move, staggering along, - he was not allowed to see them or to speak with them, he followed in their trail. It was an easy trail to follow because blood marks marked their footsteps; that after leaving the city, and in a great field by the roadside, he counted the bodies of three hundred women, each one as naked as when she was born, each one dead from the thrust of a bayonet. Those are some of the sights and scenes. "These people, many of whom have perished, have left hundreds and thousands of survivors who now look for that freedom and that liberty and that justice which is their right, and which has been denied them through the centuries; that freedeom and liberty which will come to them through this great conference, this great peace congress which is now about to be opened in France. "Strange sights and scenes one saw there. I remember walking out there one day and saw hanging in the great Square of Constantinople the bodies of eleven men, each one dead, each one with a mask covering his face; and although a hundred thousand people gazed upon these eleven bodies hanging there as they swayed in the wind all day long and all night, no one knew even with what crime, if any, these men were charged. It was whispered that they were spies, that they were traitors; that they were deserters from the army. But a day or two before there was a revolt as the little piece of bread that the Government gave out at a small price to the Turkish people was so bad in quality and so small in quantity that the people could not live upon it; but after those bodies hung there there were no more murmurings. Those who died of starvation, as they did die, died in silence. When the time came to leave that land, they had what they call 'political quarantine,' so that if you had any knowledge or information, they kept you there long enough so that it would become stale. But we were allowed to go through and to see what the war had done to these lands. And as I saw Austria on my return journey, I said then and predicted that the war could not last a year or much beyond a year, because I saw the people then starving in Vienna. I saw what the war was doing internally. Boast they might of their great man power and their great army. It was a wonderful contrast to come from all those lands on the one side of the war, to all the other lands; to come first to a land that seemed so wonderful to us, because there was so much food in it, Switzerland; it was the first time food was openly exhibited and openly distributed. "And then we came to a still more wonderful land, sorely tried, sorely burdened, very much depressed, but still with a wonderful people, a people with hearts filled with courage, we came to France. [Applause.] The time that I arrived in France was a few months after we declared war, and just as I came there the vanguard of our army came There came at their head a man, almost unknown, who proved himself in this year to be worthy of the highest history of America, a great leader of men, quiet, determined, full of invincible courage, a great soldier, whose name and whose fame now justly resounds throughout the world, and I saw him there. That was our great General Pershing. [Applause.] It was my privilege to be present in the great Chamber of Depu ties in France, when General Pershing was received there, and to hear then the great orator of France, a former premier, who had just returned from America, tell of the promise he brought back from America, as he said it,' Not from the government, not alone from the people of America, but from the heart of America to the heart of France; that America would stand behind France to her last dollar and to her last man.' And France was then needing such promise and such support. They had been tried and had given up so much in blood and life and property that they were almost willing to end it, and I wondered myself that they had not stopped, seeing how much they had suffered; but I saw that part of France which had just then been evacuated a few weeks before by the German army, where the Germans had lived for two years or more, that part which in the following spring was recaptured from France; and such a scene of ruin and desolation it is almost impossible to describe, And when I saw that city, and when I understood that story, I understood then the grim determination of France never to stop the war until she had driven every German out of France, as she has done. [Applause.] I heard that promise of America, and a few weeks ago a young officer who came back told me how that promise had been carried out. He told me how, as he and his men were being sent to the front, as they marched along the road, there came streaming back on the other side the soldiers of the French and the English armies, wounded and beaten back by an overwhelming force, not because they were not brave or courageous but because they were overpowered by superior numbers, and, as these Americans went forward the others were saying, 'It's no use, it's no use; if we cannot stand up against them, you surely cannot; and you will only go forward to be killed'; and how there was no answer, no answer save the young heads and they were very young were thrown back just a little more proudly and the thin lips were a little more tightly pressed together, and how that little army went on and with true American irreverence breaking out into song, singing, Hail, Hail, the Gang's all here,' and not only held the enemy, but drove them back. And that was the beginning of the end. [Applause.] We live in momentous times. We who live in it each day realize not those wonderful things fully that are happening day by day. Who would have dreamed, six months or three months ago, that to-day, as you sit here, American soldiers would be keeping order in the German city of Coblenz beyond the Rhine? Who would have dreamed, six months ago, or even three months ago, that to-day the flags of England and America and France would probably float over the impregnable fortresses in Strasburg; who would have dreamed, three months ago, that the despotic ruler of 75,000,000 of people, with an army of millions of men under him, would be to-day a fugitive in Holland, waiting for the even-handed justice that America and her Allies are to yield unto him? [Applause.] Who would have dreamed such things and spoken them aloud would have been truly written down as a wild dreamer. "The war is over; the fighting is over; the armies no longer seek to kill or to maim or to destroy. But another battle is still to be fought, even, perhaps, a greater battle than has been fought. America has sent an army, an army to take her part in that battle. It begins in a few days beyond the seas. It is a battle to determine whether these oppressed and downtrodden peoples, of whom I have spoken in those lands, in the southeastern part of Europe, whether the Poles, the Slovaks, the Serbians, the Roumanians and all the Armenians and Syrians, and all those peoples who have been ground down under the heel of despotism, are to enjoy that birthright of theirs, which is the birthright of all men, liberty and freedom. "America has sent an army. It is an army with a great leader. America has sent the leader of its people, the leader of its nation, to fight that battle for America, to fight the battle of humanity. It is not going to be so difficult to decide the terms of peace between Germany and France and England and Austria. They must give full idemnity. They must reconstruct and put back all they have ruined. They must give such guarantees so that they never again can be let loose like a mad dog, which should be confined. There are greater problems, — the problem of the freedom of the seas, the problem of a union of nations, so that war, war with its horrors, may never come again. But beyond all these are the problems of humanity, and America has sent as the leader of her army her great citizen, the leader of her people, he whom all America holds in high esteem. She has sent her great President, Woodrow Wilson. [Great applause.] Carping critics say-perhaps they say it honestly, perhaps in it is some measure of partisanship, perhaps it is truly spoken that it is against all precedent for a President to leave the country. It may be true, maybe it is against all precedent; but when the interests of humanity are at stake, who cares for precedent? [Great applause.] America leads to fight a great battle, to bring to those people freedom and liberty and justice, justice to make even that wonderful flag of ours brighter still, to make those stars shine still more wonderfully, to bring to those people, oppressed and downtrodden, the right to live in the sun, as all men and women under God have the right to live. [Applause.]" Previous to the address by Mr. Elkus, a dinner was arranged in his honor which was presided over by Rev. Francis E. Clark, D.D., who also introduced the speaker in the auditorium. ADDRESS BY HARRY LAUDER PRESIDENT GEORGE S. SMITH Gentlemen, we are not going to pay tribute to-day to Harry Lauder, the stage man, pure and delightful though his work of many years in that capacity has been, but we are paying our tribute to Mr. Harry Lauder, the world man, whose soul was stirred to its very depths at the horrors of war, yet who did not flinch at its flood and tumult, but threw hinself into the vortex that he might serve, and help, and save tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of soldier boys [applause}, thus winning for himself the profound respect and admiration of the real peoples in all this world. "When te deums seek the skies And the organ shakes the dome, A dead man shall stand at each live man's hand, These lines are offered to you, that you may realize the more that as these boys of ours are coming home their characters are deepened, their characters are strengthened, their tempers are steadied, that they may the better memorialize by their own lives the heroisms and the sacrifices of their mates who sleep in Flanders' fields. These lines are given to us to-day that we may realize in our capacity as counselors and servants of these returning boys, that our own lives must be bettered and strengthened that we may be the better counselors and servants, and that we, too, by that better service, will memorialize the lives of the dead as we pay tribute to the living. These lines are offered, inadequate though they be, as a fitting introduction to Mr. Lauder, for he lives in the spirit of him who to him has been the great sacrifice, and walking in spirit with his son, ennobled and glorified by his sacrifice, Mr. Lauder has ennobled and glorified his own character and his own standard of service. Mr. Harry Lauder. [Prolonged applause.] MR. HARRY LAUDER Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, Officers, and Gentlemen, I feel quite affected at being asked to come here to-day and have a little talk with you. Although I have had the pleasure and the honor of talking to a Boston audience before, I believe I have never up to the present moment had such a representative audience through the day. Well, now, we cannot talk about anything else but the war. There is not anything else to talk about, because yonder was where the real men and the best men of the world were congregated [applause]. You have heard at various times what was the cause of the war; and hearing at various times you have heard various causes of the war. Well, some of us have our doubts about the cause of the war, but there is none of us who have our doubts about the effect of the war. Since 1916, the 28th of December, when my boy sacrificed his life for the great cause, I took up the study of German history to understand why that sacrifice should be made, and in studying that history this is what I find: I find we have been and are fighting a false religion, and the god of that religion was the Kaiser, who proclaimed himself a god; and I also read in my Bible that God says that Any man who will declare himself a god on this earth shall surely perish." So, as far as I am led to believe, the Kaiser is in the first stage of decay [laughter and applause]. The religion that they promulgated in Prussia was that might was right. It had to be right, because they said that the Prussian was the nicest looking man, and that he was the nicest built man; physically he was the best man to represent the human race, and, therefore, he was entitled to exercise his authority and become the overman of the human race. That is their religion. It was preached from every rostrum in every university; it was preached from every pulpit in every church; it was preached from every floor of every school; aye, it was preached from every fireside by every mother and by every father. "Seek danger, give heroically, the lesser breeds of the world are in power because of the slumbering of Germany, but these breeds will fall to their power if Germany nourish her valor and attempt what her valor can achieve. These breeds dislike war; they hate it. They are always whining for peace, but war is the thoroughfare whereby man reaches to world's perfection; through war alone may a people rise to mastery. England must be crushed, and after England her spawn in America." It is a fine religion, isn't it? It is a beautiful religion. There is not a word in it about God. It is all brute force. Well, it has not done much good up to now, but a great reconstruction is going to take place, and our foundation must be built on the rock of justice and truth [applause] because these things are eternal and can never fail. And when we build this time we must build right up to the sky; yes, we must build higher than the sky, man; we must build right up to God. I want you to know that you are us and we are you, which now is and ever shall be, let us hope, the backbone of a new civilization. Oh, why were we ever separated one from another! I will tell you why we were separated. It was Prussian George and his Hessian troops that separated you and me. [Applause.] It took a great war to separate us for a long time, but it has taken a greater war to bring us together again. [Applause]. Oh, what a humiliation to see a fleet of battleships coming into a harbor without fighting for their existence! When they were sailing up to come into the Firth, two of our bluejackets were leaning over the rail of one of our ships, and one fellow said to the other, "Jack, what do you think of the tin cans?" [Laughter.] Jack said, "My holidays of Christmas are bothering me." [Laughter.] He said, "I don't know how long it's going to take us to scrape the rust off of these fellows" [laughter]. He says, "You know, Bill, we can't take them up to Whitehall in that condition." (Laughter.] Do you know what the British mercantile marine have suffered in this war through piracy, the pollution of the sea? Seventeen thousand men, seventeen thousand British seamen have been murdered, done to death by the pirates, the German pirates. Oh, that is a great score that has got to be wiped off, and the British mercantile marine are going to see that it is carried out [applause]. Yes, we have nearly nine thousand widows and about thirty thousand orphans yonder, all belonging to the British mercantile marine. The British mercantile marine has signed an agreement, so have all the dock laborers, so has every man that has anything to do with ships, coming in and going away from British ports all over the world, they have signed a declaration that they will not touch or handle a bale or a box of German goods for seven years, nor will they allow a |