student at Harvard at the time and every Professor
whose classes I attended took the same attitude. By such appeals
Principal Peterson helped to strengthen the body of American opinion
that exists to-day against the intolerable thought of strife between the
two peoples who have lived for more than a century in peace and harmony
and mutual affection, and his weighty words are a warning to Canadians
who share his imperialistic ideals against irresponsible criticisms of
our friends and neighbours to the South. His Imperialism, while it gave
him the vision of a commonwealth of nations within the British
Possessions, did not blind him to the larger vision of the unity of
English-speaking peoples, and to the still nobler vision of universal
brotherhood of which his fellow-countryman sang under conditions of
unrest very similar to our own:--

"'Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That man to man the warld o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that.'

"While Dr. Peterson was primarily a scholar and administrator, he was
also a public-spirited citizen who mingled freely with his fellows in
varied walks of life and who identified himself with many movements in
the interests of human welfare. His last public address was to a group
of our Greek fellow-citizens with whose propaganda against Turkish rule
over their brethren in Asia Minor he rightly or wrongly sympathised. His
chief public interest, however, was in education, and he not only served
diligently on the Council of Protestant Instruction for the Province of
Quebec but he gladly gave the encouragement of his presence and counsel
to the teachers in primary and secondary schools throughout Canada at
their annual gatherings; and one of his favourite pleas on these
occasions was for the rightful place of English Literature--and
especially Poetry--in the school curriculum. He magnified the office of
the teacher and deplored the apathy of the public towards those
entrusted with the training of the future manhood and womanhood of the
nation. 'No expenditure,' he cried, 'is considered too great to be
grudged on war and armaments by land and by sea, on construction works
such as railways, bridges, harbours and naval stations, but the needs of
the common school rouse little, if any, interest or enthusiasm. And yet
it is there that the national character is being moulded.' He never
ceased to protest against the narrow idea that education consists