Extracts from Addresses 351
General Guy V. Henry: I, as an army officer, feel that I belong to
a body of educators. It is true we are not men of letters, but I feel that
the armies of the Allies have for years attempted to keep and give their
youths character, patriotism, uprightness, manly living; and I from
personal knowledge and from early foreign education know the ad-
vantages in associating our young men with the young men of other
countries. Therefore, speaking as a representative of the army, I wish
for the British Educational Mission the greatest success in its mission
of teaching the young men of our two great countries mutual under-
standing, respect, and affection.
Ex-President Peden: It is indeed a great pleasure to me to be present
here to-day and to welcome these representatives of our magnificent army
and these distinguished visitors from across the sea. Nor am I alone
in this feeling, for there lives not an American who would not be
glad to have a chance of welcoming a visitor from Great Britain,
especially when that American recalls how the British Navy has stood
between us and the war on our borders. We all recognize and ap-
preciate to the bottom of our hearts the circumstance that the wonder-
ful navy of Britain as a stone wall has kept the battle over there. Thanks
to its protection, our homes and our firesides have been safe, while the
war has raged in France and Belgium with such fierceness that, as I
am told, a single town within a brief period was taken as many as
fourteen times before the battle was finally settled.
These welcome visitors of ours have already heard a great deal about
the size of Texas, about the distance from the mouth of the Rio Grande
to the Panhandle, and from the Sabine to El Paso, and how this State,
if turned upon a pivot, would swing around and almost touch Chicago
on the north and Atlanta on the east. I desire to tell them of another
big thing about Texas, that perhaps they have not heard of, and that
is the bigness of her heart. Texas has been in this game from the
beginning. No one knows better than I how cheerfully her citizens
have responded to every war call. May I recite just one instance?
Last April, when wheat was so scarce, when flour was being virtually
rationed, and we were asking everybody not to eat more than fifty
per cent, of their customary amount of flour and to mix fifty per cent,
substitutes, up here just north of us old Grimes County said: “If
our boys in the trenches and our Allies want wheat flour that badly,
we will do without it entirely.” They passed resolutions to that effect,
and resolutions of a similar character began pouring into the Food
Administration until we were so impressed with that spirit of coopera-
tion and assistance and ready sacrifice that we put out a questionnaire