o it is ordained--every one of you for
himself, and its name is Courage. You must excuse me if I talk a
good deal about courage to you to-day. There is nothing else much
worth speaking about to undergraduates or graduates or white-haired
men and women. It is the lovely virtue--the rib of Himself that God
sent down to His children.

My special difficulty is that though you have had literary rectors
here before, they were the big guns, the historians, the philosophers;
you have had none, I think, who followed my more humble branch, which
may be described as playing hide and seek with angels. My puppets
seem more real to me than myself, and I could get on much more
swingingly if I made one of them deliver this address. It is
M'Connachie who has brought me to this pass. M'Connachie, I should
explain, as I have undertaken to open the innermost doors, is the name
I give to the unruly half of myself: the writing half. We are
complement and supplement. I am the half that is dour and practical
and canny, he is the fanciful half; my desire is to be the family
solicitor, standing firm on my hearthrug among the harsh realities of
the office furniture; while he prefers to fly around on one wing. I
should not mind him doing that, but he drags me with him. I have
sworn that M'Connachie shall not interfere with this address to-day;
but there is no telling. I might have done things worth while if it
had not been for M'Connachie, and my first piece of advice to you at
any rate shall be sound: don't copy me. A good subject for a
rectorial address would be the mess the Rector himself has made of
life. I merely cast this forth as a suggestion, and leave the working
of it out to my successor. I do not think it has been used yet.

My own theme is Courage, as you should use it in the great fight that
seems to me to be coming between youth and their betters; by youth,
meaning, of course, you, and by your betters us. I want you to take
up this position: That youth have for too long left exclusively in
our hands the decisions in national matters that are more vital to
them than to us. Things about the next war, for instance, and why
the last one ever had a beginning. I use the word fight because it
must, I think, begin with a challenge; but the aim is the reverse of
antagonism, it is partnership. I want you to hold that the time has
arrived for youth to demand that partnership, and to demand it
courageously. That to gain courag