March 20, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



411 



Canada of the future is not to curse the 

 Canada of to-day. 



Our land is full of opportunity. Our 

 spaces are wide. Citizens of less fortunate 

 countries, which have wasted their opportu- 

 nities and shirked their responsibilities until 

 too late, have turned their eyes towards 

 Canada. 



Canada has a right to expect, both from 

 her own and her foster children, that they 

 shall use but not abuse their unrivaled 

 chances for national and world betterment. 

 We shall be wise if we see and provide in 

 time the proper mechanisms for harmoniz- 

 ing rapid development with proper conser- 

 vation of resources before we are fighting 

 for the room and the right to breathe by 

 reason of our overcrowding when we should 

 be unable to think clearly and act intelli- 

 gently and realize too late that in our 

 short-sightedness we have made unwar- 

 ranted overdrafts on nature 's storehouse. 



Facilities for rapid transit and free com- 

 munication have enabled Canada to have at 

 her command, while she yet has room, all 

 the equipment evolved by the older and 

 more crowded nations. Pioneering in the 

 year 1913 is indeed "pioneering de luxe." 

 This, whilst a matter of self-gratulation 

 for increased opportunity, brings also 

 added responsibility to our generation. 



The necessity for the provision of national 

 and provincial facilities for seeking out, ac- 

 cumulating, weighing, standardizing, adapt- 

 ing and diffusing knowledge require no argu- 

 ment: in fact, the newer provinces in the 

 middle and far west have already antici- 

 pated this need and we are now met to cele- 

 brate an important step in the development 

 of our prairie province from whose ample 

 bosom is derived that sustenance upon 

 which so many in this and other lands have 

 come to depend. 



The Canadian government has not been 

 blind to the value of such knowledge to the 



people. The provision of a fund of ten 

 million dollars to be distributed through- 

 out the Dominion for the benefit of agricul- 

 tural instruction is a splendid national in- 

 vestment. This far-sighted policy under 

 the direction of such wise leaders of Cana- 

 dian progress as Dr. C. C. James, will bring 

 much that is needed, not alone to the agri- 

 cultural interests, but to all of us. 



SCOPE, VALUE AND COST OF PROVINCIAL 

 UNIVERSITIES 



In the consideration of the function and 

 scope of a provincial university, we should 

 carefully consider the end sought, the bene- 

 fit to be derived, the means available and 

 the cost of installation and operation. At 

 the present day we are not staggered when 

 confronted with the necessity of spending 

 hundreds of millions of dollars on rail- 

 ways, whose construction is necessary to 

 open up new lands. We pledge our own 

 generation and our children to the payment 

 of vast sums for advantages which some- 

 times remain problematical for years. We 

 see the need for tremendous capital invest- 

 ment in the matter of mines when some- 

 times many years elapse before production 

 yields satisfactory dividends. The divi- 

 dends to be paid by our educational system 

 are not all to be expressed in terms of dol- 

 lars and cents, but they are sufficiently ob- 

 vious to induce those states which have had 

 most experience to invest more deeply 

 every year. 



I had the honor to deliver the second an- 

 nual opening address before the faculty of 

 science of the University of Manitoba in 

 October, 1907, at which time I spoke upon 

 "State Responsibility in University Educa- 

 tion." On that occasion I gave the avail- 

 able figures for capital and maintenance 

 expenditures in certain of the state institu- 

 tions in the mid-western portion of the 

 United States. At that time, Wisconsin 



