It is indeed a disappointment to us all, as well as to the President himself, that he has not been able to be present to-day. He has honored me by asking me to represent him, and on his behalf I accept for the Government of the United States this light, and assure you that it will ever burn to serve the splendid purpose for which you have created it. (Applause.)
Chairman Knapp then presented Count de Peretti de la Rocca, Chargé d’Affaires de France, who, in the absence of the French Ambassador, represented the Republic of France, and spoke as follows:
I shall not speak to you about Champlain; you know more about him than I. Everything around here reminds you of him. And so many speakers more eloquent, members of the French Academy, Ambassadors, Senators, Governors of States, have told you of his spirit of enterprise, his courage, his energy, his force of character, his uprightness of heart. What could I add to their discourses?
But I shall tell you how delighted I am to represent here the French Ambassador. My pleasure is as great as his would have been to be present. Mr. Jusserand told me many times how happy he was to commemorate on similar occasions the beginnings of this country, because the name of France is associated so often with these celebrations by which you Americans show, with such admirable perseverance, your remembrance of the past.
To-day you celebrate the memory of a brave French pioneer who, foreseeing the future, discovered and opened up a beautiful country to the knowledge of mankind and to civilization. Some years ago you raised monuments to the leaders who came with the military power of France to fight for the freedom of your country.
On another occasion, for your gratitude is considerate, you did honor to the memory of the French private soldiers and sailors who fell in the War of Independence and whose names were forgotten. But they shed their blood on this soil where liberty sprang forth, your country, and you wished that a beautiful monument at Annapolis should recall to posterity the memory of those modest heroes.
All these commemorations find an echo on the other side of the ocean, in the sister Republic. They make up other links added to the long chain of friendship which binds our two countries. They induce Frenchmen to cross the sea, like Champlain, impelled by the curiosity of new things, and they discover America. At first they are astonished; they did not expect to see what they see in this country, where three centuries before only explorers dared to venture. And they return to France, like the delegates who came here recently on behalf of the France-Amérique Committee, impressed not only with the future of the United States but with their present, with their unheard of development which surprises our old customs, and they bring back from this young and already great country a store of new ideas.
As Americans who know Paris like to return there, Frenchmen who once come to the United States wish to come back again; for we have much to learn the one from the other. Let us, therefore, see each other as much as possible: the more we shall know each other, the better we shall like each other. History encourages us to do so; our mutual interests recommend us to do likewise. Thank God, if so many Americans are the worthy descendants of the heroes of the Revolutionary War, there are yet in France many men of the type of Champlain, with the same energy, the same eagerness for knowledge, the same uprightness. These are characteristics of the race in that old France, always young, of which one of our best artists has portrayed the features in bronze so that you may see them there, in the midst of you, under the shadow of the memorial to a great Frenchman, who, like all Frenchmen coming over here, loved America. (Applause.)
The Chairman then introduced the orator of the day, the Hon. Robert Roberts, LL. D., Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, who delivered the following scholarly address:
Governor Dix, Members of the Lake Champlain Tercentenary Commissions, Ladies and Gentlemen: This memorial having been presented and received with due ceremony, it would seem that the purpose for which we are assembled had been accomplished and that a motion to adjourn would be in order. But a programme, like a table of contents, is a tyrannous thing, and if a place therein is marked for an address it must be filled.