Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1909 — NATION’S AIDS UNREWARDED [ARTICLE]

NATION’S AIDS UNREWARDED

Retiring Embassy Secretary Writes Letter. THANKS HIS BENEFACTORS Beys Government of the United States Doesn’t Give Even as Much as a Blue Ribbon to Those Who Give It Their Talent and the Beat Years of Their Lives —Hopes That What He Has Stated Will Create Interest In Bubjeetc. Paris, Feb. 26.—Henry Vignaud, first secretary of the American embassy, who resigned at the age of seventynine, after thirty-four years of service, has addressed a letter to the twenty prominent Americans whose generosity in subscribing a fund of $20,000 insures the last days of the veteran diplomat against want. In part the document reads: "To Levi P. Morton, Whitelaw Reid, T. Jefferson Coolidge, Henry White, James Gordon Bennett, Ferdinand Blumenthal, David Cahn, Coudert Brothers. Andrew Carnegie, .John H. Harjes, Alfred T. Heidelbach, S. de Jenge, Duke de Doubat, J. Pierpont Morgan, Munroe & Co., George R. Ostheimer, Seligman Brothers, Tiffany & Co., Edward Tuck and H. A. Van Bergen : x "The American government, having neither the right to bestow a pension upon its old servants, nor even that of honoring them with one of those bits of ribbon whereby the older governments of the world are enabled to show appreciation of faithful services, my retirement at my advanced age and without personal fortune might have placed me in a precarious situation —straitened circumstances, If not actual want “Your ‘generous initiative is bound to call attention to this grave question which remains unsolved for so many others, equally worthy of Interest”