must supply those arguments and those answers," and they turned to the professors.

We here in New York in the Chamber of Commerce are making a determined effort in behalf of commercial education. The courses of study in our public schools seem to have been constructed with the idea of children going to college. Whereas at least ninety per cent leave school at the age of fourteen years or under, and comparatively few go to college. During the last twenty-five years the curricula in colleges have not been materially changed; they have scientific courses, commercial courses and elective courses, which have been lately introduced, and certainly the same principle should be observed in framing the course of study in the public schools. By commercial study we mean the acquisition of modern languages, French, Spanish and German. Commerce in this country is struggling under three awful handicaps. For 119 years the importation of vessels built abroad for commercial use has been prohibited in this country. That is the element of protection. In 1792 when the law was passed denying American register to foreign-built vessels over eighty-eight per cent of the freighting business was done in American vessels. In 1910 less than nine per cent was done. If there is any reason for the continuance of that law I have been unable to discover it.

It costs forty per cent more to build in this country than abroad, and hence an American line of steamers must be capitalized for forty per cent more than when it is built abroad. The great commercial banking power in this country represented by our national bank system, under the banking laws under which they must do business in this country, can have no branches and no agencies at home or abroad. It is impossible that they can compete with the great banks of the world that have agents all over the world in the transaction of foreign business. And that means that our foreign business must be financed by foreign bankers, our rivals, who fix the rate of interest as the foreign vessels fix the rate for freight.

Again, business done in any other country must be done in the language of that country, and in many things according to the customs and uses of the country. In America we speak but one language and are said to speak that badly. And when we

do business abroad we must employ interpreters, and pay our rivals to make our trades for us and do business for us. Now, we hope in the Chamber of Commerce to help overcome this handicap by creating an opportunity first for obtaining a commercial education including these languages, and then by issuing certificates of proficiency as the result of examinations, which will possess a value in obtaining positions at home and abroad.

There are great problems of education to be met and solved, as well as problems of government. There is certainly no position more honorable, and under the circumstances I believe there is no position more responsible and more desirable for good, than the presidency of a great university.

JOHN GRIER HIBBEN

RIGHTEOUSNESS

Address delivered by President Hibben of Princeton University at the dinner of the Holland Society, New York, January 15, 1914.

MR. PRESIDENT, HIS EXCELLENCY, THE MINISTER FROM THE NETHERLANDS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-I am going to take, if I may be allowed, some liberty with this toast. I remember as a boy in my old home church we had an old-fashioned minister who always used to announce his text and then say that he would preach to and from it, as he expressed it; and I am going to take the liberty to speak to and from this text; and, in the first place perhaps, wandering somewhat far afield from the

text.

Following the example of the Honorable Collector of the Port, a story has been suggested to my mind by the coat of arms of William the Silent, illustrating one of the conspicuous Dutch traits of taciturnity. There was a Dutch emigrant who came to this country a few years ago who fell in love with a very pretty Irish maid; and, one evening, when all the circumstances and conditions seemed favorable, he managed to ask her a question, "Katie, do you luff me?" And she replied, with Celtic alacrity, "I do"; and the next question was, "Will you marry me?" And she said "I will"; and then there was silence for a long time; and finally the girl looked up into his face and said, "Yacob, why don't you say something more?" And he says, "I tinks I have said too much already." [Laughter.]

I have only one criticism of this delicious feast that you have spread before us to-night,-that there was a certain dish called "Hutspot," evidently intended to be a Dutch dish with an alleged Spanish ancestry, but, when it came before us to my per