Fellow-Citizens of America, and Brethren of the World, Ladies and Gentlemen:
This memorial to that great son of France, whose life and service we recall in gratitude and honor to-day, is peculiarly appropriate and expressive.
Its foundation is grounded upon a rock, its aspect is magnificent, its position commanding, and its work is for the lighting of the way of humanity. How well it typifies the character and the deeds of Champlain! He had the firmness and the constancy of the rock in his character, the beauty of the superstructure in his life, and the persistency of the never-failing light in the operations of his mind and heart for the service of his country and mankind.
The contrasts between his times and ours, the marvelous changes that have almost entirely transformed man’s environment within the past three hundred years, make it difficult if not impossible for us to-day properly to appreciate the soul-controlling purposes of Champlain, or estimate the sacrifices he endured in the outworking of those purposes.
Contemplation of Champlain, dreamer, discoverer and hero, is, however, for us a stimulant to imagination and to ambition.
To praise him because of the results that followed through the work of other men and later times, is as illogical as to disparage his character and work by taking the viewpoint of the present without giving due consideration, so far as people of our time can understand them, to the conditions and ideals of his age and the obstacles that he had to overcome in all he achieved.
His journey hither may have been for conquest and not discovery. Upholders of this opinion cite the fact that Champlain had with him and used the first explosive death-dealing weapons seen by the Indians, and that wars between the tribes followed.
Yet Indian wars were known before. Was not war the truest expression of the savage nature? Was not the Long House of the Iroquois the greatest war machine of the time? When in America was exploration free from combat, and what was land discovery but conquest?
Let us receive from Samuel Champlain the inspiration of high aims and purpose and unselfish service to our fellow-men. Let us dedicate ourselves to the work so nobly begun by his indomitable will and fortitude in blazing the way for the American spirit of courage and enterprise that so greatly enriched and developed this northern country.