to be willing to lag behind the others. Each will want the best. The old-time theories of the aristocracy will have to go. They are nearly gone now. Fortunes that can find no other proper use, and the inevitable outworking of political power, have already given the trend and set the wheels in motion. Surely it will affect the older institutions. Their constituencies will not in the long run be so widely distributed. The supply of teachers from the older to the newer will turn back from the newer to the older. And the inexorable law of nature which favors the son of toil rather than the illusioned son of wealth will prove its wisdom in the substance and the balance of democratic institutions and their steadily enlarging influence in all of the affairs of our great, round world.

It may seem that I have wandered, but I have kept an end in view. I now bring this old college, with its history and its present situation, into this general field. With all of its history, lapping parts of three centuries, notwithstanding the fact that it was the first college chartered by the State and to all intents was once the State College, and notwithstanding the fact that it was the first college established in America westward of the Hudson river, and with its alumni filling places of honor and trust in every state, it is poor. New conditions and enlarged demands have grown up around it. It has not been able to keep in the lead of events. It has become associated with four institutions in this city in a nominal university. It is an arrangement of mutual convenience. Each of those institutions has, as things go in this country, an ancient, and certainly each has an honorable, history. Would that I could have paid proper tribute to each. But neither has been able to give much of support to another or to the whole. All of these institutions are good, but poor. Each needs an endowment, the assured means of stronger support. In underpinning and superstructure each needs rejuvenation and strengthening. Each of these institutions needs to be put in circumstances which will enable it to give to and get from the others. The college needs to be reinforced and broadened if it is to continue to serve the ends of general culture or provide the training for business and social life, or supply the preparation for the technical and professional schools which they are bound to demand if they are to meet the demands which are coming-have already come, upon all professional schools. And the medical school and the law school and the technological school ought not only to require stronger general and scientific scholarship for admission, and look to the college to provide it, but they must present wider offerings,

longer courses, larger laboratories, fuller equipment, and more teachers whose exclusive work is teaching, in order to do their professional work as well as, or better than, other professional schools are doing it. The association of professional schools with a literary and arts college in a university has been abundantly demonstrated to be highly desirable, and almost or quite a vital one. And of course the value of the whole depends upon the strength of the parts. Not only this but other schools need to be created for their own sake and for the sake of those already here.

Union University has a situation which stirs envy in other institutions. It is close by the capital of the first State in the Union. It is in a half dozen cities of nearly a half million people who, with the new means of transportation, are only a few minutes apart. For higher educational purposes they are really one community. It is close by organized State educational activities like which there are none other in the country. It will soon find itself in the shadow of a great new building, the first in the country to be devoted exclusively to the intellectual interests of a state. It has access to one of the very great libraries of the nation which is soon to be very much greater. It is adjacent to the State Normal College which is about to be housed in a new, spacious and beautiful home, with facilities much expanded in many ways. It is in close association with the oldest school of civil engineering in the country which has just been aided by a worthy woman with a munificent addition to its endowment. It has exceptional opportunities for a great school of electrical, mechanical and sanitary engineering. It has not far to look for a historical and art institute which might easily become the nucleus of a school of fine arts. All around it there are excellent public high schools and good private academies without number. All these institutions need college help, and can give help. It is in an environment which is historic, and ought to be and is able to be a center of education in the country. It is among a people of liberal means, some of whom might be disposed to save the transfer taxes upon the whole or a part of their estates by giving them over to an institution of learning really equal to the higher and diversified educational requirements of a community in which they have keen interest.

In another twenty years there will probably be no city in the United States with a quarter of a million people which will permit itself to suffer the injustice of being without a university which shall provide general culture, specialize in some measure in the fine arts,

propagate the political sciences, supply thorough training for all of the professions and make practical application of the scientific knowledge of the world to all of the agricultural, constructive and manufacturing industries.

In some way these cities and towns about the capital will have such a university. They will have an infinitely better university if they combine their resources and ingenuity. The necessary cost of plant and of operation is so great that either one of these cities would make a profound mistake and surely meet with at least partial failure if it were to attempt to act alone. The logic of the situation, information which we all have, or which is at hand, and institutions of much worth which are already in our midst, point to the fact that these cities should combine in a university

movement.

Union College and the professional institutions associated with it can no longer hope to serve a widely distributed constituency. They will have sufficent burden and ample honor if they serve adequately the half million people or more who are within fifty miles of the New York State capital and if they represent these prosperous and intelligent communities as they are entitled to be represented upon the broad field of the higher learning in America.

Now, let us avoid a misfortune by speaking of it. From the first step in the development of Union College there have been occasional movements for installing it at Albany. Because of my absence I know less of the latest of these movements than others do. But I probably risk little in saying that no resident of this city will be disposed to become sponsor for such a suggestion now. The growth and the circumstances of population have already gone some distance and will speedily go much further in making that question of no practical concern. But there will be need of much readjustment and of adapting plans to situations which can be accomplished only by much concession and by readily opening the doors to new men and women, new influences and new movements. It is harder to organize a new scheme where there is a very respectable old one than where there is none at all. And it will be idle to move at all in this matter unless all who are interested are going to be disposed to take the situation as it is and act freely, without bias, prejudice or favor in making the most of it. But I entertain little doubt that if any interest should block the way of such a movement because of selfishness, that interest will find its own ends defeated, by the inevitable outworking of the situation in the next twenty years. For even in ancient

communities, the thing that ought to be in time finds its opportunity and breaks its way through.

I may have admitted, or assumed, or ventured more than the trustees and friends of the institutions in Union University would do. Even so, I have committed none but myself and I know full well that if my words do not generate much new energy they are not likely to produce very much harm. Wholly aside from what has been said it is very earnestly to be hoped that the cities of Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Hudson, Rensselaer, Cohoes and Watervliet and the prosperous villages above and below us upon the Hudson, and towards the Berkshires, up the valley of the Mohawk and out towards the headwaters of the Susquehanna may give their sincere and intelligent attention to the means for providing their people with adequate opportunities for the higher learning. These cities and towns ought to have a real university which they may justly call their own. It should be a university which can engage in all lines of research, be able to respond to every scientific need, and offer competent instruction in all branches of human learning. Its doors should swing freely to both men and women who are deserving, who have completed the work of the secondary schools, and who want to go further. It should nourish the natural, professional, political, and industrial sciences, and conserve, while it enlarges, the intellectual estate of ancient communities and a historic situation. It could be done as economically and yet as potentially here as anywhere in the country. But to do it in any satisfactory measure even here it must have an equipment of buildings and appliances which would be worth five millions of dollars and an endowment of ten millions or an assured and permanent income which would represent such an endowment. If such a university could be developed here it would be a crowning glory to a conspicuous and strategic situation, and if Union College, the Albany Medical College, the Albany Law School, and the Dudley Observatory could become the heart and core of such a university the fact would accord with the eternal fitness of things.

It

may be so if all who will it so will join hands to make it so.

Look forward not back; 'tis the chant of creation,

The chime of the seasons as onward they roll:

'Tis the pulse of the world, 'tis the hope of the nation

'Tis the voice of our God in the depths of the soul.

Lend a hand! Like the sun that turns night into morning,

The star that leads storm-driven sailors to land.

Ah, life is worth living with this for the watchword

Look up, out, and forward, and each lend a hand.

THE SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE

ADDRESS AT THE LAKE MOHONK CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION MAY 23, 1907

Mr President:

As a mere matter of prudence, my admission and your observation of the fact that this is my first appearance at a peace conference may well be coincident.

I am expected to treat of what the schools may do to promote the peace of the world. That involves my understanding of the basis of world peace. If I can not have a confident philosophy about that I can not rationally think of the relations which the schools ought to sustain to it. It is a subject about which there is not a little mystery and not a little divergent philosophy. If the newspapers are correctly informing, even the past masters are not at all times at peace in peace conferences.

Never, since the angels first proclaimed "On earth peace; good will toward men," has the hope of universal peace and good will seemed so assuring. It is because of the outworking of the New Power which the angels then heralded in the affairs of men. But the peace and good will were not to be without heavy conflict. Christ said, "I came not to send peace, but a sword." The sword was to be the necessary forerunner of peace. Repeatedly He foretold the horrors which were to follow the unfolding of the new gospel. Prophecy has been realized in fact. The theology or the spirituality of it I have not the training to exploit. Doubtless some professor of theology will tell us that the obvious meaning is not the real meaning of the statement. The Lord probably had no conception of modern theological interpretation: most assuredly I have none.

I think I have some understanding of the history which has followed since the statement was made and that fixes my attitude of mind. A new king came into human life. True, He was a heavenly king. He regarded not the kings of the earth, but they had to regard Him. He gained followers at once and together they propagated a philosophy and pursued a course which defied monarchs. The monarchs resisted, and harrassed them but they gained great numbers and became a great force. They stirred the thinking as well as the feelings of great peoples. All peoples lived in subjection to kings. The power of the kings was in the

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