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parts of the Empire. We go by large principles, and things which can be easily understood by our undeveloped democracies. If your foreign policy is going to rest, not only on the basis of your Cabinet here, but finally on the whole of the British Empire, it will have to be a simpler and more intelligible policy, which will, I am sure, lead in the end to less friction, and the greater safety of the Empire.

Of course, no one will ever dispute the primacy of the Imperial Government in these matters. Whatever changes and developments come about, we shall always look upon the British Government as the senior partner in this concern. When this Council is not sitting, the Imperial Government will conduct the foreign affairs of the Empire. But it will always be subject to the principles and policy which have been laid down. in these common conferences from time to time, and which, I think, will be a simpler and probably, in the long run, a saner and safer policy for the Empire as a whole. Naturally, it will lead to greater publicity. There is no doubt that, after the catastrophe that has overtaken Europe, nations in future will want to know more about the way their affairs are conducted. And you can understand that, once it is no longer an affair of one Government, but of a large number of Governments who are responsible ultimately to their Parliaments for the action they have taken, you may be sure there will be a great deal more publicity and discussion of foreign affairs than there has ever been.

I am sure that the after effects of a change like this, although it looks a simple change, are going to be very important, not only for this community of nations, but for the world as a whole. Far too much stress is laid upon the instruments of government. People are inclined to forget that the world is getting more democratic, and that forces which find expression in public opinion are going to be far more powerful in the future than they have been in the past. You will find that you have built up a spirit of comradeship and a common feeling of patriotism, and that the instrument of government will not be the thing that matters so much as the spirit that actuates the whole system of all its parts. That seems to me to be your mission. You talk about an Imperial mission. It seems to me this British Empire has only one mission, and that is a mission for greater liberty and freedom and selfdevelopment. Yours is the only system that has ever worked in history where a large number of nations have been living in unity. Talk about the League of Nations-you are the only league of nations that has ever existed; and if the line that I am sketching here is correct, you are going to be an even greater league of nations in the future; and if you are true to your old traditions of self-government and freedom, and to this vision of your future and your mission, who knows that you may

not exercise far greater and more beneficent influence on the history of mankind than you have ever done before?

In the welter of confusion which is probably going to follow the war in Europe, you will stand as the one system where liberty to work successfully has kept together divers communities. You may be sure the world such as will be surrounding you in the times that are coming will be very likely to follow your example. You may become the real nucleus for the world government for the future. There is no doubt that is the way things will go in the future. You have made a successful start; and if you keep on the right track, your Empire will be a solution of the whole problem.

me.

I hope I have given no offense. When I look around this brilliant gathering, and see before me the most important men in the Government of the United Kingdom, I am rather anxious that we should discuss this matter, which concerns our future so very vitally-a matter which should never be forgotten even in this awful struggle, in which all our energies are engaged. Memories of the past keep crowding in upon. I think of all the difficulties which have surrounded us in the past, and I am truly filled with gratitude for the reception which you have given me, and with gratitude to Time, the great and merciful judge, which has healed many wounds-and gratitude to that Divinity which "shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." I think of the difficulties that still lie ahead of us, which are going to test all the nations fighting for liberty far more than they have ever been tested in the past, and I hope and pray that they all may have clearness of vision and purpose, and especially that strength of soul in the coming days, which will be more necessary than strength of arm. I verily believe that we are within reach of priceless and immeasurable good, not only for this United Kingdom and group of nations to which we belong, but also for the whole world. But, of course, it will depend largely upon us whether the great prize is achieved now in this struggle, or whether the world will be doomed to long, weary waiting in the future. The prize is within our grasp, if we have strength, especially the strength of soul, which I hope we shall have, to see this thing through without getting tired of waiting until victory crowns the efforts of our brave men in the field.

§ 49

THE AMERICAN COLLEGE

By Woodrow Wilson

(Delivered at a dinner in honor of the inauguration of Ernest Fox Nichols as President of Dartmouth College, October 14, 1909.)

It gives me peculiar pleasure to be the bearer of admiring congratulations to the retiring President of Dartmouth, Dr. Tucker, from the institution I represent. We have watched at Princeton the extraordinary progress of Dartmouth under his administration with a growing conception of what the character and power of a single man can do. And also it is most gratifying to me to bear messages of Godspeed to the new man who is assuming this distinguished succession.

I would prefer to believe that the honor conferred upon me to-day by the gracious vote of the Trustees of this College came to me as a representative of Princeton rather than as an individual, for I like to believe that such acts are a recognition of the community of purpose which exists among the colleges of this country, and that we are consciously trying to draw together into a single force the powers, both individual and organic, which lie in the educational institutions of America.

I have been thinking, as I sat here to-night, how little, except in coloring and superficial lines, a body of men like this differs from a body of undergraduates. You have only to look at a body of men like this long enough to see the mask of years fall off and the spirit of the younger days show forth, and the spirit which lies behind the mask is not an intellectual spirit: it is an emotional spirit.

It seems to me that the great power of the world-namely, its emotional power-is better expressed in a college gathering than in any other gathering. We speak of this as an age in which mind is monarch, but I take it for granted that, if that is true, mind is one of those modern monarchs who reign but do not govern. As a matter of fact, the world is governed in every generation by a great House of Commons made up of the passions; and we can only be careful to see to it that the handsome passions are in the majority.

A college body represents a passion, a very handsome passion, to which we should seek to give greater and greater force as the generations go by a passion not so much individual as social, a passion for See page 488.

the things which live, for the things which enlighten, for the things which bind men together in unselfish companies. The love of men for their college is a very ennobling love, because it is a love which expresses itself in so organic a way and which delights to give as a token of its affection for its alma mater some one of those eternal, intangible gifts which are expressed only in the spirits of men.

It has been said that the college is "under fire." I prefer, inasmuch as most of the so-called criticism has come from the college men themselves, to say that the college is on fire; that it has ceased to be satisfied with itself, that its slumbering fires have sprung into play, and that it is now trying to see by the light of that flame what its real path is. For we criticize the college for the best of all reasons-because we love it and are not indifferent to its fortunes. We criticize it as those who would make it as nearly what we conceive it ought to be as is possible in the circumstances.

The criticism which has been leveled at our colleges by college men, by men from the inside, does not mean that the college of the present is inferior to the college of the past. No observant man can fail to see that college life is more wholesome in almost every respect in our day than it was in the days gone by. The lives of the undergraduates are cleaner, they are fuller of innocent interests, they are more shot through with the real permanent impulses of life than they once were. We are not saying that the college has degenerated in respect of its character.

What we mean I can illustrate in this way: It seems to me that we have been very much mistaken in thinking that the thing upon which our criticism should center is the athletic enthusiasm of our college undergraduates, and of our graduates, as they come back to the college contests. It is a very interesting fact to me that the game of football, for example, has ceased to be a pleasure to those who play it. Almost any frank member of a college football team will tell you that in one sense it is a punishment to play the game. He does not play it because of the physical pleasure and zest he finds in it, which is another way of saying that he does not play it spontaneously and for its own sake. He plays it for the sake of the college, and one of the things that constitutes the best evidence of what we could make of the college is the spirit in which men go into the football game, because their comrades expect them to go in and because they must advance the banner of their college at the cost of infinite sacrifice. Why does the average man play football? Because he is big, strong and active, and his comrades expect it of him. They expect him to make that use of his physical powers; they expect him to represent them in an arena of considerable dignity and of very great strategic significance.

But when we turn to the field of scholarship, all that we say to the man is, "Make the most of yourself," and the contrast makes scholarship mean as compared with football. The football is for the sake of the college and the scholarship is for the sake of the individual. When shall we get the conception that a college is a brotherhood in which every man is expected to do for the sake of the college the thing which alone can make the college a distinguished and abiding force in the history of men? When shall we bring it about that men shall be ashamed to look their fellows in the face if it is known that they have great faculties and do not use them for the glory of their alma mater, when it is known that they avoid those nights of self-denial which are necessary for intellectual mastery, deny themselves pleasure, deny themselves leisure, deny themselves every natural indulgence in order that in future years it may be said that that place served the country by increasing its power and enlightenment?

But at present what do we do to accomplish that? We very complacently separate the men who have that passion from the men who have it not-I don't mean in the classroom, but I mean in the life of the college itself.

I was confessing to President Schurman to-night that, as I looked back to my experience in the classrooms of many eminent masters, I remembered very little that I had brought away from them. The contacts of knowledge are not vital; the contacts of information are barren. If I tell you too many things that you don't know, I merely make myself hateful to you. If I am constantly in the attitude towards you of instructing you, you may regard me as a very well informed and superior person, but you have no affection for me whatever; whereas if I have the privilege of coming into your life, if I live with you and can touch you with something of the scorn that I feel for a man who does not use his faculties at their best, and can be touched by you with some keen. inspiring touch of the energy that lies in you and that I have not learned to imitate, then fire calls to fire and real life begins, the life that generates, the life that generates power, the life that generates those lasting fires of friendship which in too many college connections are lost altogether, for many college comradeships are based upon taste and not upon community of intellectual interests.

The only lasting stuff for friendship is community of conviction; the only lasting basis is that moral basis to which President Lowell has referred, in which all true intellectual life has its rootage and sustenance, and those are the rootages of character, not the rootages of knowledge. Knowledge is merely, in its uses, the evidence of character, it does not produce character. Some of the most learned of men have been among

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