Speech #610144193

I have said to the people of his district. who are my neighbors and friends. and I repeat here. that the sixth district of Missouri is one of the most. if not the most. distinctively American districts In the United States. It is the typical American district. animated by American Ideals. cherishing the heritage of American liberty. unfaltering In Its allegiance to the fundamental American principle of equal rights and local selfgovernment. The people of that district are Americans. with less Intermixture of recent foreign immigration than possibly any other district in the United States. It is such a district which chose Judge DE ARMOND as its leader and Representative. and well he filled such a position. In the Congress of the United States he stood out conspicuously as the most American of Americans. That great body contains.. as it should. typical representatives of every section of this great Nation. men who express the ideals of Puritan New England. men who are typical of the chivalric knighthood of the old South. men who bring to us the adventurous spirit of the pioneer West. men who embody the commercial greatness of the busy marts of trade. men who have all the hopes and views and sympathies of the newer American citizens. who constantly are enriching our national life. Among all these men. so aptly and fittingly representing the varied phases of a great nation. I place Judge Dr ARMOND as the clearcut type of that broad stream of Americanism which extends like a great golden band from the Alleghenies across the Mississippi Valley. and which historians have come to regard as the leavening influence which enters into the great. undigested mass of emigration and turns it into an orderly body of American citizenship. burning with a high patriotism unknown and unknowable in any other land. The American Congress is full of strong men. men who by their personality. native ability. and force of character have made themselves conspicuous among the thousands of their fellowcitizens who constitute a great congressional district. Among such strong men of strong personalities this little giant of the sixth Missouri district towered to a conspicuous place.