and see where some were failing and others succeeding, what methods were the best, and which inadequate, and in that way try to combine our experiences for the advantage of the whole. You would be surprised to know how this interchange of experience acts over the world even at the present time. I happen, from my peculiar position, to have an opportunity to see it as not many can. A friend of mine is just now engaged in organizing a University in Western Australia, while an old pupil of mine is doing the same thing out in Saskatchewan for a prospective population of perhaps five millions of people. I am as a go-between giving my friend in West Australia the results that my friend in North-west Canada is achieving in carrying out his scheme. This same thing is going on in many parts of the world. As a result of the discussion in the Congress, the Universities resolved to form a central bureau for the collection and distribution of all ideas with regard to University education, to arrange for the easy transfer of students from one University in the Empire to another, for exchange of professors, and for a wide comparison of University experience by recurring conferences. No other nation in the world has ever had such an opportunity as that.

The same thing I believe ought to be applied to the whole educational methods of our Empire. I wonder if we ever try to concentrate into some brief formulæ what the essential aims of education are. What are the main objects we must keep in view? I should say perhaps this could be put under two or three heads in a broad way. I think we may say that to maintain a high standard of morality in all the relations of public, commercial, and social life is one of the main objects of education. In the next place, undoubtedly another object of education is to increase the efficiency of the individual citizen for whatever work he has to do, and to deepen his sense of public duty and responsibility for unselfish service to the whole community. In the third place, I am inclined to say that the object of our national education should be to increase the happiness and welfare of the individual citizen, and of the whole community to

which we belong. Now, if you take that view, you will see what a weight of responsibility lies upon the shoulders of those who have to think upon educational questions, and carry out educational systems. And, as in many other things, that sense of responsibility must rest on the shoulders of the man of British race more heavily than upon any other people or any other race in the world. Why do I say that? Let me state the main lines of this responsibility. First, the responsibility of the Mother Land; next, the responsibility of the great selfgoverning Colonies to which the people of the Mother Land go; and next, the responsibility which both Mother Land and Colonies owe to those three hundred and fifty millions of the weaker races that, in the course of our history, have been placed under our control and who look to us for development, wise government, justice, and whatever else makes for their highest good.

First let me speak about the responsibility of the Mother Land. Very often in England I am asked to speak upon the educational, political, or religious relations of the different parts of the Empire. Now, I never do this in England without being impressed in almost an overwhelming way with the burden of responsibility towards the rest of the world that lies upon the people of the United Kingdom. Do you ever think what it means? Here is a nation inhabiting but a small country that is every year sending out three hundred thousand people or more into every corner of the world. To do what? To sow the seed of Nations. Every man of them that goes out is going to help establish the moral, the religious, the social, the political standards of the countries to which they go. Three hundred thousand a year. Never has there been anything like this in the world. To sow the seed of Nations! I say to my English audience, "What does that mean?" I got hold of an illustration the other day which I have used in addressing an English audience, one of a very penetrating kind. I live up near Reading, on the Thames, where some of the great seed-growers have their business. "Do you ever," I said, "notice what these great seed-growers put as the first line in their advertisements: 'All seeds tested

before they are sent out.' Imagine the responsibility of a nation that above all others of the world is sowing the seed of new nations on new continents. There is yet another aspect of the matter. That same nation has to maintain in India 150,000 people, of whom 75,000 are soldiers and 75,000 civilians. These soldiers and civilians are among three hundred millions, and every man of them has to stand for English civilization and English christianity. Where do they come from? Out of the little English villages, out of the slums of the English cities and the crowded centres of industry in England. Again, in every port English ships form perhaps seventy-five per cent. of all there are. England has 250,000 sailors going to every port in the world, and there they too have to stand for the civilization and the christianity of England. I have said to English audiences, that if there is anything in the world that gives dignity to the work of the poorest schoolmaster or humblest clergyman in this country of England, it is the possibility that the boys who have received their training under him may some day be standing in the remotest parts of the Empire to represent what the nation stands for. I do not think I ever felt more deeply on any subject than on this when I have tried to impress upon English people the wonderful range of opportunity given to them to fulfil high responsibilities and obligations in this way. If anything should inspire them to new activity and new effort it is that thought.

But there is another side to the question. Let me give you an illustration. I was in Boston last week. I was told by an educational man there with whom I was talking that to-day in that old representative New England State more than seventy per cent. of the population were foreign born, or the sons of foreign born. That was the old Puritan State of Massachusetts. That experience is being repeated in many parts of the United States, and while I almost stand aghast at the vast burden that is being put on our British Empire by having to deal with three or four hundred millions of other races in different parts of the world, I don't know but what, if I were an American citizen, I would be still more staggered with

the problem of having to assimilate a million a year of the people that pour especially from the great Mediterranean and other regions-Poles, Bulgarians, Greeks, Italians, and other countries of Europe. Now, we in Canada and in the Colonies are to a degree face to face with a problem somewhat of the same kind. In the future we shall have to assimilate not only the tested or untested seeds that come to us from Great Britain, but also vast numbers of people untrained to political self-government, untrained to our ideas of social and religious life, and who have to be brought in some way up to the standard of those political, commercial, and religious conceptions which have made our race what it is, have given it its influence and strength in the world, and on which the future of our nation and of our race depends. That again, is a responsibility which is as great, it seems to me, as that almost of the Mother Land. It has hurt me lately when I have been travelling through the West where large populations of foreigners have gone in, to find in contested elections that the first introduction of the immigrant to the ideals of British Government comes sometimes through the temptation to sell his vote. At any rate this is true if what one sees in the leading papers of the country are true. Few countries in the world have had such an opportunity of setting a high example as Canada has in that particular.

I have been travelling lately through many parts of the United States. An anxious people are those of the United States to-day. They find that the methods of government which they have relied upon and which have served their purposes in the past are breaking down under the weight of pressure put upon them. They are looking with interest to our British countries to see what we are doing and how we accomplish our purposes. Two years ago four of the great Universities in the west asked me to give a course of lectures to their political students on the management of our great British Empire. They were anxious to find out how the British people were working out the problems of self-government, and how it was they secured effect for the will of the people so much more easily than is done in the

United States. I do not hesitate to say that if Canada could give, on this Continent, an example of uncorrupt self-government it would have a more profound effect on our American neighbours than any other influence that could be brought to bear upon them. They admire already our Judicial system, but we want to add to that a political purity which would make every individual citizen of Canada feel that to sell his vote was to sell his soul. If we can have that, Canada with her increasing millions of people will have an immense moral influence on this Continent. What is the responsibility, then, that comes under my second division, that of these great Dominions? It is that we must make the most of the great institutions we have inherited from the Mother Land. We must not let them degenerate, we must show them at their best, and show that we are resolved to make our political system as pure as possible. That will lift up these people who come to us to the highest idea of political and public life they can have. The same is true of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other Colonies.

Now let me turn aside to the other vast problem, which is thrust upon one as he travels around the Empire. We are responsible—our British peoples—for millions of the weaker races. It is no use for Canadians to think that off in this section of the world we can shirk the responsibility of the race. We are, on the Pacific, coming already face to face with these hundreds of millions of Asia; we are going to be in touch with them; we are just as much involved in their future as people in the British Isles. If we try to shirk our responsibilities, we are unworthy of the race from which we are sprung or the blood that flows within us. (Applause)

Let me give you an illustration of how we are responsible for these hundreds of millions of the weaker races of the world. Two years ago I had to go and practically circumnavigate the continent of Africa. I went down the east coast, got into Rhodesia, went down through the centre of the country, and then came back on the west side, and as I did so I watched the map of that country. Up the Nile a railway is being built up to Khartoum