other
forever. That was an experience for which all of us--for who of us
Germans who have come over here has not experienced it?--will be
perpetually thankful. That will never be forgotten.

*Friendship for Germany.*

But beautiful and noble as that was, your nation has furnished ours with
something still more unforgettable. In those horrible days of 1870, when
a great number of Germans were shut up in unfortunate Paris, the
American Ambassador assumed the care of them, and what America did at
that time she is again doing for all of our country--men who, surprised
in the enemy's country by the war, have been detained there. They are
intrusted to the special care of the American Ambassador, and we know
with as much certainty as though it were an actual fact already that
that care will be the best and the most loyal. That, my friends, is true
service of friendship, which is not mere convention but such as it is in
the Catechism: "Give us our daily bread and good friends." They belong
together.

But to answer the question why you are our good friends we must reflect
a little for the answer which we might have given a few days ago--"You
are our good friends as our blood relations"--alas! that answer no
longer holds. That is over! God grant that in later days we may again be
able to say it, but by a circumstance which has torn our very
heartstrings it has been proved that blood is not thicker than water.
But where then is the deep-lying reason for this friendship? Does it
rest in the fact that we have so many Germans over there; that they have
been received so cordially; that they have done so much for the building
up of America, soul and body, or that we find friends in so many
Americans on this side of the water? This is an important consideration,
but it is not the ultimate cause we are seeking.

My friends, when it is a powerful relationship, imbedded in rock as it
were, which is under consideration, then the matter is more than
superficial, and that which is at the bottom of this deeper fact,
history is at this very moment showing us as she writes in characters of
bronze before our eyes; because we have a common spirit which springs
from the very depths of our hearts, for that reason are we friends!

And what is that spirit? It is the spirit of the deep religious and
moral culture which has possessed us through a succession of centuries
and out of which this powerful American offshoot has sprung. To this
culture