22 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



the cold weather. Soon after their arrival they were set free and 

 flew south along the Adriatic coast.' And a little earlier the writer 

 of the amusing ' Fourth Leader ' referred to a meeting of the Society 

 for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire at which the care 

 of the opossum was discussed, comparing this with the report of 

 happenings a hundred years earlier when there was a ' humorous 

 debate ' at the Zoological Society ' about puffing cigar-smoke into 

 the cages of the monkeys,' to their evident discomfort. The writer, 

 yielding too far, we hope, to the depression of the present day, con- 

 cludes : ' The world, it may be, is " man-sick " and yearning to 

 be rid of a bad mistake. But the creature cannot be wholly vile 

 when instead of torturing monkeys it takes thought for the opossum.' 

 It would not be right to quote from a century-old report without 

 speaking of all that is done and has been done during many years for 

 the care and health of animals by the great London Society and its 

 branch at Whipsnade, and in doing this, for the education and 

 happiness of our people. But the change of which I have spoken 

 is most deeply impressed on those who remember, as many of us do, 

 the misdirected hours in youth when birds were shot in our gardens 

 and brick traps made to catch them. I feel sure that those who did 

 these things are not essentially different from their children and 

 grandchildren who have grown up in a kinder atmosphere. I must 

 not occupy more time on a subject which to some may seem in- 

 appropriate, but it is bound up with education in its true sense — 

 the detection and training of unrecognised ability — and if, as Sir 

 Ray Lankester said at York, and we are all coming to believe, the 

 hidden powers within are inherited while the results of their develop- 

 ment are not, theft there is no easing of the burden with the passage 

 of time, but each generation afresh must bear the heavy responsi- 

 bility of conducting this development in the best way so that its 

 successor may be able to meet the changing and, at this time, the 

 increasing needs. The relationship between the powers within and 

 their development was suggested in arresting words by the late 

 Prof. Scott Holland : ' To say that a man cannot be made good by 

 Act of Parliament is such an obvious truth that people forget what 

 an outrageous lie it is ! ' 



Thoughts on the development of these hidden powers by the 

 educating influence of social environment, suggest the greatest of 

 the problems by which we are faced — the end of international war. 

 Sir Michael Foster, in his Address at Dover in 1899, after speaking of 

 progress in the material of warfare was led to believe that, ' happily, 

 the very greatness of the modem power of destruction is already 

 becoming a bar to its use, and bids fair — may we hope before long ? — 

 wholly to put an end to it ; in the words of Tacitus, though in another 



