PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 111. 



pondents by the Council, the day after the fire, this gentleman 

 very courteously replied, under date 17th November, 1882, ex- 

 pressing sympathy, intimating also that at the next Meeting of 

 his Council he intended to propose that a complete set of the 

 Society's Annales should be sent to replace what had been 

 destroyed; and, further, that he was about to communicate with 

 the principal Scientific Societies of Belgium, suggesting that 

 they, too, should show their sympathy in like manner; and that, 

 in due course, he would undertake to forward the collective 

 results — as he most kindly did when the time came. Another 

 outcome of M. Lefevre's effort, was that the names of five addi- 

 tional Societies were added to the Belgian section of our exchange 

 list, and we have had the pleasure and profit of exchanging pub- 

 lications with them ever since, until the outbreak of war. Surely, 

 in view of what has happened during the last few months, this 

 record of kindness and courtesy, and genuine sympathy on the 

 part of M. Lefevre and the Belgian Scientific Societies, when the 

 Society was suffering from a calamity which pecuniarily was 

 serious enough, but which, thanks to Sir William Macleay, did 

 not ultimately seriously interfere with its progress, acquires a 

 new interest and a new suggestiveness to present-day Members. 

 In a calmly expressed, and temperate article, entirely free 

 from bitterness or anger, on " The Soul of Belgium," in the 

 Hibbert Journal for January, 1915 (p!233), the Abbe Noel, a 

 Belgian in refuge at Oxford, writes thus hopefully of the future 

 of his country — "Numerous signs justify the expectation that 

 Belgium, on emerging from the present crisis, will again witness 

 that union of parties which founded the national life in 1830. 

 In the common effort which will presently remake our country, 

 the four Universities will, I hope, find their part enlarged. The 

 disaster which has overtaken the oldest of them [Louvain] and 

 struck down to the heart of its intellectual life, and fallen upon 

 the memorials of the past, can have but one outcome : it will 

 cause our scientific activities and our ideal life to be born again, 



enlarged and broadened And yet no task will exceed the 



forces of our national energy. Twenty times in the course of 

 history, Belgium has been the battlefield of Europe. Twenty 



