(A plain reply "Yes" or "No" was to be written by the candidate under each of these questions and forwarded to the Secretary, Mr. Consul, 73 Purbeck Street, W.. before the 14th January, 1910. No replies received after that date were admitted. The Simian League, which has agents in every constituency, acted according to the replies received, and treated the lack of reply as a negative. Of 1375 circulars sent, 309 remained unanswered, 264 were answered in the negative, 201 gave a qualified affirmative, _all the rest (no less than 799) a clear and, in some cases, an enthusiastic adherence to our principles_. It is a sufficient proof of the power of the League and the growth of the cause of justice that in these 799 no less than 515 are members of the present House of Commons.) THE EMPIRE BUILDER We possess in this country a breed of men in whom we feel a pride so loyal, so strong, and so frank that were I to give further expression to it here I should justly be accused of insisting upon a hackneyed theme. These are the Empire Builders, the Men Efficient, the agents whom we cannot but feel--however reluctantly we admit it--to be less strictly bound by the common laws of life than are we lesser ones. But there is something about these men not hackneyed as a theme, which is their youth. By what process is the great mind developed? Of what sort is the Empire Builder when he is young? The fellow commonly rises from below: What was his experience there below? In what school was he trained? What accident of fortune, how met, or how surmounted, or how used, produced at last the Man who Can? In _that_ inquiry there is food for very deep reflection. It is here that our Masters, whose general motives are so open and so plain, touch upon mystery. That secret power of determining nourishment which is at the base of all organic life has in its own silent way built up the boyhood and the adolescence which we only know in their maturity. I will not pretend to a full knowledge of that strange education of the mind which has produced so many similar men for the advancement of the race, but I can point to one example which lately came straight across my vision--an accident, an illumination, a revealing flash of how our time breeds the Great Type. I was acquainted for some hours with the actions of a youth of whose very name I am ignorant, but whose face I am very certain will reappear twenty years hence in a setting of glory, recognized as yet one other of those superb spirits who will do all for England. The occasion was a pageant--no matter what pageant--a great public pageant which passed through the Strand, and was to be witnessed by hundreds of thousands. Let us call it "The Function."