 On June 4th
1928, Paul Harris made his first speech to
an
English
Rotary Club in Birmingham. His audience included
the President elect of
RIBI, Arthur Chadwick. In his welcome, the
Birmingham President, William Adams, said that they had heard a
good deal about the father and founder of Rotary, and it was a
great privilege to have him in the flesh and to welcome him. The
Rotary movement had grown to a tremendous degree in the few
years it had been in existence. In visiting the various clubs,
the Founder and others would agree that they had built better
than they knew. The spirit and goodwill and fellowship fostered
by Rotary had made Rotary universal.
Rotarian Paul
Harris, after thanking then for their wonderful reception, said
that he was happy in the fact that the Chairman had centred his
remarks rather round the movement which he represented than
around himself personally. During the past few years he had
visited clubs in many parts of the world, and been introduced in
various ways. When on a visit to a Bermuda club, the President,
in the course of the introduction, said Rotary had done a great
service in bringing out the qualities of men; in the atmosphere
of the clubs, the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker
were rapidly becoming speakers. "These men are sometimes teeming
with good ideas and information, " continued the President, "but
when they get up to talk, they cannot say a word. It is almost
precisely the opposite of that with Rotarians. They do not
appear much intellectually but at times, they do talk. It gives
me much pleasure to introduce Paul Harris, the Founder of that
movement."
Continuing, Rotarian Paul Harris drew an
interesting and almost pathetic picture of the "call of the
wild" which every true American feels at times - the call to
England. the longing to visit the Anglo- Saxon people on this
side of the great pond. He felt that call years ago , and
although he had only been in this country two weeks, had visited
many places of historic interest. He felt less inclined to speak
of the early days of Rotary than almost any other subject
because his mind was constantly projected forward, but he would
tell them some of the things responsible for Rotary in its
present form.
Really it was an offspring of his own New
England raising. He was brought up in one of the small New
England towns and as they knew, New England ultimately became
the cradle of American liberty. When he had finished his
institutional education he was possessed with a great longing to
see the world and particularly England.
Rotarian Paul Harris then described how he shipped from
Baltimore on a coal ship bound for Liverpool and later succeeded
in being made cattleman on a ship sailing to Tilbury Docks and
on each of those occasions he saw as much of England as was
possible in a very limited time. Finally, he had an
opportunity of travelling in rather more dignified style, and
during a six months' tour he visited England and Scotland and
Europe. Upon returning to America, he settled down in Chicago to
study the practice of law,
"It was with that kind of
history and such an experience as that", continued the speaker,
"that I called together the first meeting of the first Rotary
Club in the city of Chicago. We began calling each other by our
first names as though we all went back to the days of our
childhood and there was no formality about it."
Rotarian
Harris then traced the history of Rotary from that beginning
through America and Canada, then across to Liverpool, Glasgow,
London, Manchester, Birmingham and other cities. As he saw the
manifestations of Rotary everywhere, he became more and more
optimistic, and it needed no prophetic vision to see that the
time was not far distant when it would be established in every
civilised country throughout the world. It had been said to him
often by men that Rotary was the greatest influence that had
ever come into their lives, an women had frequently told him
that Rotary had transformed the family life of their husbands.
"Friendship is not an anaemic thing." concluded the speaker,
"It is capable of hurling itself over those barriers which men
have been building between each other through centuries of time.
I am not going to attempt to affect religious or national
feeling but I feel that there ought to be some place where men
can meet on a common plane, without respect to those other
considerations and I want my Rotary to be that sanctuary."
This speech is taken from 'Rotaria' the magazine of the
Birmingham
Club whose editor at the time was W. Unite Jones.
We are grateful to the club and to the then club archivist
Richard Austen for providing it.
Provided by RGHF senior
historian Basil Lewis,
UK and posted by RGHF founder
Jack Selway 5
February 2009
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