responses to speeches of welcome made by municipal officials on
railway platforms, or were replies to toasts at luncheons and dinners.
In Rome, Mayor Nathan gave a dinner in his honor in the Campidoglio,
or City Hall, which was attended by a group of about fifty men
prominent in Italian official or private life. On this occasion the
Mayor read an address of welcome in French, to which Mr. Roosevelt
made a reply touching upon the history of Italy and some of the
social problems with which the Italian people have to deal in common
with the other civilized nations of the earth. He began his reply in
French, but soon broke off, and continued in English, asking the Mayor
to translate it, sentence by sentence, into Italian for the assembled
guests, most of whom did not speak English. Both the speech itself and
the personality of the speaker made a marked impression upon his
hearers; and after his retirement from the hall in which the dinner
was held, what he said furnished almost the sole subject of animated
conversation, until the party separated. In Budapest, under the dome
of the beautiful House of Parliament, Count Apponyi, one of the great
political leaders of modern Hungary, on behalf of the Hungarian
delegates to the Inter-Parliamentary Union presented to Mr. Roosevelt
an illuminated address in which was recorded the latter's achievements
in behalf of human rights, human liberty, and international justice.
Mr. Roosevelt in his reply showed an intimate familiarity with the
Hungarian history such as, Count Apponyi afterwards said, he had never
met in any other public man outside of Hungary. Although entirely
extemporaneous, this reply may be taken as a fair exemplification of
the spirit of all his speeches during his foreign journey. Briefly, in
referring to some allusions in Count Apponyi's speech to the great
leaders of liberty in the United States and in Hungary, he asserted
that the principles for which he had endeavored to struggle during his
political career were principles older than those of George Washington