Professor Henry Morley lectured hour after hour to successive classes in
a room half way down the passage, on the left. Even overwork could not
deaden his enormous vitality; but I hope that his immediate successor
does not lecture so often. Outside the classrooms I remember the
passages, which resembled the cellars of an unsuccessful sculptor, the
library, where I first read _Romeo and Juliet_, and the refectory, where
we discussed human life in most, if not in all, of its aspects. In the
neighbourhood of the College there was the classic severity of Gower
Street, and, for those who preferred the richer variety of romance,
there was always the Tottenham Court Road. Beyond all, and throughout
all, there was friendship, and there was freedom. The College was
founded, I believe, partly in the interests of those who object to
subscribe to a conclusion before they are permitted to examine the
grounds for it. It has always been a free place; and if I remember it as
a place of delight, that is because I found here the delights of
freedom.

My thoughts in these days are never very long away from the War, so that
I should feel it difficult to speak of anything else. Yet there are so
many ways in which it would be unprofitable for me to pretend to speak
of it, that the difficulty remains. I have no knowledge of military or
naval strategy. I am not intimately acquainted with Germany or with
German culture. I could praise our own people, and our own fighting men,
from a full heart; but that, I think, is not exactly what you want from
me. So I am reduced to attempting what we have all had to attempt during
the past two years or more, to try to state, for myself as much as for
you, the meaning of this War so far as we can perceive it.

It seems to be a decree of fate that this country shall be compelled
every hundred years to fight for her very life. We live in an island