276 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
government ever did a more tactful or 
a more graceful thing for the Ameri- 
can people than to send to this country 
as their representative the author of 
"The American Commonwealth." They 
sent us a man who understood us and a 
man who understood our institutions. 
But Mr. Bryce's knowledge is not limited 
to the United States. His great work 
on "Impressions in South Africa" shows 
him to be just as much a master of 
Africa as he is of America. Indeed I 
doubt not but that he owes his pre- 
eminence as a statesman to the profound 
knowledge of countries and peoples that 
he possesses that can be utilized by the 
British government. 
Your Excellency, the National Geo- 
graphic Society recognizes very fully 
your eminence in geographical research 
■of the very highest type, researches re- 
lating to the countries and peoples and 
institutions of the world, and I have been 
requested by the Board of Managers to 
announce tonight that they have elected 
you an honorary member of this Society. 
We cannot hope. Your Excellency, to 
add honor, or to confer honor, upon one 
so eminent as yourself, but the Society 
-will confer honor upon itself by adding 
your name to the list of eminent men 
who constitute the honorary membership 
•of the Society. 
ADDRESS BY THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR, 
MR. JAMES BRYCE 
President Gannett, Dr. Graham Bell, 
.ladies and gentlemen of the National 
Geographic Society: I thank you most 
lieartily for the very high honor you 
"have done me in electing me an honorary 
-member of your Society. There is no 
honor that could come to me which I 
shall prize and cherish more, because I 
'"know of the long career of this Society, 
-of the admirable work it has done and is 
doing for geographic exploration and re- 
search and of the new fields into which, 
as Mr. Bell has told you, it is always 
pushing its way. 
You said, Mr. Bell, and I heard what 
you said with very great pleasure be- 
cause it seems to me that your friend- 
ship has enabled you to understand what 
I feel, that there is nothing I am so fond 
of and nothing I have been all my life 
so interested in as geography. In fact, 
it sometimes occurs to me I have mis- 
taken my vocation in life. It might have 
been better to have chosen the vocation 
of a traveler and describer of countries, 
rather than that of a lawyer, or writer, 
or politician, because there is, in my 
opinion, no pleasure comparable to that 
of studying the earth on which we live 
and endeavoring to obtain a knowledge 
of what the Creator has given to the 
dififerent peoples on this earth, of that 
which it contains, and how the course 
of human events, from the time of the 
prehistoric ages down to the fuller light 
of our own time, has been determined by 
the physical circumstances under which 
the various races of mankind have been 
led in their several careers. 
Whichever way you look at it, whether 
as the gradual unfolding of the forces of 
the human intellect, or as evidence of the 
wise and beneficent purposes of our 
Creator, there is no subject of more in- 
terest and better fitted to suggest pro- 
found contemplations than the history 
of mankind in relation to the history of 
the earth on which we live, and it is a 
history the full meaning of which is 
never completely unfolded, because every 
succeeding age adds something to it. 
I feel, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, 
that there is nothing that the man who 
loves this earth and who loves his fellow- 
men ought to desire more than to devote 
himself to this inquiry, and certainly 
there is no better way than being ad- 
mitted as a member to your Society, 
which is laboring in that glorious task. 
It is very hard, ladies and gentlemen, 
to find anything to say that has not been 
better said by many of your members, 
who could claim a much fuller knowl- 
edge than I can upon the purpose and 
methods of geographic research ; but 
when I was thinking of previous meet- 
ings at which I have had the pleasure 
of attending, it occurred to me on one 
occasion there came up for discussion 
the possible exhaustion of the field of 
geographic exploration. It has at these 
meetings been pointed out how much of 
the earth there was which was unex- 
plored and unknown in the days when 
