Extracts from Addresses 365
to us, not that students from us come to America; and if this inter-
change is going to effect all that we hope, they must be going in both
directions.
I have sometimes been asked over here: “Suppose we were to establish
in our universities or colleges fellowships or scholarships for the bene-
fit of students from Great Britain, would they come? What would they
come for?” Now, I think it is very easy to indicate a number of sub-
jects which would be very attractive to them. I will say nothing
about applied science. I have no right to speak about that at all, but
still I have seen enough of your engineering schools, I have seen enough,
for instance, of your great medical schools in this country, to know that
students coming from our own country over here would have very
much indeed to learn. But I am going to talk about something else.
I will take only two subjects. I am going to talk about economics, and
I am going to talk about political science. Those are two subjects
which make a great appeal to many of our best students in England.
They are very keen about economics, they are very keen about political
institutions and their working. Now, don’t you think to a young fellow
of that kind, one of our best, ablest students, that it would be immensely
attractive to him, this prospect of coming over here for a year even, or
for a year or two, to one of your universities, to be able to study
economics in the midst of the novel economic conditions of America, to
be able to see for himself how the economic conditions of this country
differ from the economic conditions of our country? Or again, take
the student of political science. Here in America you have opportuni-
ties for experiment that no other country in the world has. Here in
America you have forty-eight States, and that means you are forty-
eight sovereign bodies capable of legislation, bodies which are not only
capable of legislation but are constantly legislating, trying experiments
in legislation, rewriting their constitutions, bringing them up-to-date
There is nothing of that kind in the old world. I was present at the
centennial of the University of Wisconsin, and they were discussing at
that centennial legislation with regard to land settlement. Then I
discovered that the work to be done in that was embodied in a law upon
the statute book of Wisconsin. Can you imagine anything more in-
teresting to a student of political science? So I think you can make
your minds easy, although the idea is very strange and very novel for
our students to come over here, that when once they get the chance,
they are going to avail themselves of it. Now the only other subject
I want to speak about is this, and I will speak about that very briefly—
one particular aspect of the interchange of teachers. It has been sug-
gested to us over here more than once that in addition to the interchange