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5. After the Banąuet in the Kongresshaus Zurich Apres le banquet au Kongresshaus Zurich

to a high degree of perfection. Only one point might be added here, something Professor Terzaghi taught me soon after I met him for the first time. It was in the city of Washington in the summer of 1926, on one of our frequent walks around the pond which faces the Lincoln Memoriał. (By the way, in my opinion this is the most beautiful monument built in this century. Un-fortunately, its beauty is now spoiled by many temporary war buildings erected during the last war.)

We talked about the ingredients which make for Professional success, and Professor Terzaghi mentioned in particular two:

first, to find a field in great need of development, and second, intense concentration. I need not cxplain that his achicvemcnts have amply dcmonstrated the validity of his formula.

Professor Terzaghi, it is with great pleasure and deep emo-tion that I present to you, in the name of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, this token of our admiration, gratitude and afiection, with our best wishes for your health and happiness, and with the hope that you will continue to Iead us and inspire us for many years to come.

Speech by Prof. Dr. K.Terzaghi, President of the International Society

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish to cxprcss my deepest gratitude to you, for your beautiful gift and to my old friend and colleague Arthur Casa-grande for his searching comments on my mental attitude to-wards the problems to the solution of which we are devoting our energies.

My sevcntieth birthday is still seven weeks off. Nevertheless the presentation of this lovely watch constitutes the second celebration of the forth coming event. The first one was given three weeks ago in London, by my friends of the British National Committee, without advance notice. This unconven-tional procedurę had obvious!y its reasons. My British friends knew that I was heading for Kenya Colony and they thought that there was no telling what the Mau-Maus might do to the old boy. Therefore they decided to go ahead while the going was still good.

The decision concerning the Zurich celebration may have been influenced by the empirical fact, familiar to Arthur Casa-grande, that one can never know where I will be Iocated on my birthday. The last seven of them I expericnced at various points within a triangle between Madras in India, the Matto Grosso in Brazil and Anchorage in Alaska, but never at home. This time I will be somewhere in the northwestern United States, at a point rather inaccessible to you. Hence, geographi-cally, Zurich was definitely preferable.

In any event I cannot cherish any morę illusions concerning the fact that I am rapidly approaching the State of what is technically known as “old agc’\ To be an “old gentleman”

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