall how the world rose to Gladstone's appeal at
the time of the Bulgarian atrocities. Behind him was the
whole power of British public opinion, with its army and
navy. We were ready to help if the occasion had demanded it.
My friend, Eugene Schuyler, then a young man in the diplo
matic service, went over the ground where the massacres oc
curred, and his report was received with universal eagerness.
It is a commonplace now to read in the morning paper that
several thousand have been slaughtered at, near or around
Smyrna. We fail to respond in any way to the starvation
and murder of millions of Armenians. The deportation of
whole populations from the farms and villages where they
have lived peacefully and happily for generations, to foreign
ports and shores where they die miserably, is a paragraph
which catches our eye in the raorning newspaper, but is not
carried to our business or discussed in our clubs or commented
upon in our churches or our Congress. The only comment if
any is, "Oh, the Turk has come back and is administering true
to form." The Turk had been eliminated and his power vir
tually destroyed by the war, but the jealousies of the victors
have enabled him to play the role which Abdul-Hamid did for
so many years with such eminent success for his throne and
such horrors for the Christian populations in Turkey. One
3

singular and unfortunate result of the World War has been
that under phrases of fellowship, universally accepted, has
come an isolation of peoples dangerous to peace and civilization.
Neighborliness Most Potent
Let us localize and leave for the moment these world
problems and look about home. When these dinners first began
thirty-two years ago, Brooklyn was famous for the number
of its clubs. They were social organizations and the centers
of the life, activities and associations of every neighborhood.
Nearly all of them have disappeared. This club, the Montauk,
is one of the few survivors. The subway, with its easy and
cheap access to the attractions of .New York City proper, and
the automobile have largely contributed to this result. Grad
ually the citizen is a member of only two clubs, one near
Fifth Avenue and the other in the country. The Montauk
has lived and thrived because under wise management it has
promoted neighborliness. It attracts all families who belong
to it to the hospitality within its walls. They meet here fre
quently for all the purposes which interest and should interest
a neighborhood. Of all the elements which go to make good
citizenship and good citizens, promoting good government,
local and general, which purify politics and sanctify the home,
there is none more potent than neighborliness.
The Church Eighty Years Ago
I recall life in the country seventy years ago, and remember
vividly my contact with it eighty years ago. Clubs were un
known in rural neighborhoods, but the church was, outside of
its sacred function, preeminently a club. The members were
on intimate terms. After the services, if it was a rainy day,
the gathering in the lobby was a renewal of the past, a
cementing of the present and promising for the future. On
clear days, when the open air was attractive, the congregation
lingered long in the sunlight and the spirit of their gathering
was full of health, enterprise and activity for the whole neigh
borhood. I recall how the weekly prayer meeting was an ex
change of good fellowship. The repeated statement of the
worthy deacon that the Lord knew he was a man of "wounds
and bruises and putrefying sores" led me, as a boy, to ask
4

him why he did not take a cure. Even in cities, much of
this intimate association prevailed. Human beings are gre
garious. They must meet and have contact and sympathy.
If for material reasons, or selfishness, or class distinctions, the
better purposes of assemblage fail, then we have the rise of
the socialist, the bolshevist and finally the anarchist.
The Indifference Towards France
An extraordinary illustration of the indifference which
comes from an unnatural isolation is the situation in the
Ruhr. We recognize how difficult is the position of France,
with her old enemy possessing a population so much larger
and constantly increasing and with the ever-present danger of
a new war with new atrocities. When the armistice was
signed, the United States and Great Britain recognized the
appeal of France as she stood on the frontier of liberty, to
their protection and assistance if necessary, but neither have
responded, and France is left to protect herself. We all hope
that out of the present trouble will come some situation which
will secure for her the payment of the reparation debts which
were promised, or at least part of them, and conditions of
security where she can safely reduce her military armament
and vast protective expenses, and that the demands upon Ger
many will be within that country's economic and industrial
development. And yet, neither in Great Britain nor in the
United States has this sentiment of sympathy and help led
to any suggestion of helpfulness.
Hindsight and Foresight
A remarkable and critical question comes involuntarily to
the front. What has the world gained from the greatest war
in its history? Most of us here, I think, were eager for the
United States to enter the war long before we did. Neither
our government nor our people possessed the gift of prophecy,
and we as a people were preeminently peaceable and war was
abhorrent. We can see now that if we had responded at once
on the sinking of the Lusitania, the war would have ended two
years earlier and probably there would never have been any
necessity of sending our boys abroad. But hindsight is a safe
but never a generous critic of foresight. S

Our Country After the Civil War
The American situation in the two greatest conflicts in
which we were ever engaged, the Civil War and the Great
War, presents interesting contrasts. After the Civil War,
when we came to balance the books and count the gains and
the losses, the credit side enormously over-balanced the debit.
Slavery had disappeared and four millions of human beings
had been raised to freedom and opportunity. That was uni
versally recognized in the South as well as in the North,
as an inestimable gain for our country. The Union of our
States, in other words of our Republic, had been saved and
recemented on a permanent basis. In this was the security
of constitutional and orderly liberty, not only for our country,
but in a measure for the whole world. Our people, undis-
couraged, undismayed, full of hope, energy, ambition, confi
dence, compelled prosperity, and with a healthy steadying by
the panic of 1873, we moved on to a development of our
resources, to the building of cities and villages, to the con
struction of railroads, to the settlement of farms, to the opening
of mines, and to the founding and the enlargement of fac
tories. The industrial world has never known such a beneficent
restoration, resurrection and progress.
Revival of the Religious Spirit
There was another and very marked phenomenon im
pressed on the memory of those who were active at that period.
It was the revival of the religious spirit. A universal recog
nition of dependence upon God; a general recognition of
His fatherly care and endless blessings. The churches were
full, the spirit rested alike upon the pulpit and the pew. When
Memorial Day was first celebrated in my home town, I was the
speaker. The meeting was in the old cemetery and in the
grounds was a church, built long before the Revolutionary
War. Every woman in that vast crowd was in deep mourning;
every family had lost a son. I knew all those boys personally
who had died, and as I recalled their lives at home and their
heroism in the field, I never have witnessed such a scene. Out
of its agony, however, arose hope and universal sympathy and
love. This same feeling was evidenced that day in every part
of the country, north, south, east and west. If there ever
6

was a time when the spirits of the departed renewed their
associations with the loved living, it was then.
Russia and the Consequences of Communism
Now let us look at this picture so indelibly impressed
upon our memories, especially on the memories of those who
passed through those days, and contrast it with our present
situation. Five years ago, the armistice was signed. For
five years, the best representative talent of both the victors
and the vanquished have been trying to solve the problems
which the armistice left us. What is the result? Russia
has been during the whole of this period the experiment sta
tion of a small company of theorists to carry out their ideas of
government. They gained possession of the army, of the police
and the whole machinery of force, and of every element of
production and all the means of transportation. They had
180,000,000 of an unusually submissive people entirely under
their control and domination. They abolished all freedom,
all liberty of press and all public opinion. They suppressed
all industries and reduced the people to practical slavery and
dependence upon the government for such food and clothing
and necessaries of life as the government might yield. The
experiment proved that communism destroys initiative and
that no human power can substitute what God has implanted
in man and woman, the incentive of personal gain and the
security of property gained by personal exertion and effort.
The intelligent classes have been suppressed, exiled and, accord
ing to official reports, millions of them executed. There is
at present a limited revival of industry due to the abandon
ment of the principles of the Communist revolution and the
recognition of those eternal principles and practices which are
scornfully denounced as capitaUsm. It is curious that the
very able leader of this movement, which was proclaimed to
be for the benefit only of those who worked with their hands,
is a nobleman, a college man and whose only work during a
long lifetime has been as a revolutionary agitator. His revo
lution succeeded and gave him a complete and absolute oppor
tunity on the largest scale ever known to carry out his theories,
and they have utterly failed. Russia is still a very unhappy
country with an afflicted people. 7

The Situation in Europe. Belief in Returning Normal
Conditions
The conditions in Germany are anything but hopeful.
Austria, split up by the mistakes of the conference at Versailles,
is trying to have a great city live without the necessary con
tributing territory. Central Europe has been divided into small
states who have erected hostile boundaries and are rapidly de
veloping a war spirit. France has nobly, and in almost a
miraculous way, risen from the devastations of her territory,
but she has become burdened with a debt whose proportions
stagger the calculations of the economist and the budget maker
and whose burdens rest upon all her brilliant enterprises.
Great Britain has a debt several times greater and with burdens
of taxes correspondingly larger than before the war. On
account of the disorganization of the countries which she
formerly traded with, a million and a half of her working people
are out of employment. Her middle class, who contributed
so much to her stability, have been reduced to the severest
economic straits, while the old estates are largely disappearing
under the burden of taxes so great that they cannot be main
tained. We in the United States have always been restive
under a national debt. The theorists who said a national debt
was a national blessing, have always been few, principally mil
lionaires who wanted govemment securities because they dis
trusted all others. At the commencement of the Great War
we had so far paid off the obligations of the Civil War that
we owed about one thousand millions of dollars, and now it is
twenty-three thousand millions. The necessities of our gov
ernment are so great that to raise by taxation what is required
has so far baffled the tax experts and led to the adoption
of a system which is political and not scientific. Neverthe
less, the situation of the United States is in every way so
infinitely better than any other country in the world that we
must feel we ought to be under a tremendous exaltation of
gratitude and hope. I cannot with my make-up sympathize
with those who, returning constantly from Europe, paint such
pictures of despair, chaos and anarchy. I have the profoundest
faith in humanity, in its ability to rise to all situations and to
meet and overcome all difficulties. I believe that with all
the troubles that must come and the sacrifices which must be
8

endured, the world will be in a not distant future in those
normal conditions of internal development and industry and
international good will and helpfulness which will make it
still, as it has been, a grand old world to live in.
Few New Things Except Inventions
A peculiar phase of the situation in our country is what
is called by its advocates liberalism and progressivism. We
find it in the church and public life. We all have passed
through many storms in the religious and political world and
are studying with intense interest this development. It is not
new. Very few things in this world are new, except inven
tion. It is curious that the inventive mind was never so
active and productive as during the Great War, but inventions
were wholly for destruction. It was to increase the efficiency
and peril of the submarine so as to destroy safety on the seas.
It was to perfect the poisoning of the air so that armies or
cities or villages might be wiped out at once. It was to add
to the power of the machines of war, so that distance was no
safety and the atmosphere was full of peril. Some friends
of mine in Paris were crushed while at church by the explosion
of a shell fired from a gun seventy-five miles away. Since
the war, the inventive genius of the world has been equally
active and productive. It has given to us the radio, the wire
less and the expansion of the telephone. Recently through
broadcasting a concert in New York was heard in France. It
is now a commonplace to say from the United States, "Hello,
London," and have London respond with the facility of an
adjoining town. The ideas of all the ages have been that the
earth was of little use except for agriculture, the water except
for navigation and for fish, the mountains except for minerals,
and the air except for oxygen and nitrogen, but in the last few
years inventive genius has found that all these elements,
properly understood and harnessed, can be used for every
purpose necessary for the enjoyment and advancement of life.
Liberalism and Pbogressivism
In 1852, seventy-one years ago, I entered Yale College.
It was a period of great unrest in the intellectual, educational
and religious world. Jonathan Edwards had converted the
whole country by lurid pictures of hellfire and the certainties

of damnation. There had been a violent reaction. Hell had
become unpopular. Preachers were finding new paths to
Heaven. New sects and divisions of old sects were common.
What was known as transcendentalism attracted general in
terest. Then there ran through the colleges a sentiment that
the time had come for independence of thought. Independence
of thought, as understood by the undergraduate, was the re
pudiation of all that had been taught him at home. The under
graduate was an aggressive and very disagreeable young man
in his protests against the tyranny of creeds and his proclama
tion of the development of a new thought. Most of these
boys became normal after they got home. The great lights
who had the front pages of the newspapers burned out; the
leaders of the new thought are no longer remembered. Now
there is a lively and interesting recrudescence, and it is called
liberalism and progressivism. Apparently in its present form
it neither establishes a new church nor creates a new party.
Its mission is in religion for its advocates to have the advantage
of the church organization, with its power and its safety, and
at the same time do all that is possible to destroy tiie founda
tions of faith. In the political world, it is not to undertake
the perils of a new party, for all new parties in our country
have failed, but to remain in the party and have the prestige
and safety of the organization while planting bombs and dyna
mite at convenient and strategical points. In the church, lib
eralism seems to mean that it is more in accordance with
modern ideas not to reject Jesus Christ but to take from
Him as far as possible every element of divinity and to destroy
that trust in Him which has been the salvation and the hope
of countless millions. It is to reduce the aposties and their
preaching to the status of itinerant evangelists whose teach
ings are not always to be trusted and are frequentiy the result
of physical or mental ailments to which all human nature is
subject. The Two-Party System
American. Democracy has successfully solved its problems,
carried on its government and made its success in every ele
ment which constitutes for a people progress, development,
liberty and prosperity, by the two-party system. The two-party
system is founded upon human nature. Broadly, men and
10

women are temperamentally divided into different degrees of
conservatism and radicalism. To draw an illustration from the
horse period, it was the traces which pulled the load uphill and
the breeches which prevented it running to destruction down
hill. Both were absolutely necessary. In the practical opera
tion of the two-party system, each checks the other. If
the conservatives are too slow or stuck in the mud, there is
always a large moderate element which joins the radical side
to push the machine forward. On the other hand, if the
radical element has broken so far loose from proper control
that it puts our institutions in peril, the moderate element again
joins the forces of stability. We recognize that our institu
tions are built upon the individual and that every opportunity
must be furnished for him to live his life and accomplish in
dividually and as a citizen all that there is in him. But for
the general purposes of government, those whose tendencies
are in the same direction must meet together as a party. While
they are agreed upon essentials, there is liberty upon non-es
sentials. Nevertheless, the will of the majority must dictate
the policy of the party. After a long era of control by the
one party, we have had within the last few years violent changes
from the moderate element shifting from one party to the
other because of unrest with present and prospective conditions.
I have been an interested student of political and economic
conditions for over seventy years. I have witnessed the rise of
independent organizations whose object was to form a third
party, and have seen them fail. I followed the fortunes of
Horace Greeley in his pathetic and tragic attempt. In the clari
fied atmosphere and loneliness outside of the fortifications, I
learned my lesson, and within a year was back again in the
ranks of the party. 49 Against 482
We have just elected a new Congress. The administration
which came into office two years ago has suffered many de
feats in the Congress elected at the same time by an unusual
majority, but has won notable triumphs in some of its im
portant pohcies. The margin now is narrow in both the Sen
ate and the House. Some of our statesmen are restive under
party government and disinclined to act with the majority and
have recently announced a program which puts in doubt party
II

policies of the new Congress during the succeeding two years.
In a recent issue of the Saturdcty Evening Post is an announce
ment of their program. Briefly stated, it is this : That after
a careful and microscopic search of the Senate and of the
House of Representatives, they have found 49 devoted
patriots. There are 96 senators and 435 members of the
House, together constituting 531. It is most interesting, if
true, that only 49 of this 531 can be trusted in legislation neces
sary for the country and the solving of problems essential to the
welfare of the people, but the statement of the group clearly
defines why it functions. It is because of this recently elected
governing legislative body of the United States only 49 repre
sent the people and 482 are hostile to the people's interests.
When the people of the United States have thoroughly dis
cussed and clearly understand the issues before them, their
verdict is vox populi, vox Bei; that is to say, the voice of the
p,eople is the voice of God. Ten righteous men, if they could
have been found, would have saved Sodom. The above men
tioned 49 must be righteous, they admit it themselves, and so
we are reasonably safe.
The Parable of the Ten Talents
Now in a canvass where all questions were so thoroughly
discussed as in the campaign of last year, it seems to me to
require marvelous nerve to say that the people so erred as to
place as their representatives at Washington 482 out of a
total of 531 who would betray them, and succeeded in selecting
only 49 who were faithful to their interests. It certainly
develops one of the most interesting situations in our public
life and political history. This group claim to be able by
shifting their strength from one party to the other from time
to time, to compel both parties, if they wish to succeed, to
abandon their own program and accept that of the 49. These
49 patriots are not all agreed. In fact, in their program they
are allowed large individual discretion, but their organizers
claim that they are a unit on questions which affect the
economic conditions of the country, the stability of busi
ness and safety of property, and that their general program is
to overthrow as far as possible by legislation the methods by
which the country has progressed and developed in such a
phenomenal and extraordinary way. There is an idea among
12

those who are the victims of unrest that general prosperity is
dangerous to the happiness and development of large num
bers of people. Reduced to its last analysis, it means that those
who have secured independence and property by industry,
sobriety and intelligence, must be compelled by legislation to
divide with those who are neither industrious nor sober nor
intelligent and charge their ill luck to industrial conditions
and not to their own character and conduct. This school,
which is not a new one, repudiates the parable of the ten tal
ents. They say that the man who doubled his ten talents and
the man who increased his five talents should be compelled
to divide with the man who wrapped his talents in a napkin
and went to sleep. Mussolini and Lenin
One of the most interesting phenomena of the world-wide
struggle for mastery by these antagonistic principles is the
development of the Fascisti in Italy. The main sufferers from
wild experiments in efforts to overthrow the principles which
have proved sound and wise by the experiments of the
centuries are what are known as the middle class of every
country. They are unorganized and they suffer from the group
tyranny of those of the privileged class above them and of the
others who are not of them. They constitute, however, a sohd
body of intelligent, law and order abiding and property own
ing, industrially and educationally active people who are the
strength and stability of every nation. There is no more in
teresting contrast in the world than the rise and government
of Lenin in Russia and Mussolini in Italy. Lenin, nobleman,
aristocrat, and then revolutionist and leader of the Commu
nists ; Mussohni, son of a blacksmith, socialist, and then organ
izer of the Middle Class Union and leading conservative.
Mussolini found his people drifting to the same conditions of
servitude to a proletarian dictatorship as exist in Russia. He
found that his people were gradually falling under the domina
tion of the propaganda for revolution and for bolshevism which
is active in every country, including our own. Of course, its
avowed object is to destroy property interests, the church and
the independence of intelligence by violent methods. Musso
lini, starting as a socialist, saw this propaganda gradually cap
turing and confiscating factories and farms, and with the
13

example of the results in Russia saw what would happen in
Italy. So he did what was never accomplished before — formed
a Middle Class Union. Everybody who had anything at stake
by the preservation of law and order and equal rights and of the
possession and protection of the family and the church, and of
what one could acquire by his own honest efforts, was called
to the standard of law and liberty. It is a miracle, and
demonstrates marvelous constructive ability and executive force
that this man succeeded so well that he captured the govern
ment and became practically its dictator. This middle class
constitute everywhere a vast majority of the whole population,
and under the inspiration of the movement in Italy they may
become a force and be organized for the stability of the old
world. Happily, with our American standards of liberty, law and
representative Government, with our free schools and inde
pendent pulpits, with universal suffrage and a free press, no
Lenin and no group led by a Lenin and Trotzky vrill ever
be able to engineer in the United States a Communistic revo
lution, and we never will need or accept a Mussolini.
The World Court
Well, my friends, we of the United States, with all the
blessings which we enjoy, cannot escape the responsibilities
which we owe to the rest of the world. The radio, the wire
less, inventions which are increasing in wonder and bringing
the world together as never before, have made isolation im
possible. There is a universal horror among our people of
entering into any European adventure. The jealousies, the
conflicts, the antagonisms of Europe and Asia have caused
us more and more to retire within ourselves, but we cannot
long resist the call of suffering humanity or of our need of
foreign markets. On the charitable side we have done more
than ever was done before to feed the starving and clothe the
naked everywhere. Now for the first time since five years of
chaos an opportunity is offered where we can legitimately
help. It does not call for American boys to be sent abroad as
soldiers to carry out mandates or to pacify countries. It does
not call upon us to impose additional burdens of taxation for
monies to be spent upon foreign adventures. It is in the
line of our constitution and our institutions. I refer to our
14

joining the World Court. Its organization was largely helped
by the constructive genius and legal ability of Elihu Root.
The International Court of Arbitration
The idea of an international court or peace conference is
not new. It has been suggested many times to a war weary
world. In 1896, twenty-seven years ago, I delivered the
annual address before New York State Bar Association.
There were war clouds in the air. I took for my subject the
necessity for peace of an International Court of Arbitration.
The Association unanimously adopted the suggestion and ap
pointed a committee which prepared and presented a plan to
the Government at Washington. Then, in 1899, came from
Russia an invitation for the Peace Conference at The Hague,
and a second Hague conference was held in 1907. We were
represented and joined in the recommendation for an Inter
national Court. Then in 1920 a general convention of in
ternational representative judges and lawyers met at The
Hague and prepared the scheme of a court whioh is sub
stantially the one which President Harding has sent to the
Senate.
The World Court the Hope of the World
If the United States should become a member, the Court
is no longer localized but universal; its judgment is the judg
ment of the best sentiment of the world; there can be no ques
tion as to the enforcement of its decrees ; it is the one power of
universal force which will arouse and appeal to public opinion.
Public opinion is, even in the most chaotic of countries, a force
of supreme authority when once thoroughly aroused. No
organization of government in any land would be strong enough
to resist successfully the decrees of this Court. In its de
cisions is the hope not only of the stability of the world,
of the absence of wars, but the reconstruction upon high
judicial line's of the relations of govemments to each other
and of the organization of orderly liberty within the boundaries
of all countries. Greatest of All Is Faith
Out of the troubles of ancient days, the Good Lord evolved
the three elements of success and happiness and universal
consideration, faith, hope and charity. We have tried charity
15

in our relations with the world. Our hopes have not been
entirely justified. But we have not lost faith. I have found,
with very broad opportunities for observation and experience,
in what can fairly be called a long life and a very active one,
that the foundation of hope and of charity, the foundation of
love and friendship, the foundations of business and associa
tion, the foundations of government and its successful ad
ministration and the foundations of relations between man and
his God, are all in faith. The man and the woman who are
joined together, and have faith in each other, whose children
have faith in them, and the whole family which has its faith
undisturbed by revolution, by propaganda, by false doctrine,
and serenely pursues its way in life under the prelecting
banner of faith, becomes part of that great and controlling
constituency which has made the United States what it is,
which will preserve it upon its past principles and traditions and
transmit it to posterity as Washington and the fathers of
the country hoped it would be.
Keep to the Middle Road
Well, my old friends, you have smoothed the road, accel
erated the pace and added to the joys of travel over the highway
of life for a third of a century. With the eighty-ninth mile
stone behind, I enter upon my ninetieth year. One of the
sources of healthy and continuing longevity is to forget every
thing of the past, except its gifts of pleasure and happiness. I
had a friend who on learning of any disease said, "Oh, I have
that," and another who beUeved the wealth of the world would
be his, though he never had a dollar. There is misery and
worry in extremes, and all the good possible is not at either end
but can be found along the middle road.
Friendly Advice
I have been near enough to vast riches to be grateful for
my escape and close enough to bankruptcy to feel its pangs.
Death has robbed me of precious lives, but love has alleviated
sorrow and glorified the years. Keep appetite within health
ful limits and place no boundaries against friends and you
will not suffer from physical ills, or feel lonesome in age.
The world is full of good men and women who will gladly
reciprocate all the cheer and joy they get from you.
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