This seaside visit had been a welcome break in a year that had brought me a new occupation as a member of the Destitute Board, had given me the experience of a political campaign, had witnessed the framing of the Constitution for the Commonwealth ’neath the Southern Cross, and had seen effective voting advance from the academic stage into the realm of practical politics.  During the year Mrs. Young and I addressed together 26 meetings on this subject.  One of the most interesting was at the Blind School, North Adelaide.  The keenness with which this audience gripped every detail of the explanation showed us how splendidly they had risen above their affliction.  I was reminded of Helen Keller, the American girl, who at the age of 21 months had lost sight and hearing, and whom I had met in Chicago during my American visit, just before she took her degree at Harvard University.

To all peacelovers the years from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the South African war.  The din of battle was in our ears only to a less degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country.  War has always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether unjustified.  Froude’s chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the publication of his book “Oceana,” after his visit here in the seventies.  His indictment of England for her treatment of the Boers from the earliest days of her occupation of Cape Colony was too powerful to be ignored.  I felt it to be impossible that so great a historian as Froude should make such grave charges on insufficient evidence.  The annexation of 1877, so bitterly condemned by him, followed by the treaty of peace of 1881, with its famous “suzerainty” clause, was, I think, but a stepping stone to the war which was said to have embittered the last years of the life of Queen Victoria.  The one voice raised in protest against the annexation of 1877 in the British House of Commons was that of Mr. Leonard (now Lord) Courtney.  Not afraid to stand alone, though all the world were against him, the war at the close of the century found Leonard Courtney again taking his stand against the majority of his countrymen, and this time it cost him his Parliamentary seat.  I have often felt proud that the leadership of proportional representation in England should have fallen into the hands of so morally courageous a man as Leonard Courtney has invariably proved himself to be.

We are apt to pride ourselves on the advance we have made in our civilization; but our self-glorification received a rude shock at the feelings of intolerance and race hatred that the war brought forth.  Freedom of speech became the monopoly of those who supported the war, and the person who dared to express an opinion which differed from that of the majority needed a great deal more than the ordinary allowance of moral courage.  Unfortunately the intolerance so characteristic