The World Today

Abstract

When I was a little boy my mother used to assure me that to be elected a senator of the United States was to reach the summit of human achievement. Since, however, she had married a Scotsman, resident in England, I was never able to see how it would be possible for me to realize such an ambition. Nevertheless, if she were alive today, I think she would have drawn ample reward from the spectacle of her son being honored as a former prime minister of Britain by the authorities of Columbia University, and invited to address so distinguished and notable an assembly as is gathered here. She would have felt a glow of legitimate pride at an event which so happily linked the country of her adoption wih the country of her birth. But this was not the only lesson which I learnt from my mother. I used to listen with rapt attention to her stories of her childhood in what was then-I am speaking of nearly 120 years ago-the distant and pioneering region of the Middle West. Even my memories go back nearly seventy years, when children received their first teaching at their mother's knee. These early recollections, followed by a close connection with my mother's homeland during all the years of my life, and