ting at Carnegie Hall, November 2, 1918, the Circle was
addressed by the late Theodore Roosevelt. On the platform also as
speakers were Emmett J. Scott, Irvin Cobb, Marcel Knecht, French High
Commissioner to the United States; Dr. George E. Haynes, Director of
Negro Economics, Department of Labor; Mrs. Adah B. Thorns,
Superintendent of Nurses at Lincoln hospital, and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois,
who presided.

Mr. Roosevelt reminded his hearers that when he divided the Nobel Peace
Prize money among the war charities he had awarded to the Circle for
Negro War Relief a sum equal to those assigned to the Y.M.C.A., the
Knights of Columbus, and like organizations.

"I wish to congratulate you," Mr. Roosevelt said, "upon the dignity
and self-restraint with which the Circle has stated its case in its
circulars. It is put better than I could express it when your
officers say: 'They, (the Negroes) like the boys at the front and
in the camps to know that there is a distinctly colored
organization working for them. They also like the people at home to
know that such an organization, although started and maintained
with a friendly cooperation from white friends, is intended to
prove to the world that colored people themselves can manage war
relief in an efficient, honest and dignified way, and so bring
honor to their race.

"The greatest work the colored man can do to help his race upward,"
continued Mr. Roosevelt, "is through his or her own person to show
the true dignity of service. I see in the list of your
vice-presidents and also of your directors the name of Colonel
Charles Young, and that reminds me that if I had been permitted to
raise a brigade of troops and go to the other side, I should have
raised for that brigade two colored regiments, one of which would
have had all colored officers. And the colonel of that regiment was
to have been Colonel Charles Young.

"One of the officers of the other regiment was to have been 'Ham'
Fish. He is now an officer of the 15th, the regiment of Negroes
which Mr. Cobb so justly has praised, and when 'Ham' Fish was
offered a chance for promotion with a transfer to another command,
I am glad to say he declined with thanks, remarking that he
'guessed he's stay with the sunburned Yankees.'"

A guest of honor at the meeting was Needham Roberts, who won his Croix
de Gu