On an

'Good God, what will become of you all!' That is the feeling which is in my mind to-night. Your studies and success mark a stage in life, and yet it is only a stage. It is with the life itself that lies around and beyond that we are really concerned. Whither are you going? With what equipment and with what aims? These are solemn questions. I cannot, of course, answer them. Even your long list of prizes scarcely gives me the clue; but it gives me the right to surmise that you have practical aims in view. Let us hope that these are not limited to your calling or profession in life, but extend to your country and its business, as well. occasion like this it is, indeed, usual to burn a candle at the pale shrine of platitude. At any rate, there are certain categories and topics into which such addresses usually fall History, science, education, reading, comprehend the bulk of them. I don't feel in that mood to-night. We scarcely seem to be in a position to indulge in abstract meditation. It is hardly worth while to recur to bygone history when so much history is being made for us to-day and every day. That is, the history which is in all our minds, yet it is history from the consideration of which we are precluded by a wise unwritten rule, for it is on the forbidden ground of institutions such as this. There are departments of science of which I would gladly speak if I could do so with anything but the enthusiasm of ignorance; for it is at once a most practical and attractive subject. . . . A sound and adequate scientific training seems to be a necessary qualification of our captains and lieutenants of industry. But against one sublime department of science I would beg to enter a respectful warning. I do so with some apprehension because I have distributed a prize in that department of science to-night. It is dangerous, in my judgment, to study astronomy, for astronomy kills ambition. What mind, after contemplating the eternal procession of nnnumbered worlds, perhaps with their

infinite generations of life, their various splendors, their history, their endless rolls of celebrity, their separate myriads of heroes, can return without a disheartening sense of the pitifulness and futility of everything on his own narrow universe?"

The speaker then took up the subject of reading, its advantages and pleasures, pointing out the injury of reading merely to occupy the mind; of the "immense fens of stagnant literature which can produce nothing but intellectual malaria." Then he passed to the subject of independent thought. “It is that, perhaps, which I plead the most, for I am inclined to think there are few needs of our nation which are more pressing than the need of There is plenty of

independent thought. independent thought.

it in certain categories of our people, for instance amongst the mental aristocracy of science and the churches, but as a nation we do not seem to abound in it. do not seem to be able to form our opinion for ourselves. We live in old cells; we move in old grooves; we go on using old watchwords, apparently unconscious that these are out of date and have lost their savor and their meaning. Our country sometimes reminds me of a man emerging from the eighteenth century in periwig and ruffles, unable to understand why he is out of touch with his neighbors who stare at him and laugh at him. The fault is not with him. He is convinced he is correctly dressed; it must be they who are so cropped and absurd. Do we not constantly need a leaven of independent thought to make us distinguish what is from what has ceased to be real and essential? I can think of no other reason to account for the strange unrippled apathy, that seeming imperturbability which appears to veil the thoughts of the nation. The country lies before us like that magic mere by which Arthur fought his last battle with its hush and its mist and its swoon. That is a strange and perplexing symptom. When our people are passive and silent it may mean content and prosperity, and it may mean mischief. I

doubt if it ever means political indifference. The training of so many centuries cannot be shaken off even at the bidding of the gods of the football field and the cricket field. We know, of course, and from very recent experience, that the calm sometimes implies in Great Britain the stoical concealment of extreme tension. It cannot always be that. It is, perhaps, largely due to the extreme rapidity with which events move-a rapidity which dazes and bewilders and produces a laxity of attention. Casting about to discover its real import, one is sometimes driven to conjecture that the faculty of independent thought is for the time weakened or distracted or numbed. May we hope and believe that that thought is there and it is only deficient in expression? It may be that under this apparent calm men are thinking out the problems that beset us, and that in the mine and the workshop and the monotonous pursuits of agriculture men are grappling with the questions which are imminent around us. I hope it is so, for we need much thought-political, commercial, military-if we are to maintain our national power, and national power in these days is synonymous with national safety. In the days that are coming-if they have not already comeempires will be formidable, not so much from the immensity of their area, for they will all be immense, or even the mere numbers of their population, though these are important, too, but from the numbers of their trained, intelligent population. The unit will be relatively more important in relation to the mass. As the private soldier will require in future wars to display more and more the qualities of intuition and intelligence, so will the soldier of commerce and manufacture."

Passing to political education the speaker said that "if commercial education means money, political education A people trained in politics-I do not mean party politics -almost governs itself; at any rate, it governs itself in proportion to its political

means power.

training. Such a nation inspires and controls those who are called its leaders. If guidance, indeed, does not come from the people, if the people cease to give direction and impulsion, we are losing one of the great motive powers of the State. We as a nation have for generations rested on the nation itself, and as we have always to derive our strength from the same base, we must, in the present conditions of rivalry in the world, constantly improve that base and every component part of it. And here I am brought to another point. Commercial and political education are all very well, but neither will avail without the spirit to take advantage of it. Something more is required, which you cannot teach except by biography and example-the spirit of righteous ambition, of honest dissatisfaction, as opposed to torpor and complacency. nation which is satisfied is lost. The nation which is not progressive is retrograding. Rest and be thankful,' is a motto which spells decay.

46

The

The New World seems to possess more of this quality, in its crude state, at any rate, than the Old. In individuals it sometimes seems to be carried to excess. I don't by this mean the revolutions which periodically ravage the Southern and Central American Republics. I think more of the restless enterprise of the United States, with the devouring anxiety to improve existing machinery and existing methods, and the apparent impossibility of accumulating any fortune, however gigantic, which shall satisfy or be sufficient to allow of leisure and repose. There the disdain of finality, the anxiety for improving on the best, seems almost a disease, but in Great Britain we can afford to catch the complaint, at any rate in a mitigated form, and give in exchange some of our own self-complacency. For complacency is a fatal gift. 'What was good enough for my father is good enough for me,' is a treasured English axiom, which if strictly carried out would have kept us to wooden plows and water clocks. In these days we need to be in

oculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans. That is true of individuals, admittedly true, but is it not also true of the nation? As a nation is made up of individuals, it represents an alarming amount of self-complacency. Fortified by generations of happy ignorance of warfare at home and of immunity from serious competition in colonization or in commerce, we look back with satisfaction

on

our history and say in proverbial fashion that there is a Providence that watches over us. But in the same proverbial fashion may we not say without irreverence that Providence may become a little weary of watching over us if we do not watch over ourselves? Occasionally the nation wakes up and finds that its methods or machinery are out of date, and even decayed. It demands, for example, that some department or another should be placed on a business footing and brought up to date, and having inade the demand it turns its attention to something else, or to slumber. Then it wakes up again, finds that nothing has been done, grumbles, and perhaps swears, and turns its attention to something else, or perhaps slumbers again. There is a story of an English duke, the husband of a historical duchess, who was awakened with the news that his magnificent palace, in which he was then sleeping, was in flames. He expressed the hope that they would be put out, and turned round and went to sleep again. Now, that in itself is not a bad form of phlegmatic courage -a passive force in itself; but it is a quality of strength which contains a peril. Our people, in like manner, when they are told that their house is on fire, are apt to call loudly for a fire-engine, but to fall asleep again directly it arrives.

"And so with this question of reorganization of departments of the services. Do they not see that it is from themselves, from their assistance, from their passionate determination, if you will, that the sustaining and driving impulse must come if energy is to result? That is the central fact which we all have to confess, that the

nation itself, under our popular constitution, must be the driving power. Nothing else will avail, for even if some great alarms should awake our coast for a moment,

they soon die away. Nothing else will avail, for the nation has to strive with itself, with inherited centuries of complacency, with the pride of achievement, in spite of all that comfortable sense that all will work out somehow right in the end. It is not enough for the nation to say in a languid and somewhat muffled voice that it wishes its servants, or its leaders ----whichever you choose to call themto do something or other. The nation itself must persist and see that it is done. Leaders are all very well; they are desirable, they are necessary, they are sometimes admirable; but they are not everything. They are inadequate to grapple with national tasks unless they have a national force behind them. It is of no use calling upon Paul or Apollos to help you if you will do nothing to help yourselves. No one knows better than I do the sacrifices and heroism of which our people are capable. What I am asking from them is something else, and something much less. It is only that when they want a thing they shall want it with all their might; they shall exert their irresistible will-power, and insist that it shall be done. If the nation chooses, it can exercise an impulse compared to which all the forces of Niagara are but as a breath. But it is apt not to stir itself until it is too late, or until the mischief has become uncontrollable, and you have a catastrophe instead of an improvement. But how, you ask, can the nation make itself felt, how can the nation itself feel? That is a question not easy to answer in terms, but easy to answer by example, though not, perhaps, without approaching on perilous precincts. When the nation in the past has really willed anything it has had it carried out; but it is slothful or reluc tant to put so mighty a machine into motion, and so what it wants done is not

done. Were I to follow up this line of thought heaven knows where it would lead to, so I will stop. I will forbear."

LORD ROSEBERY'S SHORTCOMINGS

Both as a party leader and orator, says George W. Smalley in McClure's Magazine, it is Lord Rosebery's fault to see both sides, or all sides, of a question too clearly. The note of decision is therefore lacking, sometimes, in declarations or in manifestoes which ought to be final. Nothing ever cost a statesman dearer than the "predominant partner" phrase by which, in the House of Lords, he truly told Ireland that England had the deciding voice on all Irish questions. The withdrawal or explanation of the phrase a fortnight later shook public confidence. Men said, quite truly, that he ought never to have used it or never to have withdrawn it. There is the key to his public character. He is a diplomatist rather than a national leader. He is adroit, ingenious, fertile in devices, baffled by no perplexity, misled by no adversary, capable of surprises, capable of a great policy. He thinks long and hard; he exhausts a subject. His resemblance to Mr. Gladstone lies there, and there it stops. Mr. Gladstone also saw all sides, but he chose one, and, having once made up his mind, remained inaccessible thenceforward to evidence and argument till-a reason sufficient to him-he chose the other. Not till he thought himself in danger of defeat did he reopen a matter he had once closed, nor always then. But Lord Rosebery has spent part of his very brilliant political career in building forts on which he presently displays a flag of truce. detachment of mind is a political defect. To recover the authority he has renounced he needs but to simplify his politics. Whenever he can resolve to present a plain issue plainly to the "plain people," in whom Lincoln saw the arbiters of his country's fate, Lord Rosebery will be joyfully accepted as a deliverer.

His

THE NEW CANAL TREATY Following is the text of the new HayPauncefote treaty relating to the construc

tion and maintenance of an isthmian canal, submitted to the United States Senate by President Roosevelt the first part of December and ratified on December 16th by a final vote of 72 to 6:

"The United States of America and his Majesty Edward VII. of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the seas, King, and Emperor of India, being desirous to facilitate the construction of a ship canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by whatever route may be considered expedient, and to that end to remove any objection which may arise out of the convention of the 19th of April, 1850, commonly called the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, to the construction of such canal under the auspices of the Government of the United States without impairing the 'general principle' of neutralization established in Article VIII. of that convention, have for that purpose appointed as their plenipotentiaries:

"The President of the United States, John Hay, Secretary of State of the United States of America, and his Majesty Edward VII. of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the seas, King, and Empero, of India, the Right Hon. Lord Pauncefoter G. C. B., G. C. M. G., his Majesty's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States.

"Who, having communicated to each other their full powers, which were found to be in due and proper form, have agreed upon the following articles:

ARTICLE I.

"The high contracting parties agree that the present treaty shall supersede the aforementioned convention of the 19th of April, 1850.

ARTICLE II.

"It is agreed that the canal may be constructed under the auspices of the Government of the United States, either directly at its own cost, or by gift or loan of money to individuals or corporations, or through subscription to or purchase of stock or shares, and that, subject to the provisions of the present treaty, the said Government

shall have and enjoy all the rights incident to such construction, as well as the exclusive right of providing for the regulation and management of the canal.

ARTICLE III.

"The United States adopts as the basis of the neutralization of such ship canal, the following rules substantially as embodied in the convention of Constantinople, signed the 28th October, 1888, for the free navigation of the Suez Canal, that is to say:

"1. The canal shall be free and open to all vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules, on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of traffic, or otherwise. Such conditions and charges of traffic shall be just and equitable.

"2. The canal shall never be blockaded, nor shall any right of war be exercised, nor any act of hostility be committed within it. The United States, however, shall be at liberty to maintain such military police along the canal as may be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and disorder.

"3. Vessels of war of a belligerent shall not revictual nor take any stores in the canal except so far as may be strictly necessary; and the transit of such vessels through the canal shall be effected with the least possible delay in accordance with the regulations in force, and with only such intermission as may result from the necessities of the service. Prizes shall be in all respects subject to the same rules as vessels of war of the belligerents.

"4. No belligerent shall embark or disembark troops, munitions of war, or warlike materials in the canal except in case of accidental hindrance of the transit, and in such case the transit shall be resumed with all possible dispatch.

"5. The provisions of this article shall apply to waters adjacent to the canal, within three marine miles of either end. Vessels of war of a belligerent shall not remain in such waters longer than twentyfour hours at any one time except in case of distress, and in such case shall depart as soon as possible, but a vessel of war of

(ne belligerent shall not depart within twenty-four hours from the departure of a vessel of war of the other belligerent.

"6. The plant, establishments, buildings, and all works necessary to the construction, maintenance, and operation of the canal shall be deemed to be parts thereof for the purposes of this treaty, and in time of war, as in time of peace, shall enjoy complete immunity from attack or injury by belligerents, and from acts calculated to impair their usefulness as part of the canal.

ARTICLE IV.

"It is agreed that no charge of territorial sovereignty or of international relations of the country or countries traversed by the beforementioned canal shall affect the general principle of neutralization or the obligation of the high contracting parties under the present treaty.

ARTICLE V.

"The present treaty shall be ratified by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof, and by his Britannic Majesty; and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington or at London at the earliest possible time within six months from the date hereof.

"In faith whereof the respective plenipotentiaries have signed this treaty and hereunto affixed their seals.

"Done in duplicate at Washington, the 18th day of November, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and One.

"JOHN HAY. [Seal.]
"PAUNCEFOTE. [Seal.]"

AN EXPENSIVE EDUCATION It is suggested, and the suggestion seems eminently reasonable, that when England gets through practising in South Africa she will have the ablest army in Europe; an army fit to be compared with Grant's in 1865. It is the great drawback to the military art that a nation can't learn it thoroughly without practice, and that usually, as the world is managed now, by the time any generation in any nation becomes exceptionally proficient at fighting, the chance to use its skill passes, not to re