THE BRITISH ACADEMY International Scholarship PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS ELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY JULY 21, 1920, BY SIR F. G. KENYON, K.C.B. London Published for the British Academy By Humphrey Mil ford, Oxford University Press Amen Corner, E.G. Price One Shilling and Sixpence net INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP PRESIDENTIAL ADDEESS BY Sm F. G. KENYON, K.C.B. Delivered at the Annual General Meeting, July 21, 1920 DURING the past year the Academy has lost but one of its Fellows, and that one who, in the ordinary course of nature, might have been with us for many years to come. It is a loss which appeals to me per- sonally, for Francis Haverfield was my schoolfellow at Winchester, and the friendship which began there lasted throughout life. But to the world of scholarship in general the loss is that of the leader of Roman studies in this country. His knowledge of Roman antiquities, and especially of the antiquities of Roman Britain, was singularly thorough, and gave him an easy mastery of the material which commanded con- fidence. He knew so much that he could acknowledge uncertainty and the doubt which arises from insufficient evidence, without attempt- ing to fill the gaps by dogmatism. But in one respect the best was the enemy of the good. It is, I think, to his unwillingness to put down on paper anything of which he was not certain that we must attribute the paucity of his published work. Yet it is a great loss to scholarship that so much learning should have disappeared unrecorded. In this respect his fate resembles that of his master and friend, Henry Pelham. It is to be hoped that the monographs, which were extracted from him by the enterprise of the Victoria County History, may be brought together in a form more easily accessible to students of Roman Britain. They are models of their kind, and should stimulate, as well as assist, future students. This is the more desirable, since through some fatality there is a great deficiency of scholars in this country who have devoted themselves especially to Roman studies. Two of the most learned, Greenidge and Haverfield, have died before their time ; one of the most promising of the younger generation, Cheesman, was a victim of the war. These are gaps which are not readily filled. May the want be the stimulus to some of the young scholars in whose hands the future rests ! i\ u 436455 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY Of our foreign colleagues we have lost two : the Comte de Franque- ville and Professor Brugmann. The former was one of the first group of Corresponding Fellows elected to the Academy, in 1904, on the occasion of the meeting of the International Association of Academies in London. Of that list, nine have now passed away ; only four remain. Comte de Franqueville was one of the representatives of France, along with MM. Delisle, Paul Meyer, Perrot, and Picot; and it would have been difficult to choose any one with better claims to represent an alliance between England and France. He was a member, and in his turn President, of the Institut de France, of which he was also the historian. His eminence as a student of civic institutions was attested by the numerous honorary degrees conferred upon him ; but his special study was the laws and institu- tions of this country. In a long series of works he had treated of our political, administrative, and judicial systems ; of our organization of public works ; of our Parliament and Government ; in short, he had devoted to our institutions an amount of thought and labour to which few parallels can be found (save in Lord Bryce's study of America) among treatises by British scholars upon the institutions of foreign countries. I may add that he had further linked himself to this country by his marriage with a brilliant English wife, to whose unique position in her adopted country remarkable tributes were paid at her death a few years ago. Professor Brugmann was a scholar of a different type, a compara- tive philologist of characteristic German learning and courage. His Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Langiuiges, published in five volumes in the years 1886-93, and translated immediately into English, has long been the standard work on the subject, and the foundation of all subsequent investigations. Philology, in the narrower sense of the term, has receded into the background in recent years, and few scholars appear to devote much thought to it ; and I think I am right in saying that no work of comparable scale and learning and thoroughness has appeared to challenge the position of Brugmann. He was one of our latest German colleagues, elected along with Professor von Giercke in 1913. Of his attitude during the years which followed so shortly after his election, I have no information. The additions made to our number a year ago included Dr. Cowley, Bodley's Librarian, an eminent Orientalist, and during the past year Schweich Lecturer to our Academy. His lectures, on the fascinating, because mysterious, subject of the Hittites, have appeared in print within the last few weeks, and the Academy may congratulate itself PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 3 on the addition thus made to the distinguished series of publications on this foundation. With him was associated Dr. Paget Toynbee, whose election was very opportune, in view of the celebration, in which the Academy will take part next year, of the great poet to the study of whom he has devoted his life. English scholarship had already deserved well of Dante in the person of our former Fellow, Dr. Moore ; and the tradition is worthily carried on by Dr. Toynbee. Of those who have been elected this afternoon I will not speak. They strengthen us in the sections of law and history, as our elections last year did in two very different branches of philology. We welcome our new colleagues ; but if it were not that each new member implied the loss of an old one, we (or at rate many of us) would regret that there are not more of them. At every election the conviction must be forced on those who really give thought to the matter, and especially on those who have to make the final choice, that with our present numbers it is impossible, not only to elect all who are unquestionably worthy of election, but even to secure an adequate representation of many subjects which ought to be repre- sented. If the Academy is to answer in any way to its ideal as the official representative of the humanities in this country, it ought to include in its numbers members capable of speaking for all branches of humanistic study. That is certainly not the case to-day ; and I think another attempt should be made to convert the minority whose belief in the plenary inspiration of our first constitution was allowed on the last occasion to nullify the wishes of the majority. An increase in our numbers would palliate, though it would not remove, another difficulty under which the Academy labours, that of finance. This year, for the first time, our statement of accounts shows a deficit on the year's working; and the deficit would have been larger but for the holding over of certain payments due. With the present cost of production of all publications, and with certain irreducible commit- ments to be taken into account, it is difficult to see how we can continue to pay our way, much more how we can fulfil the purpose for which we exist, that of encouraging learning. We hope, of course, that the Treasury will one day realize the discredit which arises from our being the one country which does not support its national Academy. On this point I shall have something more to say in another connexion. For the present I would say that we must not trust to this hope alone. We must try to appeal to those who realize that learning is the glory of a country, and that learning needs material equipment to carry out research and to publish the results of it. The Council pro- pose to take this matter into consideration, and to see what can be 4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY done to raise an endowment which would secure for the Academy its proper status, and enable it to perform its proper function of mobiliz- ing the forces of learning. From finance we begin, and to finance it will be necessary to return, but by another route, starting from a point of departure which has nothing to do with money. Among the subjects with which the Academy has had to deal this year, one of the most important is that of International Scholarship. It has been before us in more than one form. One is the progress that has actually been made in taking up the threads dropped during the war, in restarting the machinery which during the past six years has been stopped or diverted to other purposes. The other is the* problem of the resumption of relations with those who have been our enemies. I should like to say something on both of these topics, and will begin with that which I have mentioned last. Before 1914, if any of us had been questioned as to the position of scholars in the event of war between nations, I think our answer would in substance have been that scholars, as men, would 'take such part in the defence and assistance of their country as circumstances qualified them to take, but that as scholars they would have no share in hostilities, and would be ready, when the war was over, if not before, to take up in common that pursuit of truth which is the scholar's function. It has been recalled that at the height of the Napoleonic wars Sir Humphry Davy was invited to Paris and received with great honour; and I think most of us would have felt that on scholars, more perhaps than on any other class of men, the duty would lie of keeping alive the spirit of sane human relationship, which war tends to inter- rupt so forcibly. The facts have turned out otherwise. The scope, the universality of the war, involving all classes of the people ; the spirit in which it was from the first conducted on one side ; the bitterness of feeling thence engendered ; all these caused a complete breach in all relationships between the opposing countries, and have made it very difficult to knit them together again even when the war is over. During the war there were many who held that the outrages of which Germany as a nation was guilty, and the absence of any apparent protest against these outrages by the intellectual class, and even, in some cases, the defence of them by men whose names in scholarship were honoured, made all relations in future impossible, and called upon us to mark our sense of their enormity by the expul- sion of all honorary members of our learned societies who belonged to the offending nations, and the cancellation of honorary degrees PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 5 conferred upon them. With that contention I did not, and do not agree ; and I am glad that the Council of the Academy, like the Council of the Royal Society, refused to take any such action. I do not think it can justly be said that those of us who thus refused were less indignant than others at the crimes that were committed, or less zealous in the cause of our country, or did less to support it in the conflict in whatever way was open to us. But we held that the annul- ment of distinctions or of compliments which had been conferred for good and sufficient reason for services done to learning before the war was not the right way to mark our sense of injuries done to us during the war ; that in the heat of the war it was difficult to discriminate between those who had themselves been guilty of actions unworthy of the good name of scholarship, those who had (perhaps under compul- sion) acquiesced in such actions, and those who had disapproved and resisted ; and we thought it more consonant with the dignity of scholarship to refrain from hasty action. We also perhaps clung to the thought that when the war was over, when intercourse between nations was necessarily resumed, scholarship might find some paths of relationship which had not been irremediably stained with bloodshed or been made foul by bad faith, and might so, not at once but gradu- ally, help to reconstruct the fabric of human intercourse which had been so violently and foully shattered. But just because we then took what may be called the more moderate view, we are entitled to state frankly the difficulties which stand in the way of full and prompt resumption of friendly relations. To my mind (for I am not entitled to speak for any one but myself) the one thing which has most disastrously poisoned all intercourse between English and German scholars is the celebrated, or I should rather say the notorious, manifesto of the ninety-three German scholars published at the outset of the war, and the total absence (so far as I am aware) up to the present day of any indication that that manifesto was regretted, much more repudiated, by German scholars as a class. It was nothing that these ninety-three persons should, as individuals, believe that their country was right, or should accept as gospel the statement of the case put before them by their unscrupu- lous politicians ; but that, speaking as scholars (and their scholarship was their only title to be heard at all) they should make emphatic affirmation of the truth of statements which they had not investi- gated, and on which they were not in a position to pass judgement, was a gross crime against scholarship ; and that men among them who had accepted honours and hospitality from England, and whom we believed to be honestly our friends, should go out of their way to 6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY insult the name and fame of our country, was an offence against good manners and the common decencies of life which cannot be simply ignored as though it had never happened. I know, of course, that there are allowances to be made. We in England noted, not only the names that were attached to this un- happy document, but also those that were not. We could guess also that some of those who signed, did so under strong compulsion, to which the dependence of the German professoriate on the Government rendered them peculiarly liable ; and the same reflections made us give a positive, and not merely a negative, value to the absence of certain names from the list. But the very facts which account for the signatures of some and the silence of others should make it more easy, now that the pressure of official authority is removed, to take some action which would mitigate the unfortunate impression that the original document caused. At present the document stands unwith- drawn, not disavowed, an obstacle to friendship, and a discredit to German scholarship. We do not, I think, ask for express withdrawal or apology. We do not want to make reconciliation difficult. But I think English scholars are entitled to some indication that German scholars desire the resumption of relations ; that they recognize that an obstacle stands in the way of any cordiality in such relations ; that they regret the obstacle, for the existence of which there may be excuses, though not justification ; that they do not, in short, hold such opinions of England as must make sincere and genuine relations impossible. This topic is particularly relevant at the present time, when appeals are being made from Germany and Austria for direct assistance from England for the intellectual life of those countries. In itself the appeal commands our sympathy; the Academy has, in fact, taken steps to ascertain whether those who are our Corresponding Fellows desire to receive our publications as before ; and I may add that the Trustees of the British Museum have taken similar action. But I confess I think that some indication might be given that the sentiments of those whom we used to regard as friends are not in fact such as those to which such unfortunate expression was given, in reference either to England or to English scholarship. I have expressed my personal opinions on this painful subject quite frankly, not because I wish to put any obstacle in the way of the full resumption of international intercourse, but for the exactly opposite reason. I look forward to the revival of normal relations between English and German scholars, and I desire that it may come without delay; and for this reason I think it best to point out what seems to PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 7 me the main impediment to it. It is useless to pretend that nothing has happened. With certain individuals, who have gone out of their, way to be offensive, intercourse in the future is impossible ; but with others I have every hope that it may be resumed, provided that it is realized that we have legitimate grounds for resentment, and that some steps are taken on the other side to remove them. The sooner all such obstacles- are removed, the better for the cause of learning. It is idle to suppose that we can ignore German scholar- ship in the future. We may have exalted it too much in the past ; but it is childish to talk as if it had rendered no services to learning, or as if it could be treated as negligible in the future. Science knows no distinction of allies or enemies. German scholars will have to take account of the work of French' and English scholars, and French and English scholars will have to keep themselves acquainted with the work of the scholars of the Central Empires. No doubt any full restoration of the relations which existed before August, 1914, must be a matter of years. Interchange of information and of assistance may be restored between individuals, and even friendship in particular cases ; but it will not be wise to attempt general international intercourse, such as meetings of international congresses after the old fashion, for some time to come. The most we can do is to keep the door open, and to trust to the healing influence of time. On our side we can avoid bitterness ; on the other, we have a right to look for some evidence of the spirit which characterized German scholarship in the middle of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, there is no reason to suspend the international organi- zation of scholarship altogether, but much to the contrary. With our allies we can work with fuller concord, with a more deeply based affection, than ever ; and we welcome the opportunity of renewing connexion with the nations which perforce remained neutral during the war. The first step in this direction was taken by France ; and our Academy readily responded to the invitation. In the Council's report last year reference was made to the initial negotiations for the formation of an international organization to include the allied and neutral countries. I am glad to be able to report that during the past year substantial progress has been made, and that the organiza- tion has not merely been formed but has begun to get to work. Some account of it is due to those members of the Academy who may not be fully cognisant of what has taken place, and of the action of the Council in the matter ; and it may be useful for the future to have the course of events placed on record. In one respect there is a marked difference between the new organi- 8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY zation and the old International Association of Academies. The International Association included in one scheme both the humanistic and the scientific sections of the national Academies. This system, while it brought together the representatives of knowledge in all its branches, and thereby militated against the calamitous tendency to separate into hostile camps those who ought to be supporting one another against their common foes, yet had serious defects in practice. Science and the humanities have common aimsin their campaign against ignorance and indifference, but their subject-matters are so diverse that co-operation in detail is seldom possible. Joint meetings of both branches tend to waste time in generalities and machinery ; and when the discussion of actual projects of work has to be dealt with, they must inevitably operate separately. In the new organiza- tion, accordingly, a different procedure has been tried. It is, in fact, two organizations. The fact that the initiative proceeded from the French made this easy. In France there is not one Academy with two or three sections, but several Academies, loosely federated into one Institut. Accordingly it was easy for the Academic des Sciences to invite the scientific bodies of other countries to form a federation with it, and for the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (with which was afterwards associated the Academic des Sciences morales et politiques) to issue a similar invitation to the humanistic societies. And in England the response was equally easy, the Royal Society representing the nation in the one category, and the British Academy in the other. The preliminary meeting was held in Paris in May, 1919. The countries represented there were America, Belgium, France, Italy, and Roumania, with unofficial representatives of Greece and Japan. The British Academy was unable, at rather short notice, to find any Fellow who was in a position to make the journey at that moment, but asked to be kept in touch with the movement. At this meeting some draft statutes were prepared, and it was agreed that a meeting should be convoked in October to consider them. In the interval, correspondence took place, in which our Academy urged the importance of at once inviting the collaboration of the neutral countries. The second meeting accordingly took place, again in Paris, on October 15-18. On this occasion eleven countries were represented : America, England, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Holland, Italy, Japan, Poland, and Russia ; Norway gave in its adhesion by letter ; Finland, Portugal, and Czecho-Slovakia were unable to appoint representatives in time; Serbia failed to receive its invita- PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 9 tion ; and only Sweden held aloof, expressing a desire to join as soon as it might be possible to invite all the nations to do so. At this meeting the difficult task of revising the draft statutes was successfully carried through. Delicate questions, such as that of the terms on which other countries might be admitted to the Union, were solved through the general spirit of mutual consideration and desire for harmony which prevailed, and for which special recognition is due to the tact and courtesy of the representatives of France, M. Senart, who presided, and M. Homolle, who acted as secretary. In the end the Union was founded, under the title of Union Academique Inter- nationale ; the statutes were approved and signed by all the delegates present ; the official seat of the Union was fixed at Brussels ; and it was decided to hold the first business meeting there in May, 1920. Finally, one session was devoted to the informal presentation and dis- cussion of various projects of work to be undertaken by the Union. The formal consideration of these projects was postponed until the Brussels meeting. The first business meeting was duly held at Brussels on May 26-29 of the present year, when the Academy was represented by the Presi- dent and Professor Tout. Twelve countries were represented : America, England, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Holland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia, while Norway sent a letter of regret for absence and full sympathy. It was announced that Roumania (which was not present at the October meeting) had given in its adherence ; but nothing further had been heard from Sweden or Switzerland. M. Pirenne, of Belgium, was elected President of the meeting, with representatives of France and England as Vice-Presi- dents. The examination of the various proposals for work to be undertaken by the Union occupied three days of serious work, each project being first outlined in full session, then referred for detailed study to small commissions, the reports of which were laid before the final sitting of the full conference. The following were the proposals put forward : 1. A Corpus of Greek Vases ; proposed by France, in a memorandum drawn up by M. Pottier. The object aimed at is a complete photo- graphic reproduction of all pottery vases (excluding vases in relief) of the countries of the Middle East, the Mediterranean basin, and Europe, with very brief descriptions. The more important vases would be shown on a scale of from 6 to 9 centimetres in height (a scale similar to that of many of the postcard reproductions published by the British Museum) ; the least important would be shown in large groups on a single page. The arrangement would be by museums, but 10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY a uniform classification by countries of origin would be applied to each. A rough estimate (on which it would be rash to place much reliance under present conditions) suggested that 100 plates of quarto size, containing an average of ten subjects apiece, could be produced annually for 75,000 francs for an edition of 2,000 copies ; if two-thirds of them were sold, the cost of production would be covered. The report of the commission which examined this project, con- firmed by the full Conference, was to the effect that the scheme should be recommended to the several Academies ; that M. Pottier should be asked to prepare a specimen of plates and text, to be circulated for consideration ; that the method of reproduction should be by collo- type ; but that experiments in the technique of photographing vases (which the British Museum was prepared to attempt) should be under- taken before definite publication began. The project will therefore come up again for consideration, with fuller data, next year. 2. A complete edition of the works of Hugo Grotius ; proposed by Holland. This is already in hand in Holland. The Union was asked to give it its patronage, and to commend it to the several Academies. This was agreed to. 3. A publication of materials of all kinds relating to Indonesia ; proposed by Holland. No detailed scheme was put forward, and on the suggestion of England and France the consideration of the pro- ject was postponed until next year. 4. A Catalogue of Greek and Latin MSS. relating to Alchemy, on the same lines as the Catalogue of Greek Astronomical MSS. edited by MM. Cumont and Boll; proposed by Belgium. The Danish Academy is prepared to undertake the preparation of a first fasciculus, and to bear half the expense of it, while the Belgian Academy will contribute a quarter. It is probable that this country will be able to assist in the work materially, through the collections already made by Dr. and Mrs. Singer at Oxford. The project was approved by the Union, and it is hoped that the first fasciculus will appear in the course of the year. 5. 6. Two proposals were put forward by Poland : (a) for a publi- cation of Imagines Celtarum, or documents and monuments relating to the Gauls ; and (b) for an edition of the works of Gregory Nazianzen. Both these works are already in course of production by Polish scholars, and the commission appointed to report on the pro- posal did not recommend their adoption by the Union. This completed the list of proposals formally laid before the Union according to the procedure laid down in the statutes. Some other PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 11 projects were, however, considered as a preliminary step towards a fuller discussion next year. They were as follows : 7. The preparation of new volumes or a new edition of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum and the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum ; proposed by Professor Lanciani on behalf of the Accademia dei Lincei. The proposal was to the effect that each country should undertake the publication of new or, if necessary, revised volumes of the Greek and Latin inscriptions within its own boundaries or in areas for which it is responsible. The scheme had not been formally or fully laid before the Union, and in the absence of Professor Lan- ciani, the consideration of it was postponed. 8. The same fate befell a proposal for a Map of the Roman World, on a scale of 1 : 1,000,000, put forward by the same scholar, but not formulated in detail. 9. A Catalogue of Greek MSS., to replace that of Gardthausen ; proposed by M. Bidez on behalf of Belgium, and supported by America. It was agreed that these two countries should prepare a report for the next meeting, and that meanwhile, in preparing the Catalogue of Alchemical MSS., such notes should be taken as would be serviceable for the wider project. 10. A new Ducange; proposed by our Corresponding Fellow M. Rostowjew on behalf of Sir Paul Vinogradoff, and by M. Pirenne (reviving a proposal laid before the London Historical Congress in 1913). The necessity of such a work was generally recognized, and also its great complexity and difficulty. The Union accepted a report by a commission, which strongly commended the proposal to the con- sideration of the several Academies, and urged that committees should be appointed in each country to investigate its practicability. This concluded the business of a meeting which was marked throughout by an excellent spirit of harmony and of desire to work together for the advancement of knowledge. It may be added that this spirit of concord and friendship was promoted by entertainments given by H. M. the King of the Belgians, by the Minister for Arts and Science, by the Burgomaster of Brussels, and by the Academy of Belgium. Some general remarks may be added on the work of the Union and the Academy's share in it. Some of the projects put forward, such as the Catalogue of Alchemical MSS. and the edition of Grotius, are of moderate compass, such as a single Academy, possessing endowments of its own, might undertake. Others, however, such as the Corpus of Greek Vases, the revised Corpus of Inscriptions, and the new 12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY Ducange, are beyond the power of any single Academy, and im- peratively require international co-operation. It is for undertakings such as these, as well as for the cultivation of international friendships, that the Union exists ; and I do not think any one will question the expediency of our Academy taking part in the new organization. It remains to be seen how far we can creditably fulfil our due share in its labours. In the schemes so far put forward there are certain things which it is within our power to do. Thanks to the work already done by Dr. and Mrs. Singer, and to their willingness to place it at the dis- posal of the Union, we can contribute to the Catalogue of Alchemical MSS. If (as I think is probable) the Trustees of the British Museum are willing to give their aid, we can play our part in the Corpus of Vases. The share that would fall to us in the revision or extension of the Corpus of Latin Inscriptions is so moderate that I should riot despair of our being able to undertake it, though a good deal would depend on the co-operation of the Clarendon Press. It is within the knowledge of the Academy that our late Fellow, Professor Haver- field, was maturing a scheme of this nature ; and we have reason to hope that his successor in the Camden Chair may be able to take it up. Further, there are certain proposals which we might on a future occasion put before the Union. It is eminently desirable that the materials for the History of Science, prepared by Dr. and Mrs. Singer, should be made available for scholars in general ; and if this country provides so much of the work, other countries might be prepared to contribute to the cost. There is also another matter, already touched on at the Paris meeting last October, and involving no expense, on which international co-operation is very desirable ; namely, the estab- lishment of principles and regulations for the conduct of archaeological research in the Middle and Near East. I dealt with this subject in my address last year, and will not go over the ground again now ; but I would urge that the Academy should in due course give notice that it wishes to bring it before the Union next year, and meanwhile should prepare the way for an agreement between the countries specially concerned. This is eminently a work which our Academy may properly initiate, in view of our wide interests in the countries concerned, and in which an agreement between nations is of the first importance. But the qualifications which I have been obliged to attach to my summary of the work which we can undertake show where the shoe pinches. Our great stumbling-block is finance ; and I make no apology for recurring to it, because here is the root of the whole PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 13 matter. The position of a de-legate of the British Academy at an international meeting, honourable and agreeable though it is made for him by the kindness of his colleagues, is little less than humiliat- ing when questions of finance come up for discussion. Every other Academy, however small the country which it represents, is endowed and supported by its Government ; only ourselves and America, which has as yet no national Academy, are without public support. In several instances, special funds have been placed in the hands of an Academy by its Government for the express purpose of inter- national scholarship. Thus the French Government has already given 75,000 francs to the corresponding union of scientific societies, and it is understood that a grant, possibly not so large but still sub- stantial, is likely to be made to our Union. The Belgian Govern- ment has also promised a subvention, the amount of which is not yet fixed. Best of all was the announcement made at Paris by the repre- sentatives of Denmark, that the Government of that country had set aside a sum of five million kronen (,280,000 at pre-war exchange) for international scientific research. What might we not do if this country (which is neither smaller nor less rich than Denmark) were to place an annual revenue of ,16,000 at the disposal of the Royal Society and ourselves for the same purpose ? Let me further remind the Academy of some figures which I laid before it two years ago. The five Academies composing the Institut de France receive from the State about .28,000 (at pre-war rates of exchange). The three Academies of Belgium receive about ,11,000 (280,000 francs), which is apportioned among them annually by a joint committee. In both of these cases the Academies also have a fine palace as their official quarters. The Academy of Berlin has a State grant of over ,16,000; that of Vienna, ,9,000; Munich, ,5,000. The Lincei at Rome receive ,4,500 and a palace. The Academies of Denmark and Holland receive State grants, but I have not the exact figures. The Government of Greece has promised a grant to its newly formed Academy, but the amount, I understand, is not yet fixed. In short, I believe it to be the case that England is the only civilized country possessing an Academy which makes no provision for its support. It is not merely humiliating to the representatives of this country at international gatherings to have to confess, when questions of con- tributions to joint undertakings come up for discussion, that we have no funds and cannot pay for our due share. It is also bad for the reputation of the country. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer can boast of the financial stability of Great Britain as compared with the 14. PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY rest of Europe ; but whereas every other Government supports its national Academy, even in the present difficult circumstances, all that our Government has done is to withdraw the small grant which for a few years it made towards a specific publication. Can it be wondered at that this country has a reputation abroad for being indifferent to intellectual culture, and that although its scholars admittedly hold their own with the scholars of other countries ? It is plainly the duty of our Academy to endeavour to remove this reproach. We have existed long enough to 'give our proofs', and to establish our claims to represent the scholarship of the country, and I think we should again approach the Government this autumn and appeal for an endowment. This need not and should not prevent us from endeavouring to obtain additional financial support from other sources. With any grant which we might reasonably expect to secure from the Treasury, we shall still have far less than we could spend with advantage for the good of the community ; and, besides money, we need a permanent residence. I need not say what a pleasure it would be to me if, in the course of this year which the Academy has done me the honour of adding to my original term of office, I could see the Academy placed on a firm financial basis, and established in a position worthy of itself and worthy of the country ; but if I should fail, I can only hope that I may be followed by a President who will carry more weight and who will prove more successful. Oxford Printed by Frederick Hall, at the University Press Gaylord Bro. Makers Syracuse. N Y. 1 VC 32( UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY