Honorable Mr. Eller,
About the middle of May in the year of 1357, while the Duke of Lancaster was besieging the town of Rennes during the interminable series of wars between the English and the French, a knight bachelor named Bertrand du Guesclin asked whether any Englishman would try a passage of arms with him. Accordingly, the battle was halted while a formal joust was held between Du Guesclin and Sir Nicholas Dagworth, consisting of three courses with spears, three strokes with axes, and three stabs with daggers. The two, according to the chronicler Froissart “behaved most gratuitously, and parted without hurting each other. They were seen with pleasure by both armies as examples of a truly decent and honest behavior.”
That principle, which today entails performing an public activity vigorously and yet courteously and either winning or losing gallantly, was the product of the human attitude toward intense respect for the rules of behavior between decent human beings.
In this world of ours we got it pounded into our heads that those standards are unnecesary and even non-existing entities. Being thankful for your unrestrained and indeed splendid efforts toward protection of these values, I am assuring you that you will have the everlasting support of this community. Your generous statement testifies to the people’s confidence in you and that intrinsic effort of yours.
As a tiny, poetically encircled reflective expression of my personal appreciation of your truly warm personal address, I am hereby making a quotation of a poem that is, I feel, most appropriative connotation of gratitude, as well as a true, old-fashioned reflection toward some good ole times.
[b]When I was just a tow-head kid
Not knowin’how things stood,
I got a lot of lessons boys
In telling bad from good.
The teachers tried and priest too
And dad would oft explain,
But none could reach me half as well
As cowboys like John Wayne.
They stood for truth and justice clear,
No cloudin’up with gray.
There was black or white, the wrong or right
In everything they say.
Their honesty and decency,
Their way of speaking plain
Are only part of what I owe
To cowboys like John Wayne.
I grew to love this country son,
Old Glory’s stars and stripes,
To stand up proud for what US were
And never quit a fight.
As I look at the world today
I wonder what became
Of those great values once we learned
From cowboys like John Wayne.
It seems like we’re all the villains now,
With no God, no pray, no shame.
Without decency and loyalty,
Without cowboys like John Wayne.
Dear Lord I pary we find ourselves
Before we go insane.
And may we live as they once lived,
Those cowboys like John Wayne.[/b]
May God bless you and keep you.
Hmm, fluten means to flood…
Indeed, my dear Mr. Drake, but on the other hand we have some almost standard poetical expressions: Die flutende Menge, or even better one: Das Volk flutet durch Die Straßen . On the other hand that word “voran” is pretty tricky to translate, thus allowing possibility for a misinterpretation.
