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Opening of Women's College Hospital. Toronto. 22nd Feb, 1936

22nd January, 1936.

I am very proud that you have permitted me to be present at the inauguration of the new Women's College Hospital. I remember when I was a very small boy, being taken by my father to the opening of a new hospital in Glasgow. It was opened by the Duke of Argyll, who was then a very old man, who had been a member of Gladstone's Cabinet. One thing he said that has always stuck in my memory. He said that he had often heard clever people discuss the proper definition of civilisation, and that he had never heard a satisfactory answer. But he said that he felt, looking around that hospital and realising all that it meant to human life and happiness, the best answer you could gtve would be that this was civilisation.

Here, in this great effort to relieve pain and suffering, you have a particular contribution to civilisation. It is the work of women; it is a hospital for women, administered by women. In my extreme youth, when I was with Lord Milner in South Africa, I was put in charge of what we called the Concentration Camps - the camps into which the Boer women and children were collected from the areas devastated by war. It was a strange and feverish time, and I had to learn a lot of things which do not usually come within a young man's sphere of knowledge. Two things I learned which I have never forgotten. One was the unassessable value of the hard and selfsacrificing work of doctors and nurses, for we turned these camps in six months from a Lazar house into a health resort. The other was the unassessable value of women's work, for it was the Ladies' Commission, under my old friend Dame Millicent Fawcett, which enabled us to turn the tide. Ever since then I have been a staunch

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believer in the abilities of women in every walk of life in which they are given anything like a chance. Of that I need not remind you that the Great War gave a final proof.

Since I came to Canada I have had the opportunity of going over one great hospital, and I was deeply impressed by the perfection of its arrangements. From what I have learned of this new hsopital it seems to be the last word in architectural and mechanical skill. You have perfected your weapons in the eternal fight against disease. It is not for an ignoramus like myself to praise it, and there are many here who can give you the only kind of praise worth having, that which comes from expert knowledge. But there is a thing which the Bible calls "The Amen of the unlearned". I can at least join most whole-heartedly in that.

I have been reading something of the history of the movement of which this is the culmination, the work of the noble women who, from small beginnings, have built up the great organisation of which this hospital is the fruit. It is a fine story of a fight against odds, of hard work and courage and patience and good sense, and it has won the reward which attends these qualities even in this imperfect world. My hope for you is that you will go from strength to strength, and that fifty years hence, when you come to celebrate this hospital's jubilee, you will look back, even on your present proud position, as only the day of small things.