a a The Fight for Freedom General Smuts could not
have chosen a more pertinent theme for his Rectorial Address at St. Andrews nor have dealt with it more eloquently, and it was fitting that his challenge to the defence of freedom should have been uttered in a country whose history records so many grim and heroic struggles for liberty of belief and worship. That, of course, is only one form of freedom and not that of which the Rector of St. Andrews was thinking most His diagnosis of . Europe today was relentless, for he sees about us less of liberty in its full human meaning —freedom of thought, speech, action, self-expression—. than there has been through the last two thousand years. In the declaration that " the disappearance of the sturdy, independent-minded, freedom-loving individual, and his replacement by a servile mass-mentality is the greatest human menace of our•time '" there is not a word of exag- geration. And pride ourselves as we may that in these islands at least the flame of freedom still burns bright, General Smuts's warning is meant for us no less than others. It is timely, forcible, convincing, and demands not merely passive endorsement, but action.