Fulbright, James William

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1963
JAMES WILLIAM FULBRIGHT
to be Doctor of Laws

Senates are by derivation bodies old in wisdom. Their members are not, of course, implicitly either senile or Solomons. But in the inevitable comparison of the Senates of two great Republics -- the Roman Senate and the Senate of the United States -- history will record that collective experience was never translated into such practical wisdom as under the informed and courageous leadership of a Cicero or a Fulbright.

It may further record that both these statesmen had been up-country lads, who knew by a divine instinct the meaning and the power of education; who absorbed it to the full, and in their public life never ceased exemplifying it. Whereas the Senator from Arpinum was at home in the literature of Greece and his own country, the Senator from Arkansas has never considered sly doses of Plutarch, Lewis Carroll, Erasmus, and de Tocqueville unpalatable medicine for his Conscript Fathers or less august audiences. Most articulate when their nations' good was at stake, both made their appeal by the spoken word. If Fulbright with his more economical eloquence does not command the golden gush of Tully's prose, he has refrained from two extravagances of which the vainer Roman was incurably guilty -- self advertisement and writing poetry!

With Fulbright vision has always illumined the path of action, generally preceding the visions and actions of others. While still a Congressman, and on his own initiative, he introduced the five-line resolution looking beyond World War II and placing Congress on record as favouring his country's membership in a World Organization.

Two years before the creation of NATO, and three months before General Marshall broached his historic Plan, Fulbright had envisioned the Common Market and the federation of Europe.

To sum up this inadequate citation I shall borrow two statements which might serve as his monument. The first was spoken by the Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, to the one-time Rhodes Scholar, his former pupil: "Fulbright, you are responsible for the largest and most significant movement of scholars across the face of the earth since the fall of Constantinople". The second is Walter Lippman's: "The role he plays in Washington is an indispensable role. There is no one else who is so powerful and also so wise, and if there were any question of removing him from public life, it would be a national calamity."

I shall add only that the calamity would be international.

From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.