JAMES RAMSAY MACDONALD

A MYSTIC KINSHIP

James Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of England from January to November, 1924, has long been known as a speaker, editor, writer and leader of the Labor Party. His speeches have naturally been largely on political themes, but the following address is an admirable instance of an after-dinner speech without partisanship and yet marked by both humor and political idealism. It was delivered at a dinner in honor of Mr. Frank B. Kellogg, the new American Ambassador to the Court of St. James's and Sir Esme Howard, who succeeded Sir Auckland Geddes as British Ambassador to the United States, given by the Pilgrims in London on February 2, 1924.

THE Pilgrims have, indeed, done honor to me to-night generously. Not only have you asked me to be your guest, but you have put in my keeping the toast of the Ambassador. The chairman has been good enough to use the privilege of a chairman [laughter] to give me first of all a hint that I should be humble, and, secondly, an equally good hint that I should be just. He has hinted that I should be humble by referring to the fact that those who are sitting behind me owe their places to the fortunes of the ballot. I should not like to say that I owe my place to the same fortune. [Laughter.] I am afraid it is more accident than ballot. So far as the income tax is concerned-[laughter]-neither the Foreign Secretary nor the Prime Minister has anything whatever to do with it. [Laughter.] In the language of a Parliamentary representative who is not his own master, I say I will duly report the suggestion to my right honorable friend. [Laughter.]

I am sure, however, there is one very serious thought that is in the mind of every man in the gathering here to-night, who may be here and across the seas in spirit, and that is the very

sad news we have had of the state of health of ex-President Wilson. [Subdued cheers.] This is a moment when partisanship and party allegiance sink into insignificance, and I can assure his Excellency the American Ambassador that the whole English nation to-night is standing with held breath waiting for further news of the ex-President. Our party differences flare up like a great beacon and die down like the flames of a great beacon. What is great, what is inspiring in the actions of public men, belongs not to parties, not to nations, but to the whole of humanity.

I have been asked to ask you to drink the health of his Excellency the American Ambassador. I do it with great pleasure. There are some Ambassadors who are going to give me trouble. [Laughter.] There are some Ambassadors whose visits to the Foreign Office will always fill my heart with joy, because they will have nothing whatever to say to me. [Laughter.] My honorable friend, his Excellency, who sits at my right, I am glad to say, and I am sure he is glad to say, belongs to the latter category. The relations between the United States and Great Britain were never better than they are to-night. [Cheers.] I pray to God that they will long continue in that happy condition.

This society, I believe, takes its name from a certain flight, not the flight from sterling to the dollar [laughter], with which I hasten to say I do not approve. It was a flight of the British spirit, which is always stifled when it cannot breathe the air of freedom [cheers], a flight of the British spirit, which sought home, rest, peace, and comfort across the seas, to do its duty and to worship its God according to its conscience. Happy and rich is the nation that begins its history with a pilgrimage of grace and a pilgrimage of freedom. Such is the American nation.

It is curious, since those long past days, that the mind of man has made many conquests. It has gone out in its great adventures and found paths in uncharted space, and it has discovered great empires in the insignificant world of the atom and the electron. But there is one thing that we have not yet discovered, and that is how to be neighborly. The whole of our civilization consists in reasonableness, in fair play, in kindly

consideration one for another; and, above all, in taking the quarrels of individuals away from their own arbitrament, and placing them in the custody of disinterested parties. [Cheers.] That discovery has still to be made. May I say, without offense, for there is no offense in my heart, America and ourselves have gone far to make that discovery? [Hear, hear.] America and ourselves we want no alliance; we want no documents are in the position of two nations that in spirit, by reason of those great moral and spiritual forces that are demeaned and narrowed by being written down on paper, are prepared to stand side by side, not in political alliance but in human fellowship, to help each other to advance the cause of humanity. [Loud cheers.] We have had our quarrels, as all happy families have. [Laughter.] We have disagreed, as all friends have, but when any great human cause has come before us in the natural fitness of things we have looked into our hearts, and, hidden right away in their innermost recesses, we have discovered a very shy but very faithful friendship for each other. [Loud cheers.]

So far as I am concerned, so far as my friend his Excellency is concerned, I am sure we can both talk together, privately and quietly, publicly and officially, as man to man, friend to friend, and Ambassador to Foreign Secretary, never forgetting that that beautiful, that intangible, that nevertheless enduring relationship of good will shall be guarded by us, protected by us, and nourished and cherished by us. [Cheers.] Britain has always been particularly fortunate in the personality of the Ambassadors that the United States of America have sent her. [Cheers.] Sir Henry Wotton, when going upon an embassy to Italy, defined the function of an Ambassador in this way:-"An Ambassador," he said, "is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." [Laughter.] I congratulate his Excellency-[laughter]-on his task. He will lie abroad undoubtedly-[laughter]-in one sense of the term, but not of the other. The relations that exist between us make that exercise of the elastic conscience quite unnecessary in his case.

An Ambassador is a medium of communication, and in that respect he performs a most wonderful function. Foreign Secretaries are human; Ambassadors are divine. [Laughter.] They

belong to the category of men which is most magnificently and worthily represented here to-night in the person of his Royal Highness. [Loud cheers.] When the Foreign Secretary gets a little bit ruffled in his temper; when the Foreign Secretary says hard things and he, poor man, is generally very overworkedthe Ambassador, following the Nelsonian example, hears what suits him to hear [laughter] and reports it in the proper quarter at his discretion. The Ambassador is charged with the duty of always seeing the Foreign Secretary at his best. [Laughter.]

Another task of the Ambassador is that, as a human being, he typifies his nation, and there we have been exceedingly fortunate in our American Ambassadors. In literature, art, science, politics, all the best that is in the American spirit, its poetry, its idealism, its great humanity, have always been exemplified and embodied in the Ambassador that she has sent to the Court of St. James. [Cheers.] High as is the standard that has been set by his predecessor, I believe his Excellency will worthily attain to it during his time here. [Cheers.]

We are sending our own representative to Washington. Sir Esme Howard is going there. If there are difficulties, if they have moments of depression, if Foreign Secretaries weary them, they will always be upheld by the Pilgrims, who represent two great peoples, two peoples that, when tried and tested, have always put Divine and human ends first, in preference to purely national and materialistic ends. As has been the custom, we will take his Excellency generously into our social life. He is not an official; he belongs to the family; he is one of us. If we take him to the graveyards where our fathers lie, if we take him back to the origins of our history, we and he hold them in common. If we speak together we speak a tongue which is to both our mother tongue. There is a strange mystic kinship between us, and so he is more than an Ambassador; he is the representative of a branch of our race. [Cheers.] I ask you to drink with hearty good will the health of his Excellency the American Ambassador. [Cheers.]

ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY

PRAYER AND POLITICS

This address was delivered at the 152nd annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York held at the Waldorf-Astoria on November 17, 1910. The toastmaster, in introducing the speaker, said: "Gentlemen, our valedictorian is St. Clair McKelway. His toast is 'Prayer and Politics.' [Applause.] I do not know what he will say, but I do know that whatever he says will be most interesting. [Applause.] He has always stood for the highest ideals in private life and public office. On the rostrum and in the editorial chair he has ever contended for that which makes for the best citizenship and the best government, and he has always been a tower of strength to the moral forces of this great city. May his good work continue. Gentlemen, Mr. McKelway." [Great applause.]

MY FRIENDS:-When Mr. Pratt, your secretary, sent to me the expected list of speakers, Governor White was named among those to address us on the world that is and Bishop Greer among those to commend us to the world that is to come. In a note courteous in terms, but impressive in brevity, the secretary required me to stand and deliver my subject to him. I have delivered the title to him and he can read my title clear, and what follows has been reserved for you. I told him with one thought on Bishop Greer and with another on Governor White, that he might entitle my remarks "Prayer and Politics." You may say that they do not mix. Why, I have known them to be mixed by Dr. MacArthur at Lotos Club dinners and by Job E. Hedges at Southern Education Boards [laughter], and by Henry Ward Beecher on any old occasion, which he made forever young by the ease with which he swung between both worlds. [Laughter.]

Moreover, I recall a Rochester son of thunder, who on a Sunday preceding an election, in which the party of his pref