In reviewing the success which this school has attained, the question naturally presents itself: To what is this success due? Let me here record my conviction that it has been due mainly to the courage and devotion of its corporation and of the presidents who have directed its policy. In this respect no institution was ever more fortunate. With a guiding body possessed of the courage and faith that have animated the corporation of the institution from the earliest days, and especially with the able men who have been its presidents, success was assured. While the school was yet struggling for its very existence, with few friends and little money, they never faltered. They have not hesitated again and again to plunge the school deeply into debt when its needs required it, trusting to the generosity of New England that it should not be allowed to be crippled, and each time has their confidence been justified. Poverty has never been permitted to impair the efficiency of the school. As President Crafts remarked in a recent annual report, “We are less favored than many neighboring institutions in building space, but we have always followed the wise policy of keeping in the foremost rank and in some departments leading the way in supplying the best methods and apparatus for teaching and for making investigation. We have run in debt to buy them, and run still further in debt to build houses to hold them, but we have always had them when the head of a department told the government of the school that they were necessary to the most efficient teaching of his science.” With a corporation acting on such a principle there could be no failure. It is true that the faculty have stood unfalteringly, even in the darkest days, for high scholarship; and equally true that the school has been remarkably fortunate in the character of the young men who have sought its halls, but no faculty and no body of students could have brought success with a corporation less broadminded and courageous. Let me here add my tribute to the work which was done by the late General Francis A. Walker, president of the institute from 1881 till 1897. Probably no single person did more to secure the success of the school than he. His great administrative ability, his wide acquaintance, his accurate judgment of men, his magnificent courage and his splendid enthusiasm, were factors in the development of the school whose importance it is difficult to overestimate.