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In Memoriam

SAMUEL J. ELDER

THIRD PRESIDENT BOSTON CITY CLUB

DIED JANUARY 22, 1918

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The committee appointed by President George S. Smith to prepare resolutions on the death of Samuel J. Elder reports as follows:

The Boston City Club is bereft by the death of its third President,

SAMUEL J. ELDER.

No man, more than he, believed in the principles of a great social democracy, for which the City Club stands.

He labored long and faithfully for the establishment of social justice, and his compelling personality influenced other men in the pursuit of such ideals.

His administration of the Club was marked by wisdom, efficiency, and optimism. His helpful service could at all times be summoned. His conceptions of citizenship were high; he lived them and spread them by personal contact with his fellows.

Though the public knows of his great national service, the members of the City Club were constantly reminded of his happy, sunny, warmhearted nature, and his loss will make a great void.

It is the desire of the Boston City Club that a copy of these resolutions be sent to Mr. Elder's family, and spread upon the records of the Club.

JAMES J. STORROW,
FREDERICK P. FISH,
JAMES E. FEE,

CARL DREYFUS,

Committee on Resolutions.

JANUARY 23, 1918.

and by our younger democracy in the southern seas. She has sought that her paths of destiny should be along the paths of peace. She has shown her belief that the moral and spiritual advancement of a nation should at least keep pace with its material progress. And she has shown in this world war that she is prepared to give all her resources to the great cause of human freedom.

"There is another great bond that should link the great country of China with the nations that are arrayed against a common foe. Our association with other lands is based upon confidence, and confidence is based upon character: and if we are to regard our international obligations as mere scraps of paper, then we shall in turn regard our business relations in the same light.

"We at this hour are fighting, then, in common, for one common cause, the freedom of humanity from that brutal militarism which threatens all liberty and all development. I think it was you, sir [turning to Lieutenant-Governor Coolidge], who said that America was a shrine of freedom. It is the shrine of freedom, especially to those of 1 us who belong to the self-governing dominions of the British Empire, and Boston, indeed, is the center of that shrine. It was here that liberty was born again. It was here that the stone was rolled away from the sepulcher of human freedom, and it was here that that inspiration was given which has spread freedom throughout the earth.

Your struggle here in those early days that created this nation bequeathed to the British Empire a power of endurance which otherwise she could never have possessed, because it is inconceivable that any nation can endure on a basis of force; but it can endure on a basis of liberty. From that hour that you struggled for freedom here the impression was burned deep into the minds of British statesmen that if they would hold their far-flung dominions together they could only be held together by conceding to us that very right to govern ourselves for which you had fought and suffered. [Applause.]

"So in this hour it can readily be understood how keenly we who have been watching you all of these years appreciate the greatness of your entrance into this titanic conflict. We know that your vast resources flung into the scale for human freedom must turn that scale. We know that, however far off victory may be, there can be only one end to this war. We know that the flag of America has never been raised except for right and except for liberty, and we know it will never be hauled down in order that it may be replaced by the white flag of surrender. Your entrance, then, into this conflict has brought new help to the war-scarred nations, and new help to mankind; and the inspiration that led you into it is an inspiration, I know, that this fight shall, if possible, be the last great fight of all, and that out of this night shall come some light that will enable the nations that stand together through it all to stand together after it is over, so that peace shall come upon the earth in an enduring form, and that we shall work out our destiny without this menace of Prussian militarism. [Applause.]

"We have sent, out of a population of five million people, a force numbering 380,000 men. [Applause.] Of that number 30,000 have laid down their lives for the cause of civilization. But that tremendous

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