St. Andrew's Day Special Meeting

MR. ASH: Gentlemen, tonight the St. Andrew's Society is celebrating its 125th anniversary, 1056 members strong. Because our day this year falls on the same day as the regular meeting of The Empire Club, and because our guest speaker had been invited by both societies on the same day, it was decided by both of us (the speaker excluded) to make this a joint dinner. I think it is quite appropriate that on the 125th Anniversary of the St. Andrew's Society its members should be joined in celebration by The Empire Club of Canada, both of us sharing, as we do, so many ideals in common. I like to think, too, that members of the Empire Club will enjoy (and have enjoyed) some of the ceremonial traditionally associated with the St. Andrew's Society's Dinners. Personally, I hope that tonight we are ourselves establishing a new tradition-the custom of meeting jointly for dinner in those years-about every six years, I believe -when November 30th falls on a regular meeting date of The Empire Club. But that is for future presidents to decide.

The society has received a number of messages of goodwill on this occasion. These have come from: Aberdeen, Albany, N.Y. (1803), Australia, Black's Harbour, N.B., Charleston, South Carolina (1729), Detroit, Edinburgh, Fredericton (1825), Illinois, London, Ont., Los Angeles, Cal., Mexico, Montreal, New York (1756), Oakland, Cal., Philadelphia, Penn. (1747), Regina, Restigouche, N.B., Rhode Island, River Plate, Argentina, Saint John, N.B., San Francisco, Vancouver, Winnipeg, two messages in particular I would like to read to you. The first is from the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city:

On this, your 125th Anniversary, may I extend to you, on behalf of the citizens of Edinburgh, heartiest congratulations and every good wish for the future. We hope you will have a most successful and enjoyable evening.

Kindest regards.

Your sincerely,

(sgd.) J. Greig Dunbar Lord Provost

The other is from the Immediate Past Governor General of Canada, Mr. Vincent Massey, who is an Honorary Life Member of our Society:

It gives me the greatest pleasure to send you my congratulations on the 125th Anniversary of the St. Andrew's Society. I was deeply touched when I was elected an Honorary Life Member of this most venerable and excellent organization, and I only regret that circumstances prevented me from accepting the very kind invitation to be with you on this important occasion. I would like to convey to all those present tonight my warmest greetings and good wishes. Vincent.

On behalf of our society I sent greetings to thirty-one sister societies in various parts of the world, and I would like to read the text of our message to you:

On behalf of the officers and members of the St. Andrew's Society of Toronto, founded in 1836, I have pleasure in extending to all members of your society our very best wishes for November 30th, St. Andrew's Day, 1961. "Heulin ri heulin thlan na Gael! (Shoulder to shoulder, children of the Gael!)

We also sent the following message:

Sir Winston Churchill Chartwell

Kent England

The St. Andrew's Society of Toronto and The Empire Club of Canada assembled in joint meeting to honour the memory of Scotland's Patron Saint and remembering your birthday and the added lustre it has brought to this historic day send you across the broad waters our grateful salutations and our affectionate good wishes.

(sgd.) Vasy Ash, President St. Andrew's Society and

Z. S. Phimister, President Empire Club

The signatures are the signatures of Ash and Phimister, but the language is the language of Brockington!

In the context of that cable I think Dr. Phimister is especially well fitted to give us our first toast. Dr. Phimister is Director of Education, Toronto Board of Education, Honorary President of the League of the British Commonwealth and Empire (Metro Branch), and President of the Empire Club of Canada, the society with whom we are holding our "Joint Dinner" tonight. I invite Dr. Phimister now to propose the toast of "Canada the Land We Live In."

DR. PHIMISTER: It is my honour this evening to propose a toast to Our Land, Canada, and there could be no more propitious occasion, no more appropriate time, than this joint meeting of the St. Andrew's Society and The Empire Club of Canada and the birthday of Sir Winston Churchill. The St. Andrew's Society of Toronto was founded in 1836, The Empire Club of Canada in 1903. Although there have been several occasions when Thursday (the meeting day of The Empire Club) fell on November 30, tonight marks the first occasion on which the two groups have met in a joint meeting. Whether this is a tribute to the cautious canniness of the Scots, or evidence that the empire has declined to the point where it has been surrounded by the Scots and so surrendered to them, I am at a loss to explain. However, Mr. President, on behalf of the members of The Empire Club of Canada, I wish to congratulate you on the 125th Anniversary of the St. Andrew's Society, and to thank you for your generous invitation to join with you this evening in the celebrations which mark this day.

Tonight, to borrow a felicitous phrase from one of your head table guests, we are all Jock Tamson's bairns and we thank you for our seats at the fireside of one of the grandest families in the world.

Actually the occasion calls for something pleasant to be said about Scots. This may be a bit of a problem for such as Samuel Johnson-but not for any Scot. The great Sam could define oats in his dictionary as "a grain which is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people", but every Scot would recall with pride that much literature and much governmental genius are nourished on a little oatmeal. And many young Scots found their best prospects on the high seas to Canada rather than on the highway to England.

Canada and Scotland are so intertwined in history and tradition that a pride in Canada can well be a pride in Scotland and a pride in Scotland a pride in Canada. Let me quote to you some eloquent words from Mr. Leonard Brockington's speech to this Society in 1953:

And so it seems to me that a man of Scottish birth or descent is not a worse Canadian if he rejoices (as all Canadians must rejoice) because the tapestry of Canada is coloured by the traditions, the speech and the songs of Scotland, and its fibre wonderfully strengthened by the character of the sons and daughters of a little land that helped to teach the world to fight to the end, to sing, to dance, to mourn, to be free, and ever to turn in loyalty to the kindred points of heaven and home.

Perhaps it is because Canada has benefited from the genius of many traditions and none more than the Scots that all of us feel her growing in strength, maturity and confidence. We are all separately proud of our old country ties but we are unified in our love of Canada.

Gentlemen, I ask you to join me in a toast to Canada The Land We Live In.

MR. TURNER: Canada, the land that we live in.

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said

This is my own, my native land!"

Although these well known lines by Sir Walter Scott were written about his beloved Caledonia, they also aptly reflect the feelings of a Canadian towards his own country. This is so whether we are Canadians by adoption or of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or more generation.

Canada! The very word is like the sound of geese flying north, the slap of a beaver's tail, a train whistle in a mountain pass, the whisper of ripe grain in the wind, the rustle of crimson maple leaves falling on a brisk fall day, the squeal of a wagon wheel on hard crunchy snow.

Canada, the country that stretches 4000 miles from the Atlantic, up the St. Lawrence River, across the Great Lakes, over the prairies to the Pacific where the mountains run into the sea; 2500 miles from the southern border to the Arctic Ocean and with an enormous coastline of nearly 15000 miles. A land of sun, rain and snows with a varied landscape of mountains, forests, fertile farmlands, prairies, great lakes and rushing rivers. A land that can easily support itself with its myriad of natural resources and provide the opportunity of one of the highest standards of living in the world.

Canada celebrates its 100th birthday in 1967, although its discovery, as we know it, goes back nearly 500 years. In that time men have contributed to its history. Among them, John Cabot-Jacques Cartier-Samuel de ChamplainThe Hudson's Bay Company-Wolfe-The United Empire Loyalists-Lord Selkirk-Lord Durham and the Fathers of Confederation. They gave us a country with fine traditions, a responsible governmental system, an admirable code of justice and a grand birthplace to grow up in. Oh Canada, our land, our love, our pride-Gentlemen, it is a deeply-felt privilege to respond to the toast"Canada, the land that we live in."

MR. ASH: H. V. Morton, in his In Search of Scotland, describes how he saw two boys bathing in a burn in Galloway: "The swimmers shouted and splashed in a placid pool," he wrote, "where the reflected sky fell about them like showers of liquid gold. If one or both of you, I thought, are fated to go far away and make your lives, for instance in Canada, how dear to you this moment will become, a moment of which you now think but little." It is of such memories of youth, the Bums and the Gowans fine, that some of us will think as we drink the toast which I am about to propose to you. Others will think upon the previous generations of their family, those Scots or that Scot who left perhaps the croft to venture into an unknown country to provide for their own.

The soldiers amongst us may think of the battle honours of their regiments, names like those of our two own Highland Regiments whose commanding officers are here at our head table, names like Ypres, Festubert, Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele, Amiens, Sicily, Campobasso, Ortona, Apeldoorn, Arras, Falaise, the Rhine, to mention only a few, names that indeed for all Canadians resound and echo down the corridors of time.

Each of us is entitled to his own thoughts at such a moment, whether they be of home, of ancestors, of battles, or of all the religious conviction and history of Scotland personified in St. Andrew. So let us drink the toast of the day, each thinking his own thoughts. Gentlemen: "The day an 'A' Wha honour it."

The response to the toast we have just drunk will be given by Lord Polwarth. In calling on him to do so, I know I would embarrass him if I took the considerable time that would be required to recount the long list of his distinctions, of which you have in any case read. I would, however, like to add a few personal touches. First may I say that he is a member of the council of my old school in the Highlands of Perthshire, though too new to have had anything to do with the corrective system of my day-of which I can give personal (and repeated) testimony. Next, that he fought with the Lothians and Border Yeomanry in the last war and was decorated. You know that he counts among his forebears Sir Walter Scott, but you may not know that another ancestor (on the maternal side) was Sir William Campbell, Chief Justice of Upper Canada in the years just before the foundation of our St. Andrew's Society, 125 years ago.

Harry Polwarth is the 10th to hold the barony. As a chartered accountant, a director of the Bank of Scotland, a long-standing member of the Dollar Exports Council and chairman of the Scottish Council, Development and Industry, he is a refreshing example of the modern Scottish Chief. No one is better qualified to tell us about the Scottish Nation and where it is going. Harry Polwarth's Canadian ancestor was described in the books of the time as "A man of great force of character, sterling integrity, and personal worth." Believe me, gentlemen of the St. Andrew's Society and the Empire Club of Canada, that is a perfect description of our guest speaker. Gentlemen, Lord Polwarth.

LORD POLWARTH: Mr. Chairman, Your Worship, Members of the St. Andrew's Society of Toronto, Members of the Empire Club of Canada, and Guests. It is an aweinspiring experience to be asked to respond to this toast, but I am encouraged by knowing that this is one of the greatest honours that can befall any Scot, particularly on this the 125th Anniversary of your Society, and also by the warmth of the welcome I have received, not only here tonight, but every time I have visited your great city and country. But it is still something of an ordeal to know that at each of your last four dinners you have been addressed by one who is versed and famed in the liberal or learned arts, a musician, a minister of the kirk, a chief justice and a man of Letters, the last of whom I have so greatly enjoyed sitting beside tonight.

And my mind goes back four years to the time when your great Canadian Trade Mission was in Britain. It was on St. Andrew's Day that we welcomed them to Edinburgh, as their train steamed into Princes Street Station and the Edinburgh City Police Pipe Band played brawly on the platform in the murk of a late November afternoon. We visited the Castle and saw the spot of ground which is forever Canadian soil-and the war memorial where side by side are the insignia of Scottish Regiments and the names of Scottish dead from one side of the Atlantic and the other. We joined them for dinner and Leonard Brockington dragged himself from a bed of sickness and delivered the finest speech I have ever heard upon St. Andrew's night.

It was a performance to daunt a lesser orator from the very attempt. So, in rising tonight, I shall bear well in mind the advice given to the young minister from the city who was invited to preach in a country kirk. Now this minister was a keen young man who fancied himself particularly for his preaching, and before he left the vestry he indicated to the beadle that he intended to give the congregation a sermon that would really stir them up. Well, he threw himself into the service and the sermon with zest. But somehow the congregation just did not respond, and it was a somewhat crest-fallen young minister who returned to the vestry at the end of the serivce. So he sought the advice of the beadle as to why the sermon had- not after all been a success, whereupon he replied, "Weel minister, I'm thinkin' if ye'd gaed up the way ye cam doon, ye wad hae cam doon the way ye gaed up."

Just before I left Scotland, our Prime Minister visited Glasgow, and I was privileged to sit next to him at a luncheon. As I expect you know, his forebears were crofters in the Isle of Arran. I told him about my visit to Canada and about this speech which I was to make tonight, and he said that he would like to give me a message to bring you. It is headed "Admiralty House, Whitehall" and it reads as follows:

As an exiled Scot I am very happy to send- through you a message to the 125th Anniversary Dinner of the St. Andrew's Society of Toronto.

All Scottish exiles, wherever they may be, feel a special affection for the traditional ceremonies of St. Andrew's Day. I am sure that the St. Andrew's Society of Toronto will worthily uphold these Scottish Traditions and I should be grateful if you would convey to the society my good wishes for the success of their dinner and for their continued prosperity.

Today is, of course, not only St. Andrew's Day-as your Chairman has reminded you. It is the birthday of that man to whom this world owes more than any other alive-Sir Winston Churchill. And for both your Chairman and myself it is a day of personal rejoicing because for each of us it is the birthday of one of our family. In my case it is my son and heir, and as a result he proudly bears the name of Andrew. I understand that Vacy's was also intended to be Andrew-but unfortunately there are some things in this world you cannot be so sure of as "Shell."

Sir Winston is often called a great House of Commons man, and it is a far way from the rough and tumble of that House to the peace-or sommolence-of the House of Lords. I don't know if your Senate is anything like our House, but there is a story told of a Peer who had just been made a very Junior Minister in the House of Lords and was detailed to reply for the Government to a question which was to be asked. As is customary, he was given by the department concerned a written answer, which he was careful to read out word for word. This he followed so carefully that at the end he failed to observe the parenttheses surrounding the last sentence, and he concluded with the words: "I'm afraid this is rather a dusty reply, but it ought to do for the Lords." And-one word of warning-it is also said that another peer dreamed he was speaking in the House of Lords and woke up to find that he was.

One disadvantage of an English education is that, unlike your Chairman who was at that great Scottish school Glenalmond, I have lost one of the most precious assets a Scot can have-our native tongue. It is an asset which thrives and indeed seems often to be cultivated, the remoter and the longer the owner is Furth of his native land -and nowhere more so than here in Canada. In its place I can claim an asset which I value no whit the less-a bond of acquaintance and friendship with Canada and Canadians as warm as with my land and friends at home. I came here first twenty-seven years ago-as a schoolboy in the holidays with a party of Boy Scouts. The impressions of that visit are still vivid in my mind. During the war I was honoured to serve in one of our Scottish armoured regiments, the Lothians and Border Horse, alongside your troops in a Canadian division at the crossing of the Rhine. Since the war I have been fortunate to visit Canada on business and on behalf of the Scottish Council, with increasing frequency, perhaps a dozen times in all. I have made many good and close friends, and I feel very much at home, nowhere more so than here in Toronto. And for me one of the greatest thrills I have had was to be present last Friday at your 48th Highlanders Ball, to hear that superb piping and drumming, to see the pageantry and the dancing, few things have made me feel so proud to be a Scot.

Perhaps a part of that feeling stemmed from the presence in my veins of Canadian blood-for, as your President has told you, on the distaff side I can claim direct descent from Sir William Campbell, a Chief Justice of Upper Canada. He came from Scotland with a highland regiment to fight in North America and was captured at Yorktown in 1781. On his release he settled in Nova Scotia, was called to the bar and in 1825 became Chief Justice of Upper Canada. Today I saw his portrait in Osgoode Hall and his house which still stands on Duke Street. He died in 1834, two years before your society was born, a century and a quarter ago. Your roots are indeed in history: here in Canada the families of my forebear and of other Scottish soldiers were finding their roots. At home, Sir Walter Scott had just died, Queen Victoria was about to come to the throne, Scotland's great age of industrial development was taking birth. In Canada those were tough, pioneering days, with unfriendly tribes to be held at bay while the work went ahead: not so very different from the situation of my Scottish forebears on the border two and a half centuries before-with equally unfriendly tribes a few miles to the south of them. The, family motto, loosely translated from the Latin, reads, "There'll be moonlight again," not, let me make it clear for the purpose with which moonlight is sometimes associated, but because only with a full moon could they ride the rough tracks through the wild border hills, seek out the English cattle and safely drive them home.

Tonight, all over the world, Scots are gathered together. The kilt has been donned, the pipes are playing, the haggis has been brought in and addressed in the words of the timehonoured ode, though nowhere, I am certain, with more artistry and feeling than here, and in the words of one Irishman, the whisky has gone down the piper's throat like a torchlight procession. There will be convivial talk, and reminiscences of old times, and great celebrations-in the course of which Scotland's greatest export will notch up yet another record. And what if next morning there are a few sore heads?

There was once a member of a certain St. Andrew's Society who had celebrated the evening very well indeed -so much so that after pursuing a wayward path to his house, escorted by one of his comrades, he collapsed in a state of coma on the sofa in the downstairs room. In the morning he was found by his wife, still distinctly the worse for wear, and she shook him hard and said, "Tell me, Donald, who brought you home?" To which he replied, "I haven't the least idea." But she pressed him again, saying, "Surely you can at least remember what he was like?" So he thought a bit and said, "Well, all I can remember is that he was either a short man with a beard, or else a tall one with a sporran."

But surely however important it is to celebrate the feast of our patron saint, surely our greatest cause for gathering here tonight is to turn our thoughts to the land of our forefathers-to see Scotland, not only as she was, but as she is, and as she hopes to be. These far-flung celebrations remind us that no race, with the possible exception of the Jews, has travelled so widely, engaged in so many activities, and set up so many enterprises the world over as the Scot. He was indeed lived up to those famous lines of James Graham, 1st Marguess of Montrose:

He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small That dares not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.

There are some at home-not many, I am glad to say -whom bemoan this wanderlust of ours, who would have us stay at home and confine our energies to Scotland, who would seek for Scotland her own parliament and turn the border once more into a frontier, psychological if not physical. Surely this is narrow, nationalistic talk, and dangerous at that. Surely all the lessons of our time teach that if we are to prosper and have peace we must extend and strengthen the links between nations, rather than shut ourselves up within narrow, nationalistic walls.

Scotland has had an infinitely greater influence on the world than she would if her sons had stayed at home. They have been like the biblical leaven that leavens the whole lump. Last summer I was in the far north-east of Scotland, and there, on the storm-lashed coast of Caithness, where before was nothing but bog and rock and sea, is a great new atomic station employing thousands of folk. At its centre stands a vast 160-foot sphere of steel. It houses a revolutionary new kind of nuclear reactor-revolutionary because in operation it produces more fuel than it consumes -not a bad symbol, I think, of the way the Scot has influenced the world.

Look no further than Westminister. We have a government headed by a Macmillan, and numbering among its members a MacLeod, a MacKay, a Home, a Perth, a Dundee, a Grant and a MacPherson. On the Woolsack in the House of Lords sits Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, now Lord Kihnuir, and this year we mourned the death of Shakes Morrison, a most well-loved Speaker of the House of Commons and a Son of the Croft.

Look at Canada: Scottish names are synonymous with leadership in your history, your industry, commerce and banking-in every branch of your national life. In the Toronto phone book there are no less than 20,000 Macsnot to mention 60 ashes! Why did they come here? Not just for the sake of adventure, but because a living was hard to win at home. One hundred and fifty years ago the clearances poured the Highland clans into all parts of Canada. Thirty years ago the collapse of much of our, economy sent a fresh wave of Scots workers and their families to your shores-this time mainly from the industrial lowlands.

Now all that has changed. In the past quarter Century Scotsmen have wrought their own salvation-Scotsmen at home helped by Scotsmen abroad. Problems we still have, but mass unemployment and poverty are not among them. Look at the change from the thirties, and you will see a mircle in our midst. It has been brought about by the same qualities which down the ages have enabled the Scot to maintain the existence of his nation-determination, a readiness to grapple with the hard facts of his surroundings, and to fight for the heritage which has been built up over these years.

So now Scotland is in good heart. Sixty years ago to be a Scots engineer was to be a leader in an industry in the frontiers of technical advance. So again it is now, after a long night of depression. Once more we are in the vanguard of the world's industrial march-we have passed from the defensive and are on the attack once more. Our traditional industries have a new look. At Motherwell our great steelmakers, Colvilles, are building a $150 million mill to make sheet steel. Our shipbuilders are modernizing their yards and are securing orders in the face of intense competition. At Greenoch we are building a graving dock which will take the largest ships afloat or thought of, and across the Clyde, in Loch Long, we have an oil terminal that takes the largest tankers. The oil is pumped across the waist of Scotland to Grangemouth on the forth, where there is now a vast complex of refineries and chemical plant. We have great new industries which were unknown in Scotland twenty years ago. We make business machines in Dundee and Dunbarton, electronics in Edinburgh and Fife, aero engines near Glasgow, and trucks, tractors and motor cars in Mid-Lothian, Lanarkshire and Renfrew.

But it is not just a picture of new industry for old, or alongside the old. New life and prosperity is being breathed into towns the length and breadth of Scotland, towns which for years have had little to offer in opportunity for their younger folk. A tool-works in Jedburgh, glass made in Wick, clothing in Campbeltown, fine foods in Fochabers. You all know the song about the high road and the low road. Soon there will be a new high road-the largest bridge in Europe, spanning the forth at Queensferry, and a new low road, a tunnel under the Clyde in Glasgow. Nor have we forgotten the resources God gave us. Our Hydro schemes, small though they look beside yours, have harnessed the waters of which we have such a generous share. We are finding uses for our growing forests. Our farms are second to none in Britain-go to Perth bull sales and count the ten-gallon hats and you will know we breed the finest livestock in the World. My family have always taken a keen interest in farming and my great-grandfather was one of the pioneers in developing the short-horn breed of cattle. To his estate on the Borders, he brought down from Aberdeenshire a farm manager and a number of cattle-men. (I am delighted to find that the manager's nephew, Mr. Jock Hutcheon, is in this room tonight.) Most of these men settled into their new surroundings, but one of them did not seem to be thriving, so his wife consulted the local doctor who asked him about the symptoms and what sort of food he usually took. "Ah weel, just much the same as at hame: parridge and milk and whiles brose w' tatties and sic like." It was clear that the man was mainly dependent on farinaceous food. So the doctor said, "I think your husband should take some animal food, it will brace him up." The wife seemed rather dubious but said she would try. And in about ten days the doctor called again and found the wife not looking so cheerful. "Well", he said, "and how is your man doing on his new diet?" "Weel, he managed middlin' well wi' the neeps, and whiles, the linseed-cake, but oh Doctor, he canna thole the straw!"

So the tale I have to tell is of a Scotland which has found again its vigour and its confidence with a livelihood to offer to all who seek it, reaching out to grasp the challenge of the future. But while we look to the future, we must never forget the past-the past which has made us what we are. Much of our history is enshrined in our historic buildings, be they castles, mansions or the humble homes of ordinary folk-or our battlefields, our mountains, our coasts and islands. To preserve this heritage is our constant endeavour-and in this many of you here in Canada, and in this room, are playing a splendid part, through your generous support of the National Trust for Scotland-in this you have our warmest thanks.

Take only a few of the places it holds in trust: Culzean Castle in Ayrshire, the little houses in Culross and Dunkeld, the mountains of Glencoe and Kintail, and the far-flung isles of St. Kilda and Fair Isle. Next May, the Trust is running a cruise specially for visitors from the Commonwealth. In the space of a week it will call at Brodick Castle in Arran, at Inveraray, at the Islands of Colonsay, Staffa and Iona, at Kisimul Castle in Barra and Dunvegan in Skye, and the Garden of Inverewe in Wester Ross. I hope that Canada will be well represented on the passenger list and that some of you will come and see for yourselves the results of your generous help.

The Trust tries not only to preserve, but to educate and tell our history. Over the next few years this will be its special aim, by displays, maps and talks at those historic sites like Glenfinnan, Culloden, Killiecrankie, Bnanockburn-names that spell out the very making of our land. So you see it is not only the material things with which we concern ourselves today. That great Scot, Philip Kerr, Lord Lothian-our Ambassador to the United States in the early years of the last war, was once discussing Scotland's contribution to the world. He said that in the field of literature, with the outstanding exception of Scott, Burns and Carlyle, it had been slight. Her only artists of international renown had been Allan Ramsay and Raeburn. She had contributed little to the refinements of life in the way that France had done.

But there had gone forth, he said, all over the world, from the grey towns and villages of Scotland and the whitewashed farm houses, a stream of men with a good basic education and high competence in some vocation, whether as bankers, doctors, engineers, agriculturists or merchants. And besides their talents, many of these Scotsmen had taken with them some intellectual interest-in economics, history, science, literature, wihch had lasted all their lives -and above all a deep faith in the religion of their fathers. So they had been an invaluable leaven in the young communites, chiefly concerned with material interests, in which they found themselves. And I would add, they have always been ready and generous in coming to the help of their brethren who have fallen on less good times-as witness the activities of your own society. And they have not been slow to lead the social and cultural life of their communities-as witness your Chairman's tireless work for the Duke of Edinburgh's study conference, the university, and many other causes.

The results are here for all to see in this great country to whose building Scotland gave so much. They are with us still, thank God, in the Scotland of today. Living in a land where the Scot is surrounded by the visible memorials of a past for which he has had to fight-and taught in a way which still lays weight on the things of the spirit-he can balance the deeper, fundamental things against the material problems of possessions and of earning his living.

Perhaps it is in this field that Scotland, in the future as in the past, can make her greatest contribution to the Common wealth of Nations of which she is a part. The Scot, blended as he is of hard-headed Lowlander and imaginative Highlander, always aware no less of the misty isles than of the clamour around him on the factory floor, has the stuff to make this dream a reality. If he does, Scotland's contribution to the future of the world will be every bit as great as it has been to the past.

And since tonight it is to the Land of our Fathers that we turn for inspiration for that future, may I end by seeking it in those well-known lines of my kinsman Walter Scott: Mr. Turner has given me the lead, so I will follow it up:

Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,

'This is my own, my native land!'