The use of this text or audio material is subject to the TR American Patriot user agreement located at: TR American Patriot.com    

LIFE AND WORK OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL 

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

THE OFFICIAL MEMORIAL

Congress in Joint Session with Crowded Galleries Hears a Magnificent Tribute to Theodore Roosevelt from the Lips of Senator Lodge, His Long-Time Personal and Political Friend.
The Congress of the United States paid the last and greatest possible official honor to the memory of Theodore Roosevelt on Sunday, February 9, 1919, which had been dedicated as the official memorial day throughout the United States.

The huge hall of the House of Representatives was packed to capacity with members of the two branches of Congress, members of the Cabinet, the Supreme Court of the United States, the Diplomatic Corps, and officers of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.

Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, senior Senator from Massachusetts, held the absorbed attention of the officials and dignitaries on the floor of the House and of the packed galleries while he laid before them the life history of Colonel Roosevelt.

Senator Lodge traced the remarkable rise of the sickly boy through his college days, when by sheer will power he made himself an athlete, to the height of power and honor to which he rose while still a young man. In a little more than an hour he sketched the principal points in the remarkable life history of the ex-President, touching  on his election to the New York State Assembly a year after his graduation from Harvard; his life in the West after that; his political activities up until the time he was made Civil Service Commissioner and the upheavals and reforms he forced in that service; his record as chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City; the record he made as Assistant Secretary of the Navy; as one of the organizers of the Rough Riders; his administration as Governor of New York, and his seven years in the White House.

Senator Lodge dwelt also on the many achievements of Colonel Roosevelt outside his public career, paying the superlative tribute to him as a statesman, a public servant and his friend.

"Had No Secrets from the People" With a firm voice throughout the Senator depicted the long and hard fight made by Colonel Roosevelt and Representative Augustus P. Gardner (Massachusetts), a Major in the army at the time of his death, for putting the United States on its guard and preparing itself for war. Only at this point and one other did the least trace of bitterness creep into the Senator's voice. Major Gardner was Senator Lodge's son-in-law.

In only one sentence was it possible to read into the Senator's eulogy the least tinge of partisanship or comparison of President Wilson with Theodore Roosevelt— when he declared that Colonel Roosevelt when President "had no secrets from the American people."

Representative Nicholas Longworth (Ohio), Colonel Roosevelt's son-in-law, did not sit in the gallery reserved for members of the Roosevelt family. Mrs. Longworth, General and Mrs. Macauley, and Mrs. Douglas Robinson (the Colonel's sister) were the only representatives of the family there.   Mr. Longworth occupied a place among his colleagues of the House.

Impressive But Simple

The ceremonies, tremendously impressive, at the same time were simple in the extreme.

Promptly at 3 o'clock Speaker Clark's gavel fell and the House was declared in session. Immediately announcement was made of the presence of the Senate and the Senators led by Vice-President Marshall filed in two by two and silently took seats in the first four rows at the left of the Speaker's rostrum, the Vice-President taking Ms place by Speaker Clark. Next General March, Chief of Staff of the Army, accompanied by Generals Crowder, Seibert, Black and Squier, Bear Admirals Fletcher, Blue, Winslow and McKean of the Navy and Brigadier-General Lauchheimer of the Marine Corps were announced, and filed to their seats at the opposite side of the House.

The Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court next were conducted to their seats directly in front of the rostrum.

Announcement was then made of the members of the Cabinet. When it was seen that the heads of only six of the ten executive departments of government had seen fit to be present and pay this last respect to the memory of the former President, one of the few jarring notes of the solemn occasion was distinctly noticeable. Acting Secretary of State Polk and the Secretaries of the Interior, Treasury, War, Navy, and Commerce took their seats.

The absent Cabinet members were Postmaster-General Burleson, Secretary of Agriculture Houston, Secretary of Labor Wilson, and Attorney-General Gregory. 
Just before the Diplomatic Corps were ushered into the House, former President William Howard Taft, once Theodore Roosevelt's close friend and the premier of his Cabinet, later his political enemy, but in the last years of the Colonel's life again his friend, was announced. As Mr. Taft walked down the center aisle to the seat assigned him a wave of applause swept Senate and House members. Mr. Taft sa|; beside Senator Martin (Virginia), the Democratic Senate leader.

Nations of Earth Represented

Lastly, the representatives in America of practically every civilized nation of the world filed in and took their seats.

The diplomats present were: Spain, Ambassador Riano; Mexico, Ambassador Bonillas; Japan, Ambassador Ishii; Chili, Ambassador Mathieu; Portugal, Envoy Extraordinary De Alte; Bolivia, Minister Calderon; Norway, Minister Bryn; Guatemala, Minister Mindez; Sweden, Minister Ekengren; Denmark, Minister Brun; Siam, Minister Karavongse.

Other countries were represented as follows: Venezuela, Minister Dominici; Bulgaria, Minister Panaretoff; Salvador, Minister Zaldivar; Ecuador, Minister Elizalde; Colombia, Minister Ureuti; Honduras, Minister Guiter-rez; Dominican Republic, Minister Galivan; Nicaragua, Minister Chomorro; Paraguay, Minister Gomdra; Netherlands, Minister Cremei-; Peru, Minister Tedula; Serbia, Secretary of Legation Simitch; Great Britain, Henry Getty Chilton, Secretary of Embassy, and Sir Henry Babbington Smith; Argentina, Counsellor Quintana; Brazil, Counsellor Moreira; Italy, Secretary of Embassy Di Valentine; France, Counsellor De Chambrun; Rou-mania, Secretary of Legation Lahocary; Panama, First Secretary of Legation Lefevre; Hayti, Secretary of Legation Blanchot; China, Counsellor Yung Kwai; Montenegro, Secretary of Legation Matanovitch; Uruguay, Secretary of Legation De Pena; Cuba, Second Secretary of Legation Brull; Switzerland, Commercial Adviser Oederfing-; Russia, Baron Gunzburg; Belgium, Counsellor Symon; Persia, Mr. Baabe.

Invocation by the Chaplain

As the diplomats took their seats the gavel in the hand of the Vice-President fell and the Rev. Henry N. Couden, the blind chaplain of the House, arose and said:

"We are here in memory of one of the nation's noblest sons, a writer, a speaker, a scientist, a patriot, a soldier, a statesman. We respect him because he respected his country. We love him because he loved her people. We honor him because he honored and revered her sacred institutions and would have poured out his heart blood to uphold and sustain them. A Christian ever turning with faith and confidence to his God for strength and guidance—God, help us to cherish his memory, emulate his virtues, that we may leave a record well pleasing in Thy sight.

"Let Thy kingdom possess our hearts that we may hallow Thy name, our God and our Father. Amen.''

The Marine Band then played one of the favorite hymns of the great American in honor of whose memory the ceremonies were held, "How Firm a Foundation." As the last strains of the hymn died away Vice-President Marshall introduced Senator Lodge, and the Senator immediately began his eulogy.

Senator Lodge's Address
The Senator, who knew Colonel Roosevelt from the latter's college days, spoke first of the effect upon the world of the tidings of his death—'' the cry of sorrow came from men and women of all conditions, high and low, rich and poor, from the learned and the ignorant, from the multitude who had loved and followed him, and from those who had opposed and resisted him." Senator Lodge continued:

"We can not approach Theodore Roosevelt along the beaten paths of eulogy or satisfy ourselves with the empty civilities of commonplace funereal tributes, for he did not make his life journey over main travelled roads nor was he ever commonplace. Cold and pompous formalities would be unsuited to him who was devoid of affectation, who was never self-conscious, and to whom posturing to draw the public gaze seemed not only repellant but vulgar. He had that entire simplicity of manners and modes of life which are the crowning result of the highest culture and the finest nature. Like Cromwell, he would always have said, 'Paint me as I am.' In that spirit, in his spirit of devotion to truth's simplicity, I shall try to speak of him today in the presence of the representatives of the great Government of which he was for seven years the head.''
KEPT PEACE  WITHOUT  THREATS

In sketching Colonel Roosevelt's life, Mr. Lodge said of the Presidential period: "Those who were alarmed about what he might do had also suggested that with his combative propensities he was likely to involve the country in war. Yet there never has been an administration, as afterwards appeared, when we were more perfectly at peace with all the world, nor were our foreign relations ever in danger of producing hostilities. But this was not due in the least to the adoption of a timid or yielding foreign policy; on the contrary, it was owing to the firmness of the President in all foreign questions and the knowledge which other nations soon acquired that President Roosevelt was a man who never threatened unless he meant to carry out the threat, the result being that he was not obliged to threaten at all."

   It was the Senator's opinion that in the Panama Canal President Roosevelt "left the most enduring, as it was the most visible monument of his administration.''
   
"Much criticised at the moment for his action, in regard to it, which time since then has justified and which history will praise, the great fact remains that the canal is there," Senator Lodge said. '' He said himself that he made up his mind it was his duty to establish the canal and have the debate about it afterwards, which seemed to him better than to begin with indefinite debate and have no canal at all. This is a view which posterity both at home and abroad will accept and approve."

HIS  GREAT  PERSONAL  STRENGTH

This was the speaker's comment on the election of 1912, when Colonel Roosevelt led the Progressives:

"There never has been in political history, when all conditions are considered, such an exhibition of extraordinary personal strength. To have secured eighty-eight electoral votes when his own party was hopelessly divided, with no great historic party names and tradition behind him, with an organization which had to be hastily brought -together in a few weeks seems almost incredible, and in all his career there is no display of the strength of his hold upon the people equal to this.''

Coming to Colonel Roosevelt's service to the country during the war and the loss of his son, Quentin, Senator Lodge said:

"He would have had us protest and take action at the very beginning in 1914 when Belgium r:as invaded. He would have had us go to war when the murders of the Lusitania were perpetrated. He tried to stir the soul and rouse the spirit of the American people, and despite every obstacle he did awaken them, so that when the hour came, in April, 1917, a large proportion of the American people were even then ready in spirit and in hope.

"How telling his work has been was proved by the confession of his country's enemies, for when he died the only discordant note, the only harsh words, came from the German press. Germany knew whose voice it was that had more powerfully than any other called Americans to the battle in behalf of freedom and civilization.''

Because he was not permitted to go to Europe at the head of a body of soldiers, said Mr. Lodge, Colonel Roosevelt "was denied the reward which he would have ranked above all others, the great prize of death in battle.'' He continued:

PATRIOT IN EVERT FIBRE

"But he was a patriot in every fibre of his being, and personal disappointment in no manner slackened or cooled his zeal. Everything that he could do to forward the war, to quicken preparation, to stimulate patriotism, to urge on efficient action, was done. Day and night, in season and out of season, he never ceased his labors. Although prevented from going to France himself, he gave to the great conflict that which was far dearer to him than his own life. I cannot say that he sent his four sons, because they all went at once, as every one knew that their father's sons would go. Two have been badly wounded; one was killed. He met the blow with the most splendid and unflinching courage, met it as Siward the Earl of Northumberland receives in the play the news of his son's death:

Siw.    Had he his hurts before?
Boss.    Ay, on the front.
Siw.    Why then, God's soldier be hel Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death: And so his knell is knoll'd.

"Among the great tragedies of Shakespeare, and there are none greater in all the literature of man, Macbeth was Colonel Roosevelt's favorite, and the moving words which I have just quoted I am sure were in his heart and on his lips when he faced with stern resolve and self-control the anguish brought to him by the death of his youngest boy, killed in the glory of a brave and brilliant youth.

"There was no hour down to the end when he would not turn aside from everything else to preach the doctrine of Americanism, of the principles and the faith upon which American Government rested and which all true Americans should wear in their heart of hearts. He was a great patriot, a great man; above all a great American. His country was the ruling, mastering passion of his life from the beginning even unto the end.

AS A WHITER AND SPEAKER

'' Let me speak first of his abilities. He had a powerful, well trained, ever active mind. He thought clearly, independently and with originality and imagination. These great gifts were sustained by an extraordinary power of acquisition, joined to a greater quickness of apprehension, a greater swiftness in seizing upon the essence of a question than I have ever happened to see in any other man. His reading began with natural history, then went to general history and thence to the whole field of literature. He had a capacity for concentration which enabled him to read with remarkable rapidity anything which he took up, if only for a moment, and which separated him for the time being from everything going on about him. "He made himself a writer not only of occasional addresses and essays but of books. He had the trained thoroughness of the historian, as he showed in his history of the war of 1812 and of the ' Winning of the West,' and nature had endowed him with that most enviable of gifts, the faculty of narrative and the art of the teller of tales. At the same time he made himself a public speaker, and here again, through a practice probably unequalled in amount, he became one of the most effective in all our history. In speaking, as in writing, he was always full of force and vigor; he drove home his arguments and never was misunderstood. In many of his more carefully prepared addresses are to be- found passages of impressive eloquence, touched with imagination and full of grace and feeling.

'' He had a large capacity for administration, clearness of vision, promptness of decision and a thorough apprehension of what constituted efficient organization. He could not have done all these things unless he had had most exceptional natural abilities, but behind them was the driving force of an intense energy and the ever present belief that a man could do what he willed to do. As he made himself an athlete, a horseman, a good shot, a bold explorer, so he made himself an exceptionally successful writer and speaker.

POWER TO  HOLD ATTENTION

'' His also was the rare gift of arresting attention sharply and suddenly, a very precious attribute and one easier to illustrate than to describe. This arresting power is like a common experience, which we have all had on entering a picture gallery, of seeing at once and before all others a single picture among the many on the walls. For a moment you see nothing else, although you may be surrounded with masterpieces. In that particular picture lurks a strange, capturing, gripping fascination as indescribable as it is unmistakable. Roosevelt had this same arresting, fascinating quality. Whether in the Legislature at Albany, the Civil Service Commission at Washington or the Police Commission in New York; whether in the Spanish war or on the plains among the cowboys, he was always vivid, never to be overlooked.

'' Men follow also most readily a leader who is always there before them, clearly visible and just where they expect him. They are especially eager to follow a man who never sounds a retreat. Roosevelt was always advancing, always struggling to make things better, to carry some much needed reform and help humanity to a larger chance, to a fairer condition, to a happier life. Moreover, he looked always for an ethical question. He was at his best when he was fighting the battle of right against wrong. He thought soundly and wisely upon questions of expediency or of political economy, but they did not rouse him or bring him the absorbed interest of the eternal conflict between good and evil. Yet he was never impractical, never blinded by counsels of perfection, never seeking to make the better the enemy of the good.

"He wished to get the best, but he would strike for all that was possible even if it fell short of the highest at which he aimed. He studied the lessons of history and did not think the past bad simply because it was the past, or the new good solely because it was new. He sought to try all questions on their instrinsic merits, and that was why he succeeded in advancing, in making government and society better where others, who would be content with nothing less than an abstract perfection, failed. He would never compromise a principle, but he was eminently tolerant of honest difference of opinion. He never hesitated to give generous credit where credit seemed due, whether to friend or opponent, and in this way he gathered recruits and yet never lost adherents.

FRANK IN ALL COMPANIES

"The criticism most commonly made upon Theodore Roosevelt was that he was impulsive and impetuous, that he acted without thinking. He would have been the last to claim infallibility. His head did not turn when fame came to him and choruses of admiration sounded in his ears, for he was neither vain nor credulous. He knew that he made mistakes, and never hesitated to admit them to be mistakes and to correct them or put them behind him when satisfied that they were such. But he never wasted time in mourning, explaining, or vainly regretting them.

" It is also true that the middle way did not attract him. He was apt to go far, both in praise and censure, although nobody could analyze qualities and balance them justly in judging men better than he. He felt strongly, and as he had no concealments of any kind, he expressed himself in like manner. But vehemence is not violence nor is earnestness anger, which a very wise man defined as a brief madness. It was all according to his nature, just as .his eager cordiality in meeting men and women, his keen interest in other people's cares or joys, was not assumed, as some persons thought who did not know him. It was all profoundly natural, it was all real, and in that way and in no other was he able to meet and greet his fellow men. He spoke out with the most unrestrained frankness at all times and in all companies.

'' Not a day passed in the Presidency when he was not guilty of what the trained diplomatist would call indiscretion. But the frankness had its own reward. There never was a President whose confidence was so respected or with whom the barriers of honor which surround private conversation were more scrupulously observed.

"As a matter of fact, what Theodore Roosevelt was trying to do was to strengthen American society and American Government by demonstrating to the American people that he was aiming at a larger economic equality and a more generous industrial opportunity for all men, and that any combination of capital or of business which threatened the control of the Government by the people who made it was to be curbed and resisted, just as he would have resisted an enemy who tried to take possession of the city of Washington.

'' He had no hostility to a man because he had been successful in business or because he had accumulated a fortune. If a man had been honestly successful and used his fortune wisely and beneficently, he was regarded by Theodore Roosevelt as a good citizen. The vulgar hatred of wealth found no place in his heart. He had but one standard, one test, and that was whether a man, rich or poor, was an honest man, a good citizen, and a good American. He tried men, whether they were men of big business or members of a labor union, by their deeds and in no other way. The tyranny of anarchy and disorder, such as is now desolating Russia, was as hateful to him as any other tyranny, whether it came from an autocratic system like that of Germany or from the misuse of organized capital. Personally he believed in every man earning his own living, and he earned money and was glad to do so, but he had no desire or taste for making money, and he was entirely indifferent to it. The simplest of men in his own habits, the only thing he really would have liked to have done with ample wealth would have been to give freely to the many good objects which continually interested him.

HIS  POWER  OVER  MEN

"Theodore Roosevelt's power, however, and the main source of all his achievements, was not in the offices which he held, for those offices were to him only opportunities, but in the extraordinary hold which he established and retained over great bodies of men. He had the largest personal following ever attained by any man in our history. Let me define what I mean by personal following. I do not mean the following which comes from great political office or from party candidacy. There have been many men who have held the highest offices in our history by the votes of their fellow countrymen who have never had anything more than a very small personal following.

"By personal following is meant here that which supports and sustains and goes with a man simply because he is himself; a following which does not care whether their leader and chief is in office or out of office, which is with him and behind him because they, one and all, believe in him and love him and are ready to stand by him for the sole and simple reason that they have perfect faith that he will lead them where they wish and where they ought to go.

'' This following Theodore Roosevelt had, as I have said, in a larger degree than any one in our history, and the fact that he had it and what he did with it for the welfare of his fellow men have given him his great place and his lasting fame.

"This extraordinary popular strength was not given to him solely because the people knew him to be honest and brave, because they were certain that physical fear was an emotion unknown to him, and that his moral courage equalled the physical. It was not merely because they thoroughly believed him to be sincere. All this knowledge and belief, of course, went to making his popular leadership secure; but there was much more in it than that, something that went deeper, basic elements which were not upon the surface. They were due to qualities of temperament interwoven with his very being, inseparable from him and yet subtle rather than obvious in their effects.

HIS   SENSE   OF   HUMOE

"Very different, but equally compelling, was another quality. There is nothing in human beings at once so sane and so sympathetic as a sense of humor. This great gift the good fairies conferred upon Theodore Roosevelt at his birth in unstinted measure. No man ever had a more abundant sense of humor— joyous, irrepressible humor—and it never deserted him. Even at the most serious and even perilous moments if there was a gleam of humor anywhere he saw it and rejoiced and helped himself with it over the rough places. He loved fun, loved to joke and chaff, and, what is more uncommon, greatly enjoyed being chaffed himself. His ready smile and contagious laugh made countless friends and saved him from many an enmity. Even more generally effective than his humor was the universal knowledge that Roosevelt had no secrets from the American people.

"Yet another quality—perhaps the most engaging1 of all— was his homely, generous humanity which enabled him to speak directly to the primitive instincts of man.

He dwelt with the tribes of the marsh and moor,
He sate at the board of kings; 
He tasted the toil of the burdened slave
And the joy that triumph brings.
 But whether to jungle or palace hall
Or white walled tent he came, 
He was brother to king and soldier and slave,
His welcome was the same.

"He was very human and intensely American, and this knit a bond between him and the American people which nothing could ever break. And then he had yet one more attraction, less serious than the others, but none the lass very important and very captivating. He never by any chance bored the American people. They might laugh at him or laugh with him, they might like what he said or dislike it, they might agree with him or disagree with him, but they were never wearied of him and he never failed to interest them.

A KNIGHT IN HIS DAILY LIFE

'' He had a touch of the knight errant in his daily life, although he would never have admitted it; but it was there. It was not visible in the mediaeval form of shining armor and dazzling tournaments but in the never ceasing effort to help the poor and the oppressed, to defend and protect women and children, to right the wronged and succor the downtrodden. Passing by on the other side was not a mode of travel through life ever possible to him, and yet he was as far distant from the professional philanthropist as could well be imagined, for all he tried to do to help his fellow men he regarded as part of the day's work to be done and not talked about.

"When the future historian traces Theodore Roosevelt's extraordinary career he will find these embodied ideals planted like milestones along the road over which he marched. They never left him. His ideal of public service was to be found in his life, and as his life drew to its close he had to meet his ideal  of sacrifice face to face. All his sons went from him to the war and one was killed upon the field of honor. Of all the ideals that lift men up the hardest to fulfill is the ideal of sacrifice. Theodore Roosevelt met it as he had all others and fulfilled it to the last jot of its terrible demands. His country asked the sacrifice and he gave it with solemn pride and uncomplaining lips.

'' This is not the place to speak of his private life, but within
that sacred circle no man was ever more fortunate in the utter
devotion of a noble wife and the passionate love of his children.
The absolute purity and beauty of his family life tell us why
the pride and interest which his fellow countrymen felt in him
were always touched with the warm light of love. In the home so
dear to him, in his sleep, death came, and	

"So Valiant-for-Truth passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."

No words at present command could add to the tribute thus feelingly uttered in the halls of Congress by Senator Lodge, true friend and fidus Achates of Theodore Roosevelt with a friendship akin to that of David and Jonathan, or that of Damon and Pythias. And as the distinguished gathering at Washington responded to the sentiments of Senator Lodge, his glowing tribute to his departed friend was echoed far and near, in the voices of a nation's spokesmen, from New York to San Francisco, from Chicago to New Orleans—until a mighty chorus of universal tribute to Roosevelt rose to high heaven on that Sabbath afternoon, and it proclaimed:

'' He was a man, a great man, and the friend of man; but above all else he was a great American, the greatest of his day and generation." 

THE END

[The total number of pages in this book is 512, including 64 pages of illustrations, which are not marked by folio numbers, and 448 pages of numbered text] 

A concluding word from Robert J. Kuniegel
TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.  Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people.  He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.  We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government. 

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.  A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.  Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive.  It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.  Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.  He was a visionary.  He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.  He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.  His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.  His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations. 

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.  It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.  His message is an example, clearly defined.  It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.  Join the good fight today.  You only need to read and interest others to do the same.  

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read. ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt.  It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”.  Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.  America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.  The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.  Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.