TRIBUTE TO MARCUS A. HANNA

ALBERT JEREMIAH BEVERIDGE

A EULOGY AT THE HANNA MEMORIAL IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, APRIL 7, 1904.

INTRODUCTION

Albert J. Beveridge, lawyer, statesman, and orator, was born on the border of Adam and Highland counties, Ohio, October 6, 1862. After the Civil War his family removed to Illinois. He received a common and high school education, worked his way through college, and was graduated from DePauw University in 1885. Soon thereafter he was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of law at Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1899 he was elected United States Senator from Indiana, being at that time the youngest member of the Senate. He soon became widely known through his public speeches, both in the Senate and on the hustings. He fervidly supported the administration's Philippine policy, and has become recognized as the leading sponsor for that policy in Congress. As a result of a trip to the Orient, he is the author of a book on the Eastern question, The Russian Advance (1903).

Endowed with native ability, Mr. Beveridge has won his spurs by aiming high and working hard. He is generally admired as a fine type of the young American in public life. Says Mr. Albert Shaw, in the Review of Reviews for January, 1905:

"Senator Beveridge brings a clear head and a firm will into the United States Senate. . . . He is very much more than a good orator, a good lawyer, a good legislator, and a good politician. He is a man of good conscience, of fidelity, of courage, and of patriotism. Whatever faults he may possess, - and doubtless he has some, he has the virtues and the essential qualities of a statesman,"

Mr. Beveridge is considered one of the best speakers in Congress, and he enjoys a national reputation as a campaign orator. While pursuing his college course he gave particular attention to the theory and practice of oratory. He took a leading place in the college literary society, and there won immediate success as an orator, debater, and organizer. In 1899-1900 he wrote a series of articles for the Saturday Evening Post, which furnish a good exposition of his ideas regarding oratory, both as to manner and matter. He stresses the need of directness and earnestness in delivery, and the avoidance of tricks and artificialities. "As to matter and style," he says, "aim only to be clear. Nothing else is essential."

While Congressional oratory is not highly rated, as a rule, still on those occasions set apart for commemorating deceased members, when the speakers take time for preparation in advance, eulogies of a high order of merit are delivered. In thought and expression, the following tribute will bear careful study as an example of the briefer form of eulogy.

1. MR. PRESIDENT: Since to all earthly work an end must come, our words of farewell to a fellow-workman should not alone be those of grief that man's common lot has come to him, but also of pride and joy that his task has been done worthily. 5 Powerful men so weave themselves into their hour that, for the moment, it all but seems the world will stop when they depart. Yet it does not stop or even pause. Undisturbed Time still wings his endless and unwearied flight; and the progress of the race goes on and up toward the light, realizing at every 10 step more and more of the true, the beautiful, and the good. 2. So it is not important that any of us should long remain ; the Master Builder lacks not craftsmen to take our place. But it is important to the uttermost that while we are here we should do our duty to the full perfection of our powers, fear15 lessly and faithfully, with clean hands, and hearts ever full of kindness, forbearance, charity.

3. These are the outline thoughts that the absence of our friend compels. With his whole strength he did his work from

boyhood to the place of rest. He was no miser of his life he poured it into discharge of duty, keeping with nature no account of heart beats.

4. The things he did were real things. He was the very spirit of the practical. Yet the practical did not kill or even 5 impair the human in him. He never lost the gift of lovableness. His sense of human touch and fellowship was not dulled, but made more delicate by time and the world. The years made him wiser, but they made him mellower, too.

5. And so he won the people's affection as well as their 10 applause. And affection is worth more than applause. There is no greater glory than this to make a nation your friend.

Senator Hanna did that. For when the angel of peace, which men call Death, took our brother to his well-earned rest, the people knew that a friend had left them. And the people were 15 sad that he had gone away.

6. This human quality in him made all he did a living thing, all he said a living word. He was the man of affairs in statesmanship; yet his personality gave to propositions of mere national business something of the warmth and vitality of prin- 20 ciples. He was the personification of our commercial age, — the age of building, planting, reaping; of ships on ocean, and on land steel highways and the rolling wheels of trade; of that movement of the times which knits together with something more than verbal ties all the children of men, weaves tangible 25 civilization around the globe, and will, in time, make of all peoples neighbors, brothers, friends.

7. Thus he was, unwittingly no doubt, one of the agents of God's great purpose of the unification of the race. We are all such agents, small or great. If this is not so if we are not, 30 ignorantly perhaps and blindly, but still surely, spinning our lives into the Master's design, whose pattern He alone can comprehend; if we and all things are not working together for good; if life is but a breath exhaled and then forever

5

lost our work means less and is worth less than that of coral insects, which, from the depths, build ever toward the light until islands stand above the waves, permanent monuments of an intelligent architecture.

8. Work with real things-real earth, real ocean, real mountains, real men made him conservative. And his conservatism was real. Much that is accepted as conservatism is spurious, mere make-believe. Conservatism does not mean doubt or indecision. It does not mean wise looks, masking 10 vacuity, nor pompous phrase, as meaningless as it is solemn. Conservatism means clear common sense, which equally rejects the fanaticism of precedent and the fanaticism of change. It would not have midnight last just because it exists; and yet it knows that dawn comes not in a flash, but gradually — comes 15 with a grand and beautiful moderation. So the conservative is the real statesman. He brings things to pass in a way that lasts and does good. Senator Hanna was a conservative.

9. Working with real things among real men also kept fresh his faith and hope. No sailor of the seas, no delver in the 20 earth, no builder of rooftrees can be a pessimist. He who plants doubts not our common mother's generosity, or fails to see in the brown furrow the certainty of coming harvests. He who sinks a well and witnesses the waters rise understands that the eternal fountains will never cease to flow. Only the man 25 whose hands never touch the realities of life despairs of human progress or doubts the providence of God. The fable of Antæus is literal truth for body, mind, and soul. And so Senator Hanna, dealing with living men and the actualities of existence, had all the virile hope of youth, all the unquestion30 ing faith of prophecy. These are the qualities of the effective leadership of men.

10. He is gone from us — gone before us. Strength and frailty, kindness and wrath, wisdom and folly, laughter and frown, all the elements of life and his living of it have ceased

their visible play and action. "Where," said despairing Villon, "where are the snows of yesteryear?" Vanished, he would have us believe. Yes, but vanished only in form. "The snows of yesteryear" are in the stream, in cloud and rain, in sap of tree and bloom of flower, in heart and brain of talent and 5 of beauty. Nothing is lost even here on our ancient and kindly earth. So the energies of our friend, and those of all men, have touched into activity forces that, influencing still others, will move on forever.

II. As to the other life, we know not fully what it is; but 10 that it is, we know. Knowing this, we who are left behind go on about our daily tasks, assured that in another and truer existence our friend is now established, weakness cast aside as a cloak when winter has passed, vision clear as when at dawn we wake from dreams, heart happy as when, the victory won, 15 we cease from effort and from care. For him the night is done, and it is written that "joy cometh in the morning."