released from that; and if only on that consideration I think that we should be prepared to do something for the country which has done so much for us. And even if there is no public work ready to your hand, there are innumerable ways in which we can serve our country, however humbly and however indirectly. I only mention in passing the Volunteer movement. But there are social methods, literary methods, ay, and even athletic methods, because I am one of those who believe that one of the subordinate methods of welding the Empire together, and even of welding the English-speaking races together, is by those Inter-Colonial athletic contests, and athletic contests with the United States, which are developing so much in these days. But what I want to impress upon you is this, that if you keep before you the high motive of serving your country, it will ennoble the humblest acts that you do for her. The man who breaks stones on the road, after all, is serving his country in some way. He is making her roads better for her commerce and her traffic. And if a man asks himself sincerely and constantly the question--“What can I do, in however small a way, to serve my country?”--he will not be long in finding an answer. Now, I will tell you what I consider the irreducible minimum of this service--the irreducible minimum. It is that you should keep a close and vigilant eye on public and municipal affairs; that you should form intelligent opinions upon them; that you should give help to the men who seem to you worthy of help, and oppose the men whom you think worthy of opposition and condemnation. That I believe to be the irreducible minimum of the debt of a British citizen to his country, and I believe it to be very important to the country. There is no such bad sign in a country as political abstention. I do not want you all to be militant politicians; I do not want it for your sake, or for the country’s sake. But an intelligent interest does not mean a militant interest, though it, at any rate, means the reversal of apathy. We are told that there is a good deal of political apathy in these days. I do not know whether that is so or not, because I have no means of judging. But if there is political apathy, I think the cause of it is not far to seek. Our forefathers, with their defective news agencies or channels, were able to concentrate their mind on one particular subject at a time, and give it all their energy and all their zeal. For example, for some twenty years they were locked in that great war with Napoleon and the French Revolution, which absorbed all their energies, and when that war ceased there came an era of great single questions, on which they were able to concentrate all their attention. But now that is all changed. The telegraph brings you into communication with every quarter of the globe. Every day brings you news of some exciting character from every quarter of the universe, and under this constant and varying