LOVE OF COUNTRY

Dan memorized and gave this dramatic reading when he was a 6th grader at Arizona School in Riverside, California.

DEFENSE OF HOFER, THE TYROLESE PATRIOT- Andreas Hofer

Hofer, a Tyrolese patriot, was captured and executed by Napoleon. At his trial he spoke as follows:

You ask what I have to say in my defense? --You, who glory in the name of France, who wander through the world to exalt the land of your birth. You demand how I could dare to arm myself against the invaders of my native rocks! Do y;ou confine the love of home to yourselves? The stars which glitter on your breasts, are they the recompense of servitude?
I see the smile of comptempt which curls your lips. You say : "This brute! He is a ruffian, a beggar!" " That patched jacket! That ragged cap! That rusty belt! Shall barbarians such as he close the pass against us, shower rocks on our heads, and single out our leader with unfailing aim? We must subdue these groveling mountaineers, who know not the joys and brilliance of life, creeping amidst eternal snows, and snatching with greedy hand thier stinted ear of corn."
Yet, poor as we are, we never envies our neighbors their with their smiling sun, their gilded palaces. We never strayed from ouar peaceful huts to blast the happiness of thos who hand not injured us. The travelers who visited our valleys met every hand outstretched to welcome him. For him every hearth blazed.To happy for ambition, we were not jealous of his wealth, and listened with delight to his tale of distant lands.
Frenchmen, you have wives and children. When your return to your beautiful cities, amidst the roar of trumpets, the smiles of the lovely and the shouts of mutitudes, they will ask; "Where have you roamed? What have you achieved? What have you brought back to us?"
When laughing children climb your knees, will you tell them:
We have pearced the barren crags; we have entered the naked cottage and leveled it to the ground; We found no treasures but honest hearts, and we broke them because they trobbed with love for their wild homes. Clasp this old firelock in you little hands. It was snatched from a peasant of Tyrol, who died in a vain attempt to stem the tide of our invasion!"
Oh Frendmen, seated by your firesides, will you boast to generous and happy wives that you extinguished the last ember that lighted our gloom?
What is death to me? I have not reveled in pleasures wrung from the innocent or want. Rough and discolored as these hands are, they are pure. We have rushed to the sacrifice, and the offering has been if vain for us. But our childred will burst these fetteres. The blood of virture was never shed in vain, and freedom can NEVER die. I have heard that you killed your king once because he enslaved you; yet now you crouch before a single man who bids you trample on all who abjure his yoke; and who shoots you if you have the courage to disobey. Do you think that, when I am dead, no other Hofer shall breath?
Dream you that, if today you prostate Hofer in the dust, tomorrow Hofer is no more?In the distance I see liberty which I shall not taste. Behind, I see my slaughtered country me, my orphans, my desolate fieldsl. But a star rises befpre my aching sight. which points to JUSTICE that shall come