Senate of U.S., Washington, 2nd of October 1963
“It is a great honour and privilege to welcome to the Senate an outstanding Head of State from the great continent of Africa. He governs a nation which is among the oldest, in a historic sense, in the world. It is also among the newest in its dynamic search for a more satisfying participation for all its people in the main-stream of progress in the second half of the 20th century.
The man whom I am to present to the Senate is the Emperor of an ancient land. He is also an exceptional international statesman whose constructive outlook has made a profound impression upon the contemporary councils of the world.
This man has been a living part of the great events of our times. He has experienced these events personally, and He has experienced them as the personification of a peaceful nation, determined to live its own life and to work out its own way of life. He and His nation were both caught up in the feaful tragedies, the high hopes, the illusions, and disillusions – in short, in the cataclysmic upheavals – of a globe in massive transition since the end of World War I. He has suffered much. He has risen above suffering with the wisdom which suffering alone brings; and he has triumphed, not in arrogance, not in vengeance, not in pride. His has been the enduring triumph of humility and a deep human understanding.
The Senate will remember his lonely appearance at the League of Nations in 1936. He spoke, then, from his heart, not only to save his people from invasion, but also to arrest the course of self-destruction upon which a smug, a glib, and an indifferent world was embarked. He was listened to, but He was not heeded. He was persuasive, but the nations of the world were not persuaded. And a few years later the smug, glib and indifferent world began to crumble about those who did not heed, who were not persuaded.
Once again, on Friday, our distinguished visitor will go to address the nations of the world, assembled in the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations. The times are different now; the faces are different; even the nations are different than they were when He appeared in Geneva almost 28 years ago. One would hope – and I am sure that it is a well-founded hope – that His words, enriched by these decades of tragedy and triumph and by profound personal experience, will find in that great assemblage of the world a deep response of heart and mind.”
