There could have been no more appropriate setting for the
Headmaster of Eton's centenary address on President Masaryk on Tuesday than the Masaryk Hall at the School of Slavonic Studies at London University, with the bronze representation of the well- known features on the wall behind the lecturer. Emphasising the President's unswerving devotion to the twin ideals of truth and justice Dr. Birley, in a singularly interesting passage, drew a parallel between Masaryk and Gladstone, both of whom (he con- fessed that on the whole he preferred the former) believed that no politics could be worth while that had not a moral basis. He did not quote, as he might have "What is morally wrong cannot be politically right," and when he observed that just as Masaryk left the Catholic Church for the Hussite, so Gladstone found he had to depend largely on the nonconformist element in national life the question was inevitably raised whether Gladstone ever really under- stood a point of view so different from his own as the average Free Churchman's. Masaryk undoubtedly had a greater compre- hension of varied humanity than the English Liberal leader. Wherever his memory fades, if it fades anywhere, it will not be in the University of London, where he became a lecturer (at King's College) in 1915.
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