[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 31 (Thursday, February 16, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2815-S2816]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      SENATOR J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I was sworn in as a Member of this body on 
January 7, as I recall, 1959, the 1,579th Member to have been elected 
or appointed to the Senate since its beginning on March 4, 1789. As of 
today, 1,826 men and women have borne the title of United States 
Senator. When I came to the Senate, some of the other Members were 
Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico, Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, 
Paul Douglas of Illinois, Allen Ellender of Louisiana, Hubert Humphrey 
of Minnesota, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, 
Richard Russell of Georgia, Lister Hill of Alabama, George Aiken of 
Vermont, Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, Carl Hayden of Arizona, 
Wayne Morse of Oregon, Harry Flood Byrd, Sr. of Virginia, Spessard 
Holland of Florida, Henry Jackson of Washington, John F. Kennedy of 
Massachusetts, William Langer of North Dakota, Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, 
and others, including J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.
  All of these men have now passed from this earthly stage and gone on 
to their eternal reward. The last of these whom I have mentioned, Bill 
Fulbright, died last week.
  J. William Fulbright was born in Sumner, MO, on April 9, 1905, and 
moved with his parents to Fayetteville, AR, the following year. He 
attended the public schools in Arkansas and graduated from the 
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 1925; as a Rhodes Scholar 
from Oxford University, England, in 1928, and from the Law Department 
of George Washington University, here in Washington, DC, in 1934. He 
was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1934, and served as an 
attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, in 
1934-1935. He was an instructor in law at the George Washington 
University in 1935, and he was a lecturer in law at the University of 
Arkansas during the years 1936-1939. He served as President of the 
University of Arkansas from 1939 to 1941. He was engaged in the 
newspaper business, in the lumber business, in banking, and in farming, 
and was elected as a Democrat to the 78th Congress, where he served 
from January 3, 1943, to January 3, 1945. He was not a candidate for 
renomination to the House, but was elected to the United States Senate 
in 1944, and re-elected in 1950, 1956, 1962, and in 1968, where he 
served until his resignation on December 31, 1974. He was an 
unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1974. He served on the 
Committee on Banking and Currency in the Senate and on the Committee on 
Foreign Relations.
  Bill Fulbright was an outstanding Senator. He served with many other 
outstanding Senators, some of whom I have named as having ended their 
sojourn in this early life, and there were other extraordinary men such 
as John Pastore of Rhode Island, Mike Mansfield of Montana, and Russell 
Long of Louisiana, all of whom are still among the living. But I have 
taken the floor today to say that one by one, the old landmarks of our 
political life have passed away. One by one, the links which connect 
the glorious past with the present have been sundered.

     ``Passing away!
     'Tis told by the leaf which chill autumn breeze,
     Tears ruthlessly its hold from wind-shaken trees;
     'Tis told by the dewdrop which sparkles at morn,
     And when the noon cometh
     'Tis gone, ever gone.''

  It was my pleasure to serve with Senator Fulbright. I always held him 
in the highest esteem. He was a gentleman with great courage and 
unwavering patriotism, a wise and courageous statesman, affable in his 
temperament, and regarded as one of the outstanding lawyers in the 
Senate and one of the best informed upon questions regarding 
international affairs. He was both morally and intellectually honest, 
simple in his habits, and devoid of all hypocrisy and deceit. He never 
resorted to the tricks of a demagog to gain favor and, although he was 
a partisan Democrat, he divested himself of partisanship when it came 
to serving the best interests of his country. Peace to his ashes!

     The potentates on whom men gaze
     When once their rule has reached its goal,
     Die into darkness with their days.
     But monarchs of the mind and soul,
     With light unfailing, and unspent,
     Illumine flame's firmament.

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other great Grecian and Roman 
philosophers, by pure reason and logic arrived at the conclusion that 
there is a creating, directing, and controlling divine power, and to a 
belief in the immortality of the human soul. Throughout the ages, all 
races and all peoples have instinctively so believed. It is the basis 
of all religions, be they heathen, Mohammedan, Hebrew, or Christian. It 
is believed by savage tribes and by semi-civilized and civilized 
nations, by those who believe in many gods and by those who believe in 
one God. Agnostics and atheists are, and always have been, few in 
number. Does the spirit of man live after it has separated from the 
flesh? This is an age-old question. We are told in the Bible that when 
God created man from the dust of the ground, ``He breathed into his 
nostrils 
[[Page S2816]] the breath of life, and man became a living soul.''
  When the serpent tempted Eve, and induced her to eat of the forbidden 
fruit of the tree of knowledge, he said to her, ``ye shall not surely 
die.''
  Job asked the question, ``If a man die, shall he live again?'' Job 
later answered the question by saying, ``Oh, that my words were written 
and engraved with an iron pen upon a ledge of rock forever, for I know 
that my redeemer liveth and someday He shall stand upon the Earth; and 
though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I 
see God; whom I shall see for myself and
 mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins''--meaning my 
heart, my kidneys, my bodily organs--``be consumed within me.''

  Scientists cannot create matter or life. They can mould and develop 
both, but they cannot call them into being. They are compelled to admit 
the truth uttered by the English poet Samuel Roberts, when he said:

     ``That very power that molds a tear
     And bids it trickle from its source,
     That power maintains the earth a sphere
     And guides the planets in their course.''

  That power is one of the laws--one of the immutable laws, the eternal 
laws--of God, put into force at the creation of the universe. From the 
beginning of recorded time to the present day, most scientists have 
believed in a divine creator. I have often asked physicians, ``Doctor, 
with your knowledge of the marvelous intricacies of the human body and 
mind, do you believe that there is a God?'' Not one physician has ever 
answered, ``No.'' Each has answered, readily and without hesitation, 
``Yes.'' Some may have doubted some of the tenets of the theology of 
orthodoxy, but they do not deny the existence of a creator. Science is 
the handmaiden of true religion, and confirms our belief in the Creator 
and in immortality.

     ``Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
     And waits to see it break away the clod
     Believes in God.''

  Mr. President, as Longfellow said, ``It is not all of life to live, 
nor all of death to die.'' Rather, as Longfellow says:

     ``There is no death! What seems so is transition;
     This life of mortal breath
     Is but a suburb of the life Elysian,
     Whose portal we call death.''

  Mr. President, life is only a narrow isthmus between the boundless 
oceans of two eternities. All of us who travel that narrow isthmus 
today, must one day board our little frail barque and hoist its white 
sails for the journey on that vast unknown sea where we shall sail 
alone into the boundless ocean of eternity, there to meet our Creator 
face to face in a land where the rose never withers and the rainbow 
never fades. To that bourne, from which no traveller ever returns, J. 
William Fulbright has now gone to be reunited with others who once trod 
these marble halls, and whose voices once rang in this Chamber--voices 
in this earthly life that have now been forever stilled. Peace be to 
his ashes!
  I recall the words of Thomas Moore:

     ``Oft, in the stilly night,
     Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
     Fond Memory brings the light
     Of other days around me:
     The smiles, the tears
     Of boyhood's years,
     The words of love then spoken;
     The eyes that shone,
     Now dimm'd and gone,
     The cheerful hearts now broken!
     Thus, in the stilly night,
     Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
     Sad Memory brings the light
     Of other days around me.

     When I remember all
     The friends, so link'd together,
     I've seen around me fall
     Like leaves in wintry weather,
     I feel like one
     Who treads alone
     Some banquet-hall deserted,
     Whose lights are fled,
     Whose garlands dead,
     And all but he departed!
     Thus, in the stilly night,
     Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
     Sad Memory brings the light
     Of other days around me.''

  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Snowe). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as 
in morning business for a reasonable period.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

  

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