Most of us have passed far beyond the meridian of life, but I trust there is much usefulness in store for us yet. We should not content ourselves with the victories and honors of the past. The present and future have demands upon us. The welfare of our respective communities and States, as well as of our common country, calls for our continued labors in their behalf.

I shall always remember a remark made by my friend, Jerry R. Morton, of Lexington (one of Morgan’s men, and, for many years after the war, Circuit Judge of that district), who has passed on ahead of us, one day while we were in Canada together. We were walking along the Detroit River, and as we took in the broad landscape view that stretched out before us, and saw the United States flag floating from a fort below the city on the other side, he stopped and, pointing across the river, exclaimed: “I tell you, Stone, that’s a great country over yonder!” I acknowledged the correctness of his estimate of the American republic. Standing on foreign soil, poor, self-exiled Rebels as we were, we did not feel at liberty to call this our country then. But all of us have the right to call it our country today. With peace and prosperity throughout the land and all sections again united in fraternal feeling, we have, even in this progressive age, beyond question the greatest country in the world.

In the world war that has practically, if not entirely, closed, we know what our country did for the cause of human liberty. The boys in khaki went across the seas,—the descendants of those who wore the gray and those who wore the blue, and they turned the tide of battle against the foe. That is conceded. We are today looked up to by all the nations of Europe to bring about a Treaty of Peace, and a League of Nations, that will prevent, as far as possible, wars for the future. We have, in my opinion, dealing with that situation and laboring with it in Paris, as great a President as this country has ever had; and if he comes back home, as I believe he will, with this League of Nations secured, and a Treaty of Peace that shall do justice to all the belligerents, including our recent foes, as well as the other nations of the world, he will go down in history, in my opinion, as the greatest statesman of all time—Woodrow Wilson. May God bless him! [Great applause.]