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SOCIETY FOR UNIVERSITY EXTENSION IN LIVERPOOL AND DISTRICT

General Secretary: J.R. BRYCE MUIR, M.A., 173 BROWNLOW HILL

September 3 1901

My dear Buchan,

When my brother brought the evening paper into my room last night, I was by a curious coincidence deep in that fascinating document, the B.S.A. Co's Reports; and as I read of road-making and railway-building & the management of childlike natives & legislation without obstruction on a clear field, and the construction of an educational system, and afforestation, I could not help enviously contrasting the future of these men who have a great new country given into their hands like a lump of clay to be modelled, with the lot of a little group of obscure and unregarded persons who are trying, with blunt tools or no tools at all, to chip the settled

& shapeless concrete of this huge city into something like a Venice. Perhaps in the end it is better to be engaged, however humbly, on the slow work of reconstruction here in the heart than in the sometimes too easy business of construction out there at the circumference. But whether or no, one envies people who have the power to effect things, & can see results. I put down the blue-book at a report on forestry - afforestation has always appealed strongly to my imagination, especially on the economic side: by the way, did you ever hear Patrick Geddes on the subject? I have heard him attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to deforestation - I put down the blue-book and picked up the evening paper: and almost the first thing that caught my eye was the appointment of Mr John Buchan to be Lord Milner's secretary.

I need not tell you how fervently I congratulate you: you may measure my

congratulations by my envy: - and yet not envy either, for I can't conceive myself in such a position. I would admire your luck, for that post, under that MAN is the post in the whole world for a man of your age & training, made for real politics (not Parliamentary rotting) but not trained for them. I say I would [underlined] admire your luck but that I know you to be admirably fitted for your work, & for the splendid things it will lead to. Don't think I am flattering when I say that ever since I knew you I have immensely admired your varied but unostentatious industry, your brilliant but unelated progress, neither unduly depreciating nor unduly appreciating your own or other people's achievements. I imagine you are moved to chuck this into the fire at this point: but it is exactly true, the tribute to an effective man of a relegated effective.

Years ago you gave me "Scholar Gypsies", & I remember chaffingly exacted a promise

of my first book. I replied that it would never come. It hasn't come; but here is some reprinted one-in-the-morning provincial journalism, the only separately printed stuff that I have yet found time to issue, for I am now really, what I never was before, an exceedingly busy person. Don't consider yourself bound, I don't say to read it, but to pretend to read it or to acknowledge it. Its single claim is that it is an expression, however ineffective, of an idea, a part of an idea, for which a few of us here are striving, and not wholly without result. It is rather fascinating to watch a big ugly city coming alive, and to prod pins into it. This paper is a Pin for the Philistine.

Finally I renew my congratulations on your advent to your true sphere. I often wonderd at what point you would change lines: with your usual good fortune (like most good fortune, mainly an eye for the true opportunity) you seem to have done it at precisely the best junction. With all good wishes, yours admiringly Ramsay Muir