Excerpt from Thanksgiving and Retrospect: An Address to the Students of Queen's by the Principal, on January 6th, 1902, in the Convocation Hall of the UniversityMy second fundamental political principle ¿owed from the first. For the good of Canada and its own and the world's good, the British Empire must form an e¿'ective union. Here toodifiicul ties which seem to pessimists insuperable present themselves, for the nobler the organism the more formidable its enemies and dangers. All life is a battle, but only in overcoming these is character formed and life made complete. Separated from Britain, Canada would necessarily be always dependent on the United States, and wishing to honour and admire our neighbors - as well we may - we must meet them as equals. But, we shall be their equals, only when we share the burdens and responsibilities as well as the privileges and glory ofthe Empire. It may take long to bring this about, although it has come so much nearer of late that you, young men, need not despair of seeing the full realization of the glorious ideal.. At the present moment our position is not one to be proud of. From a wan - to the justice of which our Parliament had unnecessarily pledged itself, while both sides were engaged in peaceful negotiations the justice of which has been repeatedly affirmed by the Prime Minister and Parliament, and in'which we took active part enthusiastically at the outset, - we have quietly 'withdrawn, leaving the enormous cost in blood and treas ure to be borne by the senior partner. True, we are per mitting a few hundreds to be recruited for service, but on conditions that make our position more deplorable than ever. We are not to pay a cent of the cost! We give the bravest of our children to die by the bullet or still deadlier enteric but some one else must pay their wages. We do not grudge the blood of our sons, but with a treasury so full that we go on paying millions for bounties and bonuses to develop resources which are said to be the richest in the world, - we grudge food, clothing and transport for them. Let the weary Titan bearing on her back all the common burdens of the Empire in peace and war he at this charge also. Let Canada accept the blood money withouta blush. This state of things cannot continue. The Em pire must be practically as well as nominally united. That principle I continue to hold as axiomatic, if we are a nation in any sense I might say, if we are honest men, in any sense.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.