Perhaps it is not amiss to quote here a small portion of the speech delivered in Washington, D. C. by Hon. Joseph Scott of Los Angeles on the occasion of a banquet following the unveiling ceremonies of the memorial erected in honor of Christopher Columbus by Act of Congress. Among the speakers present at the banquet were Ex-President William Taft (then president), Cardinal Gibbons, Speaker Champ Clark, Ex-speaker Joseph Cannon, Congressman Underwood, Judge Victor Dowling of the Supreme Court of New York and many other notable men of the nation. "It affords me unbounded pleasure to have an opportunity to deliver an expression, feeble though it be, of the sentiments of the Knights of Columbus of the great West, and particularly of California, regarding the significance of this great day. Mr. John Barrett of the Pan-American Union has already given you food for sober thought in the parallel he has drawn of the marvelous activity and resourcefulness of the Latin-American republics. Possibly I may be permitted at this time to inject a suggestion that, despite the remarks of the previous speaker about Boston as the modern Athens and the seat of universal learning, "Modern Athens" has nothing in common with the memories aroused by contemplation of the events which we celebrate today. It may be well to tell our friends from New England that before the so-called Anglo-Saxon had set foot as a colonist upon the American soil, the followers of Columbus had penetrated into the heart of Kansas and gone down as far as Buenos Ayres. I want to lay stress upon the fact that we have not noted too emphatically today that it was the great Spanish race, with its strong and sterling faith, which accomplished this wonderful mission of civilization. Too long have we endured the stress of so-called history written by Prescott and others, some of whom ought to have been put in the Ananias club before they were born. For nearly three centuries the Spanish race, with its indomitable faith, pursued almost alone its mission of civilization and evangelization of the aborigines of America. Before the Pilgrim Fathers had landed on Plymouth Rock, the Catholic Spaniard had acquired a knowledge of the Indian language sufficient to enable him to translate the Bible into the Aztec Indian language, so that the new Indian neophyte could read the story of "God's greatest Book" in his mother tongue." The Courage of Catholic Spain