Senator H. Wallace Knapp, Chairman of the New York Lake Champlain Tercentenary Commission, then delivered the following address:
Your Excellency, Governor Dix, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are assembled on an historical spot that may properly lay claim to official recognition, for associations connected with the progress of humanity in the Champlain Valley and this vicinity are especially to be distinguished for the important events that are known to have proceeded from the subject that we are here to recall.
The battles of Valcour and Plattsburgh, and the maintenance here of a permanent military post, are vitally connected with conditions attending the passing through the lake of the first white man.
The patriotic spirit has never slumbered here. The sons of this county and of the city of Plattsburgh who have dedicated their lives to the service of their country, in the army and navy and in civic councils form a long roll of distinguished honor. They have upheld the integrity of their country in every quarter of the globe, and their deeds are glowing on the pages of history. And this public service has been continuous since the first settlement here. This record has not been interrupted. Here surely, then, our Memorial may be safely entrusted to fulfill its purpose and we may leave it here, as in its long appointed home, telling to the future, with voiceless eloquence, the meaning of the scene that appears before us.
For when we have gone away there will appear in the ensuing quiet a significance here that can hardly be discerned through the sounds and the pageantry of the present hour. Now we look upon the brave soldier, the intrepid sailor, the grand discoverer, the wise administrator, the successful courtier, and the gallant friend of kings. But when we are here alone and undistracted we shall recognize a deeper and more abiding import. We shall recall his unfailing goodness of heart, his helpful and untiring care for his associates, his generous mercy to the traitor, Vignan, his motto that the saving of one soul was more worthy of endeavor than the conquest of an empire. We shall know Champlain as the devoted lover of his fellow-man, and in this philosophy we shall find the basic motive of his career, and indeed I think it is for the charm of such qualities shining through virile manhood that we most love to remember him. The Spanish conquerors were strong and venturesome, but there is no gathering of many peoples to do honor to their memory; no songs are sung for Cortez and Pizarro.
Our Monument will always be an inspiring influence for good and as time goes on, piety and poesy and song will enrich the memory of our hero, and romance will cast a halo around his deeds. It is perhaps from such beginnings that all the great epics of the world have been developed, yet none of them, it is safe to say, have proceeded from a nobler basis of character and action.
We are inaugurating our Memorial under happy conditions. A century of peace between France, England, and America bespeaks a perpetuity of good will. Their representatives have taken part in all the important functions of the Tercentenary observances and they are here to-day with messages of cheer and friendship.
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