You will find an edited version of his convocation address below.

W.L. Mackenzie King: The ceremonies we have had the privilege of witnessing today speak of ancient and honour able traditions which it is the peculiar function of institutions of higher learning to preserve. Tradition unites us with what is best in the past, and affords the surest foundation on which to build.

It is a part of the tradition of Queen's University that the Chancellor and Principal should be men of executive ability and scholarly attainments, but also that they should be citizens in the fullest and finest meaning of the word. The conception of citizenship, in this comprehensive sense, carries us back in thought to one of the two great streams of influence which have come down to us from the past. In the Greek view of life, man was a being of many faculties. His faculties were there to be developed. For the perfection of manhood, the use of all his faculties was essential. "Man", said Aristotle, "is born to be a citizen."

It was only as citizens, sharing in the life and government of their state, that men could realize the full expression of their manhood. It is this conception of citizenship that Queen's University has kept to the fore. In the deliberate association by the Chancellor of Queen's of the interests of higher education with his business concerns, there is something splendidly reminiscent of what was best in the many-sidedness of life, and the opportunities of citizenship, as conceived by the Greeks.

There is something equally splendid, and equally reminiscent of Greek life at its best, in a Christian minister quitting the pulpit for the battlefield, and returning from the scene of war to the University to assume the high and dignified position of Principal. Not only do careers such as these recall the ancient past, they are illustrative also of the many-sidedness of the present in our own land, and of the limitless opportunities which lie on the horizon of the future.

It is not the Hellenic influence alone which has been preserved in the ceremonies of today. The spirit of the Hebrew, not less than the spirit of the Greek, has had its influence on all subsequent civilization, and Queen's University has been the custodian of the Hebrew tradition of a divine law of righteousness as the greatest of realities, and the highest of all inspirations.

The founders of Queen's University were men who believed that righteousness exalteth a nation. They imposed no religious tests, they opened wide the doors of this University, and extended to all the ad vantages of a liberal education; at the same time, they were far from indifferent to the power of religion in intellectual and other achievements. It is of more than passing interest that the Principal of this University should be not only an eminent Divine of the Church of Scotland, but also an authority on ancient Hebrew literature.

It is of this combination of the Hellenic and Hebraic influences in their relation to our public life, of many-sidedness combined with a passion for righteousness, that I should like to say just a word. Perhaps I might phrase the matter differently, and, having regard to the traditions referred to, speak for a moment on the relation of the University to the State.

There is a tendency today in many quarters to make light of our public life, and to deplore the growing democracy of our times because of the class of men it is said to bring to the fore. One hears too often that politics is a sordid business, and that no decent man should go into politics. Well, if this be true, if our standards of public morality fail to reach a high level, if our public life is not what it ought to be, remember that this is not so much the fault of men who go into public life, as of the men who remain indifferent to the obligations of citizenship. I once heard Sir Wilfrid Laurier say in reply to an editor of a newspaper which was criticizing certain of his colleagues: "You good people want me to have a Cabinet of angels, but you do not send me angels to make a Cabinet out of."

It is well, perhaps, to remember that constituencies are limited in the choice of their candidates, even more from the unwillingness of able and high-minded men to endure the hard- ships, incur the sacrifices, or suffer the abuse of public life, than from any other circumstance.

Goldwin Smith, who knew more of the public life of England than almost any other writer of his day, and who had a more intimate association with university life than any scholar we have had among us, has said somewhere, with rare discernment, that "politics is the noblest of all callings, but the meanest of all trades".

In this there is a distinction that goes to the root of the whole matter. Make of politics a means to an end, and that end a sordid or a selfish one, and there is nothing so despicable and unworthy. Make of it a means to an end, and that end the service of one's country, and of one's fellow-men, and there is no form of service that is higher or nobler.

It is this latter conception of public life, and of the opportunities it affords, that I should like to see kept before the undergraduates and graduates of our Canadian universities. If there ever was a time when men of trained intelligence should feel an obligation to share in the public life of their country, that time is the present. There never was a moment when so many questions of national and international importance were pressing for solution. All kinds of problems of the first magnitude con- front us-financial, industrial, and social. No single intelligence can hope to grapple with these problems nor can any single group of minds, be they members of an entire Cabinet, or even of a Parliament. The best brains of the nation as a whole are needed to cope with the problems of reconstruction now emerging out of the wake of the War. It is true that everyone cannot be- come a legislator, but everyone possessed of intelligence can contribute in some measure towards the formation of an enlightened public opinion. All government is based on public opinion. It is an informed and enlightened public opinion that is most needed to-day if society is to progress, and be spared those extreme reactions which make for disorder.

On yet another ground, I would appeal to university men to serve their day and generation. Many of the best and bravest of our land, including university men in large numbers, have laid down their lives that our liberties might be preserved, and that freedom might not perish from the earth. Did they, our heroic dead, the chivalry of our race, leave these shores, never to return, in order to fight for a civilization that can be estimated in tons, or calculated in dollars? Or was it for the maintenance of a great ideal, vaguely defined, perhaps, as most ideals are, but to be expressed, nevertheless, in terms of freedom and righteousness in national affairs-the making of this world a better place in which to dwell, a place where good-will and not hate, will be the actuating motive in the lives of men, and where social justice, and a larger toleration will replace all handicaps of race or creed or class. It is this ideal which we have received in trust from those who have suffered and died. Its realization in our national life is the only memorial worthy of the sacrifices they have made.

May I say one word in conclusion to the young men and women who have received their higher education here, and who are now about to go out into a world which holds lightly many of the things which they have been taught to reverence. It is a word which I heard the late Professor Charles Eliot Norton, who was Longfellow's successor in the chair of Fine Arts at Harvard, deliver in a valedictory address: "Let not the dust of the world obscure your vision!"

This, in a single sentence, was Professor Norton's summing up of the relation of the University to the affairs of everyday life. I recall how he said that he wished he could give to everyone of us a talisman that would be a guide through life. He could only repeat the threadbare maxims "love beauty", and "find in duty the fulfilment of the law of life". He spoke of the words over the door of the temple at Delphi, "Know thyself", and concluded with a reference to the last hours of Sir Walter Scott who, as he lay dying, looking out from his windows to the Tweed as it wandered through the meadows hard by, said to Lockhart, his son-in-law, "Be a good man; that is all that will comfort you when you come to lie here." "Be a good man", said Professor Norton, "that is my last, my best wish for each of you."

Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Duty: these are the possessions which the University places in our hands and teaches us to reverence. It is for us to see that they become a national possession, and that our vision concerning their worth is not obscured by the dust of the world.