PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 349 



Among the subjects which I have noticed in other connections as not repre- 

 sented by name in any of the Universities of the Empire, but still claiming 

 attention of those who would help to make the facilities for education complete, 

 there are in the first place the history of the various arts and sciences, and of 

 medicine, for which some provision has recently been made at Oxford xmder 

 Dr. Singer ; oceanographj^ which, through the generosity of Professor Herd- 

 man, has now obtained a footing in Liverpool; geodynamics, for which Cam- 

 bridge wishes to make provision, historical geography and exploration ; Malay 

 and Polynesian languages and antiquities, aerodynamics, meteorological optics, 

 now neglected in this country; terrestrial magnetism, seismology, climatology 

 (past and present) particularly of the Empire; illumination and photography, 

 metrology, the science of precision, British, archaeology and dialects ; and per- 

 haps the technical subjects of radio-telegraphy, ballistics, and ventilation. 

 These are subjects with which alone a fully equipped University is competent 

 adequately to deal, and the country is ill-provided until the educational autho- 

 rities co-operate to supply between them what is needed. To secure this object, 

 I am not at all convinced that State aid is the only possibility. The pious 

 benefactor is no more extinct than he was in the days of Henry VIII. and 

 Queen Elizabetli, but while the Universities and their Colleges speak with two 

 voices and leave us uncertain as to their idea/ls, it is impossible that he should not 

 be discouraged. 



The views which I have expressed were formulated and in great part in 

 manuscript while the war was still raging, and now we have celebrated the con- 

 clusion of peace. With the signing of the armistice came the demand for an 

 actual address this year. Never in my experience have circumstances been 

 so tragic as those which supei"vened. The stimulating drama of the war in 

 which good strove with evil gave place to the new conflicts which have the 

 characteristics of real tragedy. In the early part of the new year the hope 

 that the sacrifices of the war would secure an immediate peace was blasted with 

 disappointment. The whole connective tissue of civilisation seemed to be 

 destroyed. The representatives of many peoples great and small assembled 

 at Paris to make peace had first to find some m-odtis vivendi for the future, 

 but after a foretaste of a league of nations we foimd ourselves in a welter of 

 jealousies, animosities, and struggles at home and abroad. Thousands were 

 threatened with distress or with misery by the withholding of the necessaries 

 of civilised life in order to secure the comfort of classes who regarded them as 

 rivals and not comrades in the struggle for existence ; the hard-earned savings 

 of industrious lives vanished in taxes to be scattered broadcast as largesse by 

 victorious politicians or grabbed by ruthless profiteers. Food and fuel were 

 obtainable under the strictest limitations and under conditions apparently 

 designed to be nearly intolerable ; the aged and infirm were bereft of all the 

 kindly offices that carry the sacred name of service ; teachers abandoned their 

 schools in order to settle a dispute about salaries. 



We had just learned in the great school of experience that united self- 

 sacrifice, and nothing short of it, could and did secure a victory over the 

 powers of evil; and thereupon the whole world seemed obsessed with the idea 

 that, the war being over, the time for sacrifice was done with ; we could almost 

 hear the many-voiced assertions of nations, of unions, of commercial associa- 

 tions, and of men and women generally, that as their sons and brothers had 

 made the great sacrifice never again could they be expected to make another 

 in this world. The elements themselves seemed to play their part in pro- 

 longing and deepening the gloom, and, as if impatient of the natural order, kept 

 the world dead, cold, and miserable, far beyond the limits of an ordinary winter 

 — in those circumstances, doleful beyond expression, what could be said about 

 education. What ideals of education had led us to such a state of chaotic 

 conflict oi wills. It seemed impossible that mankind could ever recover and 

 resume its sane and wholesome life of reciprocal give-and-take. 



And in the midst of the gloom came a glimpse of Easter sunshine, and once 

 more we heard the Easter words which have been the first audible sentence of 

 many a mournful scene. 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.' What do they 

 mean for us who have to try to live in this torn and distracted world ? ' There 

 will be no reconstruction and there can be no wholesome life for us or for 

 anybody else without the spirit of self-sacrifice.' If the world takes the facile 



