that they would ultimately be realized in full.

Lafayette was absolutely fearless. He had physical bravery; he was
equally indomitable in moral and intellectual realms. He had the power
of courage. He could decide quickly and then stand by the decision to
the bitter end. The essence of his bold, adventurous youth is
expressed in the motto he then chose, "Cur non." But the confirmed and
tried spirit of his full manhood is more truly set forth in another
motto: "Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra." "Do what you ought,
let come what may."

For a man so possessed by a great, world-wide idea, so fearless, so
constant, it is quite fitting that monuments should be erected and
that his birthday should be celebrated. Probably there is no man in
all history who has had so many cities, counties, townships,
boulevards, arcades, mountains, villages, and hamlets named for him,
in a country to which he was not native-born, as has the Frenchman
Lafayette in the United States of America. Also, many notable statues
of Lafayette stand in city squares and halls of art, both in our
country and in his own. Among them there is one special statue in
which the young people of America have a peculiar interest. On the
19th of October, 1898, five millions of American school children
contributed to a Lafayette Monument Fund. With this sum a bronze
statue was made and presented to the French Republic. Mr. Paul Wayland
Bartlett was the sculptor intrusted with this work. The statue was
completed in 1908 and placed in a court of the Louvre in Paris. It was
originally intended that the statue of Bonaparte should occupy the
center of that beautiful court, but it is the statue of Lafayette that
stands there--the "Boy" Cornwallis could not catch, the man Napoleon
could not intimidate. No one can tell us just how Lafayette's statue
happened to be assigned the place intended for Napoleon's; but however
it was, the fact is a luminous example of how a man who loved people
only to master and subjugate them did not reach the heart of the world
so directly as the man who loved human beings for their own sakes and
to do them good.

Printed in the United States of America.

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TRUE STORIES OF GREAT AMERICANS

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