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The Relation of the University to

International Good-will

DR. JOHN RHYS.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I introduce myself as coming from the same district as the Great Apostle of Peace, the late Henry Richards, whose name I have heard with great pleasure mentioned more than once in these meetings. As the president has told you, I come as the representative of the University of Oxford.

When I was asked to speak at this great Peace Congress, I felt keenly sorry that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford could not be here himself, for he could have represented the University far more adequately than his substitute can hope to do. Some of us are so completely of the Old World that we should find your social atmosphere too bracing for us to thrive here, but our Vice-Chancellor is such that, had his lines fallen in pleasant places in the United States, he could not have failed to prosper greatly. He is a man of liberal opinions and business habits like yourselves. He throws his whole energy into the work of the University, and judging from the tenor of his life I should say that his motto is Peace and Progress. With the powerful aid of the statesman whom our University has recently. elected to be her Chancellor, we expect to see him inaugurate a period of great academical prosperity. But for all such prosperity and progress, peace, continuous peace, is a sine qua non.

Mr. Carnegie, with the thoroughness characteristic of all his doings, including his vast hospitality, has gone into the reckoning of what war means-what loss war means-to the material industries of the leading nations of the world. In this context I wish to emphasize the intellectual industry represented by colleges and universities, a subtle industry which pervades the other industries and makes their prosperity possible in the highest sense of the word. If we take our trained intellects away to guide the destructive work of war, what becomes of the best and highest interests of our material industries? To say the least, they cease to prosper; the flow of new ideas fails to reach them; the artistic element permeating them grows senile and ugly.

I have lived to see and hear of far too many wars. When the Franco-Prussian struggle of 1870 startled the whole of Europe, I was a member of the Sanskrit and Zend classes of Professor Brockhaus at Leipsic, but alas! those classes were broken up suddenly owing to all the native Germans in attendance having to hurry away to the seat of war. Some of them never returned; some came back in the discharge of duties assigned them, and I had a conversation with one or two. They were in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with peasants, weather-beaten and clad in clothes worn threadbare like the rest. They were contented with their lot, it is true, for, as they observed to me, they knew it was impossible for all educated men in the army to be made officers. Nevertheless it was a pitiful sight which impressed me very profoundly, to see the rising philologists of Germany treated as so much food for powder. The most venerable traditions we possess seem to sum up the intellectual acquirements of the human race at the outset as "knowledge of good and evil," but war mostly brings with it knowledge of evil alone, experience of misery and suffering, social cataclysms and the overthrow of orderly life.

Looking at the question of Peace and War in its bearing on University life, I would call your attention for a moment to a movement at Oxford which makes for Peace and Good-will, a movement set on foot by the thoughtfulness and generosity of one of Oxford's most remarkable alumni in modern times, Cecil Rhodes. His benefaction enables each of the States in your great Union to send over to Oxford a number of selected students to go through a part of their academical career on the banks of the Isis. In fact you have already sent us an excellent contingent; they have not failed to show us what they can do. They are all immensely popular in the University, but they are too sensible to be spoiled. What, however, I wish to point out is, that those students will have ample opportunities of making themselves acquainted, among other things, with British peculiarities and British prejudices-the most stubborn of all the facts with which I am acquainted. If the present scheme were to be doubled so as to provide for our sending students over to the American Universities, the exchange would be complete. But I foresee difficulties, arising out of our fears that the British contingent would never come home again, but settle down here to make

money in the United States. Lopsided as you may think the present scheme, it is calculated to work distinctly for Peace and Goodwill. Usually men who thoroughly understand one another are not the readiest to rush at one another's throats at the slightest provocation or no provocation at all. Your young men who come over to Oxford are likely, when they return home, to prove men of capacity and leaders of opinion. One of your greatest authorities in educational matters has shown that far the greater number of your great judges and your great statesmen have been college men. We on the other side of the ocean boast that quite a handsome proportion of those who guide the destinies of the British. Empire are men who have received their education at Oxford. To bring these important classes of students in contact with one another while they are preparing themselves for positions of responsibility in their respective countries seems, therefore, an experiment worth making on a large scale. We believe not only that their knowledge of one another would prove to be an influence making for peace, as I have already suggested, but we believe further that peace and friendliness made permanent between America and the British Empire would always go a long way to fortify the reign of peace over the rest of the world. The deep-seated desire of the two great Anglo-Celtic powers to be on thoroughly friendly terms with one another and to act together in the cause of liberty and culture constitutes a fact not easily overlooked by any would-be disturber of the world's peace.

The University of Oxford congratulates herself, accordingly, on contributing something towards the great end which the friends of peace gathered together in this city have in view. Above all she profoundly appreciates the steps which your great Republic has already taken in the way of peace, steps taken under the guidance of your vigorous and warm-hearted President, backed by Carnegie and other men of wealth and wisdom. But in the Old Country it is not the University of Oxford, alone, that sympathizes with you, but all the thinking men and women of the British Isles. My personal feelings I could not better express than in the words of your own poet:

"I greet with a full heart the land of the West,
Whose banner of stars o'er a world is unrolled."

I will say no more; you know what I mean.

DR. BUTLER:

It is appropriate that after hearing the voice of Oxford, we should hear the voice of her sister university, the university of Sir Isaac Newton, of long ago, and the university of the genial and scholarly Jebb of yesterday. I have the honor to present to you the Master of Gonville and Caius, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Dr. Roberts.

The Christian Ministry and the Peace Movement REVEREND E. S. ROBERTS

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, AND FELLOW STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES: You have heard from your Chairman that it is appropriate that the representatives of the two ancient universities of England should speak on such an occasion as this. It is also appropriate that the one which does not care to contend whether it is the younger or older university, should speak second. (Laughter.) It has nothing to do with my subject, but I must tell you one little story which reflects credit upon my own college.

My college is named "Gonville and Keys" and usually spelled KEYS, although it is really CAIUS, more particularly and briefly entitled Keys, because it was founded by a man named Dr. Keys. At that time there was a famous Oxford historian named Key, who tried to prove that Oxford was the ancient university and Cambridge was the younger. Dr. Keys in the plural tried to prove exactly the opposite, but the historian of both says that they were equally mendacious, but Dr. Keys was the more reputable. (Laughter and applause.)

But I must come to the subject; the time allotted to my few remarks is limited, and the limitation was imposed at my own request. (Laughter.) I feel it therefore to be necessary to divest my brief address of all superfluity, and proceed without delay to the one very simple proposition which I desire to make. If it is presented in a somewhat crude form, I beg you to accept the explanation that because of the time limit it is shorn of many arguments and illustrations which otherwise might have commended it to you more forcibly. I make the proposition because I claim for it these merits: First, it contains no contentious, pernicious matter-most important in a Peace Congress; second,

it cannot but be productive of good results, even though it touches only at the outer fringe of the most difficult problem of the world's politics; third, it is eminently practicable; and fourth, and most important, it is not advertised as a panacea.

To me, then, some four years ago, the question of the duty of the ministry, of religion, in relation to the abolition of war, presented itself in this form: "Can the ministers of religion, in their public capacity, and by united and organized efforts, make any contribution to the solution of the great problem which has baffled politicians, economists, and statesmen since time began?"

While meditating upon this question, I read in the Times of London, of August, 1903, a letter signed by several prominent English clergymen; that letter contained an appeal to the Archbishop and the Bishops, that they should advise their clergy to set aside one Sunday in the year, to be devoted to the subject of abolishing war. The letter recommended a simultaneous delivery in all the churches of sermons in which the leading thought should be the obligation of Christian nations to seek a substitute for that crime of war, in which they have for nineteen centuries despairingly acquiesced. The mere Epicurean observer of human nature, whose gods care not for men, and only haunt the lucid interspace of world and world, may smile at what he may deem the simplicity and innocence of the plan shadowed forth by those undoubtedly honest clergymen. But I recognize in the letter quoted the assertion of a great and valuable principle, which—I speak subject to correction-has been conspicuously absent from any scheme, if there has been a scheme, for a general attack by ministers of the Christian religion upon that mental attitude of civilized nations which regards war as necessary, or in some cases, as a justifiable consequence of conflicting interests. The principle they affirmed is this: the attacks upon the spirit of militarism must be continuous, must be aggressive, must be a part of the persistent plan to be carried out and developed in time of the profoundest Peace, and not alone when we are overtaken and bewildered by the storm and stress of war. I should have liked, if I had had time, to go into that question, to consider the history of the discourses from the pulpit in times of peace. I believe that the result would be found to be very trifling indeed. Therefore, when we consider what answer awaits the question, "Are the ministers of religion doing anything at all toward the abolition of

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