The name is absent

Ill

A LEAGUE OF LEARNING

YOUR climate has got me by the throat, and I can only
croak; but I think you won’t mind that if I speak the
truth. A “League of Learning”—a phrase which I think is
your invention, Mr. President—describes in a very accurate
way the purposes of the mission of which I am one of the
members. I rather think that some of its purposes have
been described already, and I shall refer to them only very
briefly. The idea that underlies it is that an interchange
and exchange of university students and university teachers
between this country and Great Britain will not only be
helpful to those teachers and students, but also tend to bring
the two nations into fuller understanding, and, therefore,
into closer and deeper intimacy and fuller mutual help-
fulness.

We think it is good for us to know you better, and we
think it will be good for you to know us better. But we be-
lieve also that a still wider good might ensue, a good in
which all mankind might share and never lose any more.
Whether it comes from national self-conceit or not I cannot
say, but, at any rate, we do assume that these two peoples—
unless, indeed, I may really call them one—have it in them
to secure that there shall be no great war any more, nor
shall the fear of it darken the life of nations in times of
peace. And we believe this because we think that these two
peoples have a stronger sense of justice than has evinced
itself in other nations. Britain, with all its defects, I think

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