PROCEEDINGS FOR 1917 XXIX 



Gentlemen, you will join me most cordially in drinking the 

 health of His Majesty the King. 



His Excellency then called upon the Right Honourable Sir George 

 E. Foster to propose and the Honourable Rodolphe Lemieux to reply 

 to the toast of the Empire and Confederation. 



Your Excellency, Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen, 



I wish I could reciprocate the pleasure expressed by your Excel- 

 lency, who is now out of the danger zone, while I am just approaching 

 it. So far I have enjoyed myself very well. I like, as a freshman and 

 youngster, to get alongside of these old savants, many of whom I see 

 around this table, and burnish up some long forgotten threads of 

 knowledge. I see here, not very far from me, one of my professors 

 in the time when I was a somewhat verdant youth and he was the 

 "don" of one of the classrooms — filled with all sorts of infernal looking 

 bottles and siphons and things of that description; small alligators, 

 lizards, etc., embalmed for teaching purposes, or other — I don't know 

 which. (Laughter.) And as I see him to-night it brings back the 

 times of forty or fifty years ago. How he has preserved the eternal 

 youth that he seems to possess I do not know. (Applause.) But I 

 take pleasure in seeing Dr. Bailey here this evening and still looking 

 forward to a somewhat long life. I listened dutifully to his instructions. 

 I profited somewhat by them. I carried off, I remember, one of his 

 prizes. At the same time I did not like the sulphuric atmosphere 

 of that classroom. From that time up I have had a firm friend in my 

 old and valued teacher, and I am very happy to see him here to-night 

 amongst you all. 



And so I was enjoying myself under the protecting aegis of Dr. 

 Macallum, on my left, and a friend from a new-born allied country 

 on my right, (applause), with a certainty of scientific intervention 

 on one side, which would keep invisible enemies far distant, and on the 

 other a vision of big fleets and mighty armies, whether Teddy was at 

 the head or not, protecting the future of us Britons, who, warring 

 long and pretty well fagged out, are heartily glad that a member of 

 a kindred race, so powerful and so strong, has come to work side by 

 side with us for a common cause and help lead us to a common and 

 supreme victory. (Applause.) 



Then the trouble commenced when I had to cudgel a brain that 

 is very tired, and a body which I am afraid is following close suit to 

 that brain, for something to say on such a new and untra veiled subject 

 as the Empire and Confederation. If it had been some old subject 

 of which I had read or had heard, or knew something personally, I 

 might have had some ideas on it, but this new thing. Confederation 



