y each other in
the hour of need. In 1863 the French ambassador at the court of
St. Petersburg laid before the Czar the proposition of Napoleon
III, to interfere in your civil war for the purpose of
perpetuating the division between the North and the South. After
listening to this bold proposal of the French Emperor, Czar
Alexander, the man who had freed twenty-five million slaves in
one stroke of his pen, replied: "Tell your Emperor that the
United States is our friend and tell him also that it has the
same right to maintain a republican form of government as we have
to choose a monarchy. Tell him also that he must keep his hands
off and not meddle in its affairs for I will not allow anyone to
interfere on the other side of the Atlantic. He who strikes my
friend, strikes me." This answer in diplomatic language went the
same day to Paris and soon after Russian battleships arrived in
the harbors of New York and San Francisco. There are still men
and women who remember them. They used to wonder why the Russian
men-of-war were lying peacefully in American waters. President
Lincoln could have given the answer, for in a private message
from the Czar he had been assured of the friendship of the great
Eastern Empire. He knew that the commanders of the Russian ships
had secret orders to act in case of necessity.

But the American people have done more, for there came a morning
when the glorious winter sun of Russia greeted the Star-Spangled
Banner, when American ships landed on Russian shores ready to
protect us from a more cruel enemy--hunger. The cry of distress
from our famine-stricken villages had found an echo in American
hearts and the ships which came did not bear government orders,
they bore the tokens of love from one brother to another; they
brought us wheat and corn to feed our people.

Madame Friedland told of the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis to this
country and of the poem read by Oliver Wendell Holmes at a banquet
given in his honor, and closed: "Thus an American poet has expressed
the feelings of his countrymen and women. God bless the United States!
Long life to President Roosevelt and prosperity to you all! In the
days to come and the years to follow may our two great nations stand
side by side in harmony and peace. May the Star-Spangled Banner and
the Russian Doub