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Women's Canadian Club. Toronto. 28th November, 1939.

I.

I have had the privilege of addressing Canadian Clubs up
and down the Dominion, but this is the first time since I became
Governor-General that I have addressed a Women's Canadian Club. But
it was an old promise of mine to come one day to you in Toronto, and
the fact that we are now at war makes no difference to that promise.
Indeed, it makes it easier to fulfil. A Governor-General, as you
know, is very limited in his choice of subjects. There are many
matters on which he dare not touch, matters of controversy, above
all, matters of party controversy. Politics in the ordinary sense
are forbidden him, and that does not make it easier for a person like
myself, who was a Member of Parliament at home, and to whom politics
was a principal topic. So I am afraid - I am very much afraid -
that in my many speeches since I came to Canada I may have sometimes
bored my audience by harping on the same subjects. There is a story
of a new minister in a Scottish village who preached his first sermon
there, and an old woman in the congregation, a celebrated critic of
sermons, was asked what she thought of him. Her answer was "I thoeht
nothing of him. He was neither edifyin' or divertin' ". I fear
that too often I have been neither edifying nor diverting!

But today there is one subject of profound topical interest
on which a Governor-General is permitted to speak freely. It is
the question of the war. He is at liberty to speak because whatever
may be our differences of view on the incidents which led up to the