Gambetta - A Republic Is Born

Down the long path of history, tramping across centuries and continents, and the graves of kings in the necks of dictators, seeking always a way of life where the people have their freedom, believing, praying, fighting, dying.

We came this way! The NBC University of the Air, a public service feature of the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations, presents We Came This Way, a new historical series for our listeners at home and overseas.

With Clifton Uthley as Nurekor, we present Chapter Nine, the story of Leon Gombitta, and the birth of a Republic on We Came This Way. For my dole, men make events. Yeah, oh, well take Washington.

If Washington had not come along when he did, there might never have been a United States. What about Lincoln? Same thing. Now, men don't make events. Events make men. Look at the men we've known in our own time. Hitler, Mussolini, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I'll leave it to this fellow here. What do you say? Well, there comes time and affairs of men when the fate of millions of people hangs in the balance. It might be said that the crisis was the result of the deeds of certain men.

Or again, it might be that the men were the result of the crisis. But this we do know, when great crises face mankind, leaders do rise up and blaze the way for their people to follow.

And such an inspired leader was Leon Gombeza. People of Paris were waking in the early morning hours of December 2nd, 1861, by artillery and rifle fires sweeping the street. During the night, Louis Napoleon, who was then president, had overthrowned the Second Republic with a sudden bold stroke, created the second empire and made himself the emperor.