Excerpt from Speech by Hon. Chauncey M. Depew on His Eighty-Seventh Birthday at the Montauk Club, Brooklyn, April 30th, 1921: Being the 30th Annual Dinner Given Him by This Club

Speech by Hon. Chauncey M. Depew on his Eighty-seventh Birthday at the Montauk Club, Brooklyn, N. Y., April 30th, 1921, being the 30th Annual Dinner given him by this Club.

Mr. President and Friends: All of our meetings and greetings have been interesting. Some of them have had special significance. This, the thirtieth, marks an epoch. It is difficult to grasp the idea and visualize the recollections of thirty years of continuous celebrations of the birthday of a single individual. Necessarily, in the course of nature, most who were at our first dinner have joined the majority, but their places have been filled by their sons and new members, equally loyal to this original idea. It is a tribute to the continuance of friendships, under all conditions, favorable and unfavorable, and it is a monument to good fellowship.

The Untruth about Growing Selfishness

We hear so much of the growing selfishness of communities, of their jealousies, rivalries and competitions which separate them into hostile groups that we get a general idea that good fellowship and unselfish companionship have largely disappeared. Like most generalizations from narrow data, this is untrue. College fraternities for undergraduates were never so prosperous and never so homogeneous as they are now. The annual alumni meetings were never so largely attended, and never with such admirable results, both for the individual alumnus and Alma Mater. Our meeting here has no political, religious, sectional, trade or personal purpose. It is simply a significant proof that men of all creeds and professions can meet together and enjoy each other with hearty good will, and separate with better purposes for the welfare and prosperity of the community in which they live, of the state of which it is a part, of the country which represents it entire and of their associates.

It is an almost forgotten memory how often the country has gone to the dogs during these thirty years. The tragedy at the time of the crisis was that so many of our people had lost faith in the future.

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