PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 723 
if carried into effect, a great, if not the greatest, educational factor of 
Imperialism. 
But it may be objected here, Is not your own horizon circumscribed ? 
Why shouid educational ideals be limited, even by so extended a conception 
as Imperialism? Should not the ultimate aim of all education be, not the 
federation of one race only, but the federation of the world at large—the 
brotherhood of man? 
I am not concerned to deny that such a lofty conception is the true 
end of all physical, moral, and mental training. 
But if the master mind of a Milton was content to define true education 
to be ‘ that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously 
all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war,’ it may well suffice 
us if we extend our (at present) too narrow conceptions (the aim of which 
seems to be the cultivation of a mere island patriotism) to a sphere which 
has for its end the imperialistic sentiment of a whole race. 
It may indeed be well doubted whether a race-sentiment is not an 
ultimate factor beyond which it is impossible in an imperfect world to 
go. Universal philanthropy in its most catholic sense is a sentiment 
‘which the limited conditions of the earth’s surface seem to render im- 
possible, As long as men’s ambitions are an unlimited quantity, and as 
long as the habitable globe remains, as it ever must remain, a limited 
quantity, so long will the populations of the world be continually liable to 
shifting movements and frequent dislocations. Practical educationists, 
then, must inevitably confine the scientific consideration of aims and 
methods in education to the development of the highest interests of their 
race rather than of mankind at large. : 
And that being so, the last point on which I would insist in dealing with 
the educational factors of Imperialism is to emphasise the importance of 
what the educationists of the United States call ‘civics’ as the binding 
power which should fasten together all the separate educational faggots in 
any Imperial scheme of education—the duty of personal service to the State, 
the positive obligation which makes us all members incorporate in one 
Imperial system. In our love of individual freedom, in our jealousy of inter- 
ference with our individual liberty of action, in our insular disregard and 
depreciation of intellectual forces working in our sister communities beyond 
the seas, we have lost sight of this civic responsibility which has ever lain 
on our shoulders and from which we can never dissociate ourselves, so long 
as our Empire remains as part of our ancestral heritage. 
It is this positive duty towards each other and our race beyond the seas 
which those who live in our island home have been slow in realising, and it 
has been a real blot on our educational system that such ideas as Imperial 
responsibility and Imperial necessities have not been inculeated in the young 
people in our schools and colleges. As an illustration, I may observe that it 
has been even debated and doubted in some responsible quarters in England, 
whether the Union Jack should wave over our educational institutions on 
the days of national festivity and national observance. 
To sum up. By these, and other kindred means, I would urge a closer 
educational touch between the Mother Country and the Empire at large. 
Long ago a great Minister was able to say: ‘ Our hold of the Colonies is 
in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, 
and from similar privileges. These are ties which, though light as air, are 
strong as links of iron.’ 
But times have changed. To-day we are confronted with the problems of 
a vast and complicated Kmpire—great commonwealths, great dominions, 
sundered from each other by long seas and half a world, and however closely 
science has geographically brought them together, we cannot in soul and 
sympathy, nor ultimately in destiny, remain attached, affiliated as mother 
and children should be, unless we grapple to each other and understand each 
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