HOTEL CHAMPLAIN, CLINTON COUNTY, N.Y., July 7, 1909 (UP) - The celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of Lake Champlain moved Wednesday to Plattsburg. Tuesday the pageant and its oratory centered around the ruins of old Fort Ticonderoga. Thursday the speechmaking will be let loose at Burlington, across the lake.
The exercises Wednesday began at Cliff Haven, the Catholic summer school of America, where President Taft delivered an address to the students. He declared religious tolerance in the United States was only 20 or 25 years old.
"We are reaching a point where we are becoming more tolerant," he said. "We of puritanical ancestry believe we were the inventors of religious tolerance and religious liberty. As a matter of fact, we wanted religious liberty for ourselves and wanted everybody else to worship exactly as we did.
"Fifty years ago if we had sent a representative to the vatican it would have given rise to severest criticism. It fell to my lot to make an important journey some time ago, and I claim the distinction of being the only representative from the United States to the vatican. There I had the great pleasure to meet that distinguished statesman and pontiff, Leo XIII."
Then the president reviewed a dress parade of troops, and after the parade Taft, Gov. Hughes, Gov. Prouty, Ambassadors Jusserand and Bryce, and others, delivered speeches, eulogizing the pioneers who blazed their ways through the forest 300 years ago.
Thursday evening Taft will start back to Washington.
