Some of the English newspapers, while generally approving of the
Sorbonne address, expressed the feeling that it contained some
platitudes. Of course it did; for the laws of social and moral health,
like the laws of hygiene, are platitudes. It was interesting to have a
French engineer and mathematician of distinguished achievements, who
discussed with me the character and effect of the Sorbonne address,
rather hotly denounce those who affected to regard Mr. Roosevelt's
restatement of obvious, but too often forgotten truth, as
platitudinous. "The finest and most beautiful things in life," said
this scientist, "the most abstruse scientific discoveries, are based
upon platitudes. It is a platitude to say that the whole is greater
than a part, or that the shortest distance between two points is a
straight line, and yet it is upon such platitudes that astronomy, by
aid of which we have penetrated some of the far-off mysteries of the
universe, is based. The greatest cathedrals are built of single blocks
of stone, and a single block of stone is a platitude. Tear the
architectural structure to pieces, and you have nothing left but the
single, common, platitudinous brick; but for that reason do you say
that your architectural structure is platitudinous? The effect of Mr.
Roosevelt's career and personality, which rest upon the secure
foundation of simple and obvious truths, is like that of a fine
architectural structure, and if a man can see only the single bricks
or stones of which it is composed, so much the worse for him."

Of the addresses included in this volume the next in chronological
order was that on "International Peace," officially delivered before
the Nobel Prize Committee, but actually a public oration spoken in the
National Theatre of Christiania, before an audience of two or three
thousand people. The Norwegians did everything to make the occasion a
notable one. The streets were almost impassable from the crowds of