the work of the Empire Club of Canada is-in a special sense-just beginning. Imperial ideals, and questions of Empire significance will demand closer attention in the near future than ever they did at any period of our Empire's history.

Looking backward I suggest that our existence has been more than justified. Generations yet unborn will cherish the names and memories of those far-seeing patriots, who, feeling that a Club with " CANADA AND A UNITED EMPIRE for its watchword was good for the encouragement of an Imperial ideal, founded the Empire Club of Canada.

I say that if, as a Club, we never met again, the work accomplished in the years gone by has been well worth while, and has wrought a sentiment that will endure for all time.

I bespeak for my successor the same cordial support that you have accorded me through the year that closes to-night. If I may suggest, I would like to think that some means can be found whereby the executive and the members of the Club can be brought into closer intercourse in the future, and I take the liberty, as your retiring President, to remind members accepting office for the coming year, that the success of the Club rests entirely upon the heartiness or otherwise with which they discharge the duties they voluntarily accept.

Once again, I thank you, members of the executive and members of the Club, for your loyal support during my term of office.

Time will never erase the happy memories I have of the harmony and good-fellowship that have characterised all our meetings, and my gratitude for the many kindnesses I have received at your hands is very real indeed.

As I pass on the office of President which you entrusted to me, I breathe once more Admiral Lord Nelson's prayer, so fitting just now to rise from the hearts of all true Britons: May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory. Amen, Amen, Amen."

THE PHILOSOPHY OF WAR

AN ADDRESS BY HON. W. R. RIDDELL, LL.D.

At the Annual Meeting of the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, May 6, 1915

MR. PRESIDENT and GentlemEN,-In human affairs none, save perhaps the most simple, springs from a single cause. To determine the real causes of such an extraordinary complex occurrence as the present war may well seem almost if not quite impossible. Many facts are still unknown, others are beclouded by misleading concomitants, no few cannot appear in their true significance from national prejudice and predilection. Nowhere else as in war can be found all the idola in such full vigour-the idola tribus, idols of the tribe, fallacies common to humanity in general; the idola specus, idols of the cave, misapprehensions due to the peculiar bodily or mental constitution of the individual; the idola fori, idols of the market-place, errors due to influence of mere words or phrases; the idola theatri, errors due to imperfect presentation-all are abroad, and it requires the utmost clearness of thought and intellectual honesty to escape, even in part, from their harmful control.

I distinctly and emphatically disclaim ability to free my mind wholly from noxious gas fallacy. I cannot pretend to be quite impartial; but I shall endeavour to state my views as well as I can, uninfluenced by anything but the truth as best I can discover the truth.

We commonly say that the war between Germany and Britain was caused by the invasion of Belgium. That this infamous assault upon an innocent, honourable, and unoffending nation precipitated the conflict is most true. That it consolidated public opinion as nothing else but an attack upon Britain herself could have done is also true. Without it we have the best authority for saying the cabinet would have been hopelessly divided on the question

of war. Without it, had! Britain declared war when she did, she would have gone into the war with some of her strongest statesmen determinedly opposed, and public opinion in a most dangerous state of indecision and helplessness. As it was, the cabinet was almost one. Only the aged Morley, Burns, who had in great measure outlived his usefulness, and another of even less importance, resigned, and of these it is understood that at least one, and probably two, would gladly have gone back.

Public opinion was practically unanimous, due in no slight degree to the sturdy patriotism of the opposition leaders. A few like Keir Hardie, who is never so happy as when girding at British ideals, and stirring up strife if not sedition; the labour fire-brand Larkin, who endeavoured to win back some of the favour with which he had once been considered, but which he had lost through the stern discountenance of labour's true leaders; Sir Roger Casement and his like, open traitors and Germanophilesthese stood apart and threw sand into the machinery which they could not control. The great heart of the nation was one, and continues to be one-these are negligible.

But the war was in any case inevitable-human nature, British nature, and Prussian nature being what they are. Nay, more, unless human nature British or Prussian should undergo such a metamorphosis as is unthinkable, circumstances were certain to occur which would consolidate the nation as thoroughly as is at present the caseand far more thoroughly than it was in the time of the war in South Africa.

This war, and much as it is, with Britain unanimous and determined as she is, was inevitable in the very nature of things, and did not depend upon an incident here and there, a detail trivial and avoidable. Rivulos consectari, fontes rerum non videre.

The real and efficient cause of the war, the actual fons et origo belli, is to be found in the ideals of the Prussian governing class, and the irreconcilable conflict between these and the modern spirit.

Much has been said—not too much-of Treitschke and Bernhardi. Treitschke, however, can be credited or debited only with making the Prussian ideal known and

popular in the rest of Germany; Bernhardi with pitilessly applying Prussian principles to the existing world and the near future. The ideal was there, living, active, growing, energising, long before these, and had they never existed would have found other agencies.

In essence the predominant conception of the Prussian is and always has been that it is God's will and plan that one man shall rule, that he shall be but little lower than the Almighty himself, and shall be the Vicegerent on earth in temporal matters of the Almighty, and shall be chosen by Him alone.

To the Prussian, the proposition that kings should owe their power to the people is wholly repugnant. The predecessor of the present King of Prussia refused to become Emperor of Germany by the will of the people, he preferred to be King of Prussia by the grace of God rather than Emperor of Germany by the grace of the people. Vox populi was not vox Dei in his conception. Any such sovereignty as is gloried in by our own King," broad, based upon the people's will," is wholly repugnant to those who hold the doctrine of right divine to govern wrong.

This view of the power of the King was a favourite of the Tudors and the Stewarts, but the tragedy of Whitehall and the Revolution of 1688 made for it an eternal quietus in our system. Its recrudescence under the third Guelph and later was possible only in remote colonies across the seas, and there the cannon and rifle in one part of the Empire and in the motherland persistent constitutional agitation, and a sense of decent fair play and ordinary justice, put an end to it despite the efforts of the Bourbon element on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Prussian King, the German Emperor, is an anachronism, a survival of a former evil condition of the body politic.

In that system it follows of necessity that the state is everything, the subject but a subject fit for nothing but to support the state, and whose wants, desires, all must be in subjection to the assumed needs of the state-the state is an end in itself, the individual exists but for the state. Let no one imagine that this is a pose, an affectation. The Kaiser most honestly believes in his heaven-sent mission, he has no qualms of doubt as to the constant attendance

of the Divine, whom he looks upon almost as an ally. His people are equally convinced that is, that part of them who have any share in administering the affairs of the

nation.

In an American periodical has recently appeared an article by the American wife of a German noble. She tells of the sermons of the pastor of their church not being wholly satisfactory to the commander of the troops in that district; they were not patriotic enough; and the colonel went to see him. Before this the Kaiser was represented as the main agent in the hands of God, but thereafter it was hard to distinguish the Kaiser from God Himself.

But all this was honest and thoroughly heartfelt. It has always been the case that the assumption of viceregency for God on the earth or in any part of it, however small, leads to arrogance. This imparts its like into those in contact with it; the insufferable arrogance of the Prussian is proverbial.

Ex necessitate, the state can make no mistake: what it wants for its complete development it ought to take. No other party, state, or individual has any right which Germany is bound to respect; any opposing force should be, and must be, crushed. There is no such thing as morality to be observed in relation to other nations. Germany produces a surplus of babies every year; she must have a place to put her surplus population, and if the unoccupied land be in the possession of other nations, so much the worse for other nations.

Germany is desirous of being a great manufacturing people: if she is met in the markets of the world by the competition of Britain, so much the worse for Britain. If Britain is invulnerable except with a great fleet, a great fleet Germany will have.

If Belgium, whose neutrality has been guaranteed, affords the easiest and speediest routes by which Germany can smite those she desires to conquer, Belgium should give way and leave the way open. No thought is given to the position of Belgium if France should repulse the invader and herself require to follow him over the Low Country.

If the United States by selling arms furnishes the enemies of Germany with means to fight her, she is lengthening the

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