Nation: A DIRKSEN SPEECH SAMPLER

Just before a Senate adjournment: The moving finger writes, and the fortuities of politics will probably result in change of some faces when we return in January . . . Old faces go and new faces come, but somehow, like Tennyson’s brook, the free Republic continues to go on with vitality, vigor and an energized faith, as it moves to newer heights and newer achievements for its people in the great moral climate of freedom … So an revoir. We shall see you on the home diamond somewhere; and when it is all over, all the healing waters will somehow close over our dissidence. and we shall go forward as a solid phalanx once more.

On Senate stalling against a civil rights bill: I remember the old ditty: “The King of France with 20,000 men / Went up the hill, and then came down again.” I have marched up the hill many times; I have marched down. God willing, if I am alive long enough. I suppose I will march up the hill again and march back down again. But when I reach the bottom of the hill, I will still be looking at the summit to see where I rightfully belong . . . One becomes weary in welldoing. The fire bell rang at 2 o’clock in the morning, 4 o’clock, 6 o’clock, midnight and 10 o’clock. While I was trying to woo Morpheus, suddenly that awful clang occurred, and I thought. “Goodness, who wants to go through all this again?” I do not want to go through it again. Why not take up the bill?

On Abraham Lincoln: In the American tradition, shining majestically, there are the Pilgrims and pioneers. Valley Forge and Gettysburg. the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In it. looming large, are William Penn and Daniel Boone. Washington and Paine. Zenger and Marshall, Jefferson and Jackson. In it are faith and hope, tears and laughter. And high in our tradition stands Abraham Lincoln. Can he be explained in any other wav than that he was an instrument of divine destiny? History is but the enfoldment of a divine pattern … If not this, it can only be materialistic drift. If there be a creative hand behind this universe, there must be a creative hand in its unfoldment and direction. Everything in it —sun, moon, stars, planets, their distances, the calibration so that people will neither freeze nor scorch to death, the procession of the seasons, man’s subsistence—all rise to testify to the amazing adjustments in the universe to preserve life. And surely the creative force would not provide it all in such meticulous detail and then ignore its ultimate destiny.

On Ireland: Good old Ireland! I have tried to hold up the flag for Ireland. I introduced a resolution to try to memorialize the whole wide world, if that could be done, to compel Great Britain to give to Ireland her undivided freedom. That is the way I feel. I take my freedom straight. I am like little Johnny. His teacher asked him. “How do you spell straight?” He said. “S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T.” The teacher then asked. “What does it mean?” He said. “Without ginger ale.” That is the way I take my freedom. I take it without ginger ale. I take it straight. So I am for the Irish people, who want their united freedom.

On flowers: Let us consider the gentle, multicolored pansies. They can be planted in the winter; and when spring comes, after the winter has ended, we find them with their beautiful dainty heads, helping to beautify the world. Then there is the daffodil, a hardy flower. I remember the little ode by Wordsworth: “Ten thousand saw I at a glance, / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” The dahlias always entrance the eye; but one must be careful lest the tiny shoots of the dahlias come up before the frost ends, in which case it is necessary to do the work all over again. Then there is the gentle petunia . . .