FOR A " FACULTY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL HEALTH " 87

national relationships from every point of view, much as the family
, physician studies, or should study, the mental, physical, and moral
conditions of his individual charges. When sources of potential
danger to international health are perceived, the Faculty will pre-
scribe, long before the actual illness occurs, in order to eliminate the
causes of potential friction, the sources of infection. The curative
measures must be taken long, long before the disease has been given
an opportunity to grow. In international affairs, once the fever of
animosity has appeared, avoidance of the disease is uncertain ; it
may be too late. The prophylactic steps must be taken in time.
Much can be done around a green table in a definite case by the
sober judgment of a few far-sighted statesmen long before public
opinion has had a chance to become inflamed and their own saner
judgment warpe'd by the course of events and by the heat of inter-
national animosity.

This Faculty of International Political Health—a vision of the
future (and let me label it as purely a fantasy of my own mind)—must
sit constantly, conducting research as in any laboratory, precisely as
the Rockefeller Foundation and other similar bodies are constantly
conducting their research for the elimination of cancer to-day. Its
members will not be prime ministers or other prominent officials
but non-political technical experts in the many branches of life's
activities. Their findings, their warnings, their recommendations must
be made in time for the prophylactic measures to be effective.

We have come a long way since the First Hague Peace Confer-
ence of 1899 ; we still'have a long way to go. But need we be dis-
couraged? This movement towards international co-operation did
not spring, like Athena from the brow of Zeus, full-grown from
birth ; it must develop gradually, profiting like any infant from its
lessons and experience. It will grow to full maturity, just as the
potentialities of this great hospital for public service will grow with
experience, invention, and discovery in the realm of medical science.

And so, my friends, I have ventured to indulge in flights of fancy,
inspired by the significance of to-day's event. My Faculty of Inter-
national Political Health is but a figment of the mind, a chimera
perhaps. I have used the term but figuratively and the conception
merely as an illustration induced by the thought of what this faculty
of medicine will accomplish for. the individual and the community
in its enlightened mission. Perhaps even day-dreams sometimes do no
harm. They at least set our minds working in profitable channels.
I see in this great building and the organization whose activities it
will nobly house, a practical manifestation of the fundamental unity
of the human family. Let us then find in the principles for which it
stands a practical analogy in the efforts that are being made to-day
to bring that family into closer co-operation, and apply also to that
broader cause this great hospital's demonstration of international
friendship, its alleviation of disease and suffering, and its embodiment
of the spirit and precepts of the Cross.