University of Notre Dame - Dome Yearbook (Notre Dame, IN)

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if historic foundations and deathless traditions count for anything. No one will deny that they do. Nor is all this a matter of bare historical facts alone. Over and above the facts, there is the spirit of the facts to be reckoned with, the French spirit, the French inspiration, as it acted on the minds and in the hearts of the founders of Notre Dame. Why did they come here? France sent them; and France sent them here. Can we imagine this Notre Dame of ours in Massachusetts? That was not the soil for it. This was. This was once French soil. The stamp of France is on it forever. The air we breathe is impregnated with the breath of the soul of France. And the soul of France is that Notre Dame whose name her sons perpetuated here in the Notre Dame of America. Once, in Notre Dame de Paris, I saw a memorable sight — all the Cardinals of France, all the Bishops, scores of priests, thousands of people, gathered around the Shrine of Our Lady to celebrate the coming of peace. The great organ thundered; the vaulted shadows trembled with the choral of hundreds of voices; silver trumpets blew a blast of heart-piercing, rejoic ing music; and over all, twined together on every pillar, the Tricolor and the Stars and Stripes floated in the shaken air. France and America wor ' shipped together — and my American heart stood still in the thrilling beauty of it all. Now, every June, when our graduates march slowly up the aisle, here in our Notre Dame, carrying Old Glory to the altar to be blessed, that feel ' ing surges through me again. Commingled and fused into one emotion, all that our Notre Dame means, all that the ancient Notre Dame of Paris means, comes over me: centre of the best that man ' s mind and heart can conceive; centre of worship, centre of learning, centre of patriotism; and at that moment I say, as I say often other times, Thank God for our traditions! Thank God for these traditions of Notre Dame, that make our University Church, our campus, our school, the home we live in during our college years, and all its environment, American in the highest and truest sense; historically American, because it is founded in the bedrock of our country ' s beginnings; spiritually American, because it was conceived and born of spiritual adventure — that basic force from which American life has sprung — the same force which animated and sustained the souls of those who built the first Notre Dame on the banks of the. Seine nearly a thousand years ago. CHARLES PHILLIPS

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world was contributing to the making of the first America. Here LaSalle and his troopers came blazing the trail through the wilderness. Here Denon ' ville made his grants. Here AUouez laid the cornerstone of Christianity in the West. Go to the old Log Chapel back of the little yellow brick house that was the first University of Notre Dame and ponder there the story of that AUouez; the story of Badin, the first priest to be ordained in the United States; the story of Petit and of de Seille. You are on soil that was once as French as the ground under Notre Dame de Paris. These are all French names, the names of men who spent their lives that the glory of the Notre Dame they loved might shine over the New World with the light of faith. Stand by the rock-built monument where Father Sorin and his companions stood, to found our Notre Dame, and still you are on old French soil; you are in the very heart of the French America of the Indian prairies. You are, in fact, within but a mile or two of where LaSalle forded the St. Joseph river; where Father Rebourde, as the story is told in Father Hennepin ' s diary, blazed a cedar tree to mark the way for whatever French adventurers might follow him. And tliat cedar tree is nearer still, preserved in the museum of the Northern Indiana Historical Society at South Bend, mute witness of the courage of hearts that first beat in the shadow of Notre Dame. And mark this strange coincidence: according to scientific judgment, that tree is some eight hundred years of age — the same age as -the Notre Dame from which we take our name. When we call the roll of those early days — LaSalle, Hennepin, Rebourde, AUouez;, La Hailandiere — France speaks in every syllable. The very ground that we call our campus was deeded to us by that La Hailandiere who was Bishop of Vincennes. Vincennes — Terre Haute — Gibault — it is such names as these, names linked forever with all that the name of Notre Dame means, that rim our horizon. And if we con the dates of our history, every one of them once more echoes France: 1679, — and we stand with LaSalle under the Council Tree — and it still stands, in Highland Park; 1690, and we see Father Aveneau establishing his mission at Fort St. Joseph; 1694, Denonville makes his grant, and makes it in the name of the King of France; 1686, most illustrious of all — Allouez builds his chapel, the furthest outpost and the first centre of Catholicity in the West, set up where the Red Man once prayed to his unknown gods, and set up by the selfsame Faith that built Notre Dame where pagan Roman and heathen Gaul had worshipped. From that date, whether we reckon forward or backward, we still remain within the radius of French tradition. The lineage of that tradition is unbroken, from Sorin back through Badin and Allouez — to France; from Sorin back to Moreau — to France. France — the very stones speak the name; France, Catholic France, Notre Dame! ' ■ ' ■ ' ' Also, and by grace of that same fact, our Notre Dame is American, if there be any such thing as American. It is as American as Plymouth Rock, .-•MUK

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