I well remember the
day that that silver-tongued orator, George William Curtis, made the
dedication address. But why is it that on this Hudson, which was first
ploughed by a Dutch keel, over which first of all a Dutch flag floated,
along this Hudson which was first discovered and explored and made
habitable by Dutch industry and Dutch thrift, there is no Dutch monument
to which we may proudly point as we pass by. There ought to be a statue
of that great Dutchman, William the Silent, on Riverside Drive. [Great
applause.] Do you ever think of him? Do you ever think of his career,
that of the prototype of our own Washington? At fifteen years of age the
companion of an emperor; at twenty-one years of age, the commander of a
great army, and later giving up wealth and pomp and power, preferring to
be among the people of God, than to dwell at ease in the tents of
wickedness; giving up everything for a life of tedious struggle in the
cold marshes of the Netherlands, finally to die at the hand of an
assassin with a prayer for his country upon his lips as he passed away.
He was the first human being on the face of this earth, who fairly and
fully understood the principles of religious and civic freedom. This
great city, the exemplifier of those principles to which it owes so much
for its prosperity and magnificence, has not yet commemorated that man.
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