It was very kind of the officers of this association to invite me to be your guest upon the occasion of your meeting in my old home. Nat Goodwin had a play in which in one of the leading roles he used to say: No matter where you go, when ever you leave New York you are camping out. That of course was the sentiment of an old New Yorker, but in a broader sense it is the sentiment of every man for the place that he regards as home. But that kind of attachment is not usually formed in the later years of life; it belongs to the home of o-ne's youth, to the scenes one first looked upon, the place where one knew his earlier friends. A man seems to have proprietary rights there, even if he does not own a foot of land. He is a charter member of the community; he is part of it and it becomes a part of him in a sense that is never true of any other place. The experiences of those impressionable years underlie and color all of the experiences of his life. And so it is that no other state will ever have the appeal for me that Iowa does, and that wherever I have been since I left Fort Dodge has been camping out.

I am always glad to come back to the state and the town. I am pleased to see the prosperity of the town. I have read with wonderment of the great sums that have been raised in the town and county for the Liberty loans and the war chari ties, and let me say that every Iowan abroad has been proud of the way the old state has gone over the top on the loans. I want to congratulate the bankers, who I know had a large part in the work.

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