PROCEEDINGS FOR 1917 XXXI 



bonds and into this spirit of fathership and sonship, something of 

 the spirit and experience of helpfulness one to the other, of equal 

 standing in principles of right and of justice, of the growing strength 

 of the Dominions which are coming each year nearer to equalling the 

 strength of the motherland in comparison of man-power and re- 

 sources. There is therefore to my mind — in the white heat of battle 

 it has been welded imperishable, irrevocably — there is to-day in the 

 spirit and fibre of the Empire the world around woven in bonds that 

 are indestructible, fastened with links that are imperishable, a pact 

 of sympathy and loyal helpfulness that dominates the coming years; 

 a growth which has been so remarkable and so distinctive in the past 

 fifty years that it forbids disunion and dismemberment, which promises 

 for the years of the future ideals just as high and prospects just as 

 untarnished, of continued unity of purpose and noble endeavour. 

 (Applause). 



What will happen in the future, or when this confederacy has 

 seen another fifty years, when the confederacies in the different quarters 

 of the globe, made up of parts of the British Empire now organized, 

 and the confederacies which will be built up out of those yet un- 

 organized portions of the Empire which are so vast in extent — what 

 will happen after fifty years more shall have passed ? With faith and 

 absolute confidence, arguing from the fifty years that have passed, we 

 stand here to-night to make the solemn assertion that if we are true 

 to ourselves and our traditions, to our history and our principles, 

 the Empire of fifty years from now will be immeasurably stronger 

 and more closely united than the Empire of to-day. (Applause). 

 After this purging of war, this vast, tremendous, world-wide, blood- 

 shot spectacle and object lesson for all the ages, after the discipline 

 which arises from the knowledge and experience gained therefrom, 

 is it not certain that fifty years from now this Empire of ours, more 

 closely united and stronger than it is to-day, standing four-square 

 in the world with its mighty strength and its mighty responsibilities, 

 will find around it and about it, not warring nations locked in fierce 

 combat, but a world at peace, knitted together, no part losing its 

 own race ties and proper nationality, but all rising above petty 

 jealousies and the plundering spirit, of militarism and absolutism, 

 joined in bonds of a world-brotherhood of nationalities where the rival- 

 ries are rivalries of peace, and where the highest ambitions and ten- 

 dencies are to prove most helpful in the uplift and happiness of the 

 human race ? Can we not look forward to a future like that ? 

 (Applause). After this blood-gorging period, of awful significance, 

 has not the world got its lesson, and is it not probable that in the 

 future the forces of right and justice shall work against war and for 



