subduing any tendency to undue formality and stiffness, which often mark great functions 0f this kind. In proposing the toast of “The Queen, the Prince of Wales and the other Members of the Royal Family” he was most felicitous in his remarks. He referred to the special associations of the Royal Family with Canada in the person of The King, the Duke of Kent, Princess Louise, the Duke of Connaught, and the Prince of Wales, Who had established a home there. ln concluding his remarks he turned to the Prince and said:-- “I know you hate eulogy and l. am not going to indulge in it, but I should like to say this :-— ‘We respect you, sir, for your position, but, damme, sir, we love you for yourself’.”——a sentiment which was received with lou.d cheers. a _

The Prince replied as follows :—

“Perhaps the best way l can show my appreciation of the toast, and of your kind reception of me here tonight,is by wish- ing you all a very happy New Year. We are always inclined to he optimists in the first week of January, and, in spite of con- stant previous disappointments, we go on thinking that the coming year is bound to be a hundred per cent. better than the last. But, though New Year hopes are apt to fade as quickly as New Year resolutions, or to melt away as rapidly as the more perishable of our Christmas presents, I cannot help feeling that this time there are some grounds for expecting that 1927 will he better than 1926. At any rate, 1927 holds out for me very great hopes of re-visiting Canada.

To-night we are commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birthday of one of our greatest soldiers, General James Wolfe. The toast of his memory will be proposed by Sir Charles Warde so that it is not for me to enlarge on the topic. But, knowing and loving Canada as l do, and not having any- thing new or interesting to report of my family, l hope Sir Charles will allow me to forestall him just a very little. Every British boy is, as the saying goes, “brought up on heroes.” James Wolfe ranks very high amongst them. The dramatic story of his death in the moment of victory is one of the first that stirs our imagination when we begin to read British his- tory. To our generation he has a very special appeal because. from the very briefest sketch of his short life, it strikes one that he was just the type of so many of our young soldiers who dis- tinguished themselves in the Great War. He put his whole life into his profession, yet he was always full of new ideas, and, still more important, he was never afraid or missed an oppor- tunity of trying them out. But Wolfe’s name has, in fact, a still wider significance. Nowadays we think of him more as a pion- eer and creator than as a soldier. There are in this Empire’s

history a few names that are inlperishahly associated with cer-