Man’s instinctive and traditional respect for knowledge, reason and truth is reflected in the regard, amounting almost to veneration, in which educational systems are held throughout the civilized world. Inevitably the award of an honorary degree by a great university inspires in the recipient a sense of special pride and gratification. In this instance my natural reactions are rendered the more acute by circumstances of peculiar significance.

First of all, no one could emerge from the experiences of leading a great collaborative endeavor among nations - as I have - without acquiring the most profound respect for the contribution of education to our mutual success. Not only in the field of science itself, but in devising courses of instruction in the many complicated weapons, machines and techniques of modern war, education has played a decisive part in preparing men for battle. The Armed Forces of my own country - and I am sure of yours - drew heavily on the faculties of our colleges and universities for specialists of all sorts. This generous cooperation of educational institutions everywhere placed at our disposal the brains required to carry out some of our most difficult assignments.

The enlightened programs of education which both our nations have followed for many years paid rich dividends in speeding our preparation for the critical campaigns. Knowledge and sound habits of study acquired in the classroom gave us intelligent troops, quick to grasp each new lesson. It gives me particular satisfaction to acknowledge here the great debt which I feel to the educators of our two nations.

In the late war, I was privileged to associate with large contingents of Canadian fighting men, who braved every terror to uphold principles of humanity which are implicit as well in our concept of free education. Many of those men are here today, heroic sons of Canada and of Toronto University. So I have the additional privilege of testifying again to the gallantry, the fortitude and the devotion that they displayed in such high degree at Dieppe, in Sicily, Normandy, on the Scheldt and on the Rhine and beyond. I pay to them my humble tribute of continuing admiration, affection and gratitude.

I have another reason for unusual personal gratification in today’s ceremony. There is universal recognition of the fact that to attain victory on the western front it was necessary for many peoples, both in the field and in their homelands, to submerge nationalistic differences in the advancement of a common cause. That lesson, I hold, has a broad and profitable application in other circumstances. I like to think that the signal honor today accorded me as former Commander and a representative of the Allied Expeditionary Force, symbolizes the profound respect of Toronto University for the unlimited possibilities of cooperation in the field of international endeavor.

Again, I am particularly happy to visit a great educational institution in a country with which my own has been neighbor in more than mere geographical sense. For many years the absence of military protective works and formations on either side of our great length of common border has been a source of amazement to other countries. The age-old aspiration of nations to establish with others workable cooperation has, in this specific instance, achieved fulfillment.

The peoples of the United States and Canada are imbued, respectively, with the same fierce and justifiable pride in their independence and national pursuits as are other countries of the world. We have many of the same potential causes of serious difference as do others, involving divergent interests in political, economic, and social fields. Yet, such is the relationship between these two truly good neighbors that neither is compelled to provide in its plans and in its expenditures for physical defense against the other. Each of us has an abiding faith that those 3,000 miles of common border measure as secure a boundary as the world has known, defended as it is by mutual friendship, mightier than guns, tanks, airplanes - more powerful even than the atomic bomb.

In that security, that confidence, each of us has a national asset of incalculable value, physical and moral. It is a mighty river of common blessing fed by tributaries that are plain to see.

Of these the primary one is mutual understanding. This, in turn, is fed by such things as unimpeded exchange across the border of ideas, literature, correspondence and visits by individuals. All of these factors contribute to a steady flow into the important stream of mutual understanding, just as does the common language of the peoples. As always, mutual acquaintanceship - ordinary human contact - eliminates many of the suspicions that impede the growth of friendship.