the parents enter.  They are an old pair, backbent, they have been stalwarts in their day but have now gone small; they are poor, but not so poor that they could not send their boy to college.  They are in black, not such a rusty black either, and you may be sure she is the one who knows what to do with his hat.  Their faces are gnarled, I suppose—­but I do not need to describe that pair to Scottish students.  They have come to thank the Senatus for their lovely scroll and to ask them to tear it up.  At first they had been enamoured to read of what a scholar their son was, how noble and adored by all.  But soon a fog settled over them, for this grand person was not the boy they knew.  He had many a fault well known to them; he was not always so noble; as a scholar he did no more than scrape through; and he sometimes made his father rage and his mother grieve.  They had liked to talk such memories as these together, and smile over them, as if they were bits of him he had left lying about the house.  So thank you kindly, and would you please give them back their boy by tearing up the scroll?  I see nothing else for our dramatist to do.  I think he should ask an alumna of St. Andrews to play the old lady (indicating Miss Ellen Terry).  The loveliest of all young actresses, the dearest of all old ones; it seems only yesterday that all the men of imagination proposed to their beloveds in some such frenzied words as these, ‘As I can’t get Miss Terry, may I have you?’

This play might become historical as the opening of your propaganda in the proposed campaign.  How to make a practical advance?  The League of Nations is a very fine thing, but it cannot save you, because it will be run by us.  Beware your betters bringing presents.  What is wanted is something run by yourselves.  You have more in common with the Youth of other lands than Youth and Age can ever have with each other; even the hostile countries sent out many a son very like ours, from the same sort of homes, the same sort of universities, who had as little to do as our youth had with the origin of the great adventure.  Can we doubt that many of these on both sides who have gone over and were once opponents are now friends?  You ought to have a League of Youth of all countries as your beginning, ready to say to all Governments, ’We will fight each other but only when we are sure of the necessity.’  Are you equal to your job, you young men?  If not, I call upon the red-gowned women to lead the way.  I sound to myself as if I were advocating a rebellion, though I am really asking for a larger friendship.  Perhaps I may be arrested on leaving the hall.  In such a cause I should think that I had at last proved myself worthy to be your Rector.