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The Peterson Memorial Address

On January 16th, 1921, a University Service in Memory of Sir William Peterson was held in the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, of which Sir William was a member and where he had worshipped during his twenty-four years in Canada. The following memorial address was given by the Rev. Principal D. J. Fraser (Arts '93), D.D., LL.D., of the Presbyterian College.

“Sir William Peterson had a fine reverence for sacred things and a keen appreciation of church worship. In the absence of a college chapel, which leaves McGill still lacking one note of catholicity, it is fitting that the Service to his memory, although a distinctively University Service, should be held in this Church where he worshipped with both the understanding and the spirit during the twenty-four years of his life amongst us. He had the Scot's proverbial taste for a good sermon, and he exacted that the pulpit should deal with Christianity as a rational religion and should make its appeal to the intelligence of the people. Knowing as he did that the Bible is the foundation not only of individual and national character but also of a comprehensive culture, and regretting that many children through home neglect had their only knowledge of it from the lessons heard in church, he pleaded that the Scriptures be reverently and clearly read. He was one of our highest authorities on hymnology and church music; he loved to join in singing the familiar psalms and paraphrases and hymns, and he appreciated as few in the congregation could the majestic anthems rendered by the choir. He never wantonly absented himself from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Presbyterian ritual of which, in close keeping with the form of the original Holy Meal, naturally appealed to him. Intellectual and mystical, historical and sacramental elements entered into his worship.

“I think his last diet of public worship, except the one at which he was stricken, was a Memorial Service in this Church to those who would not return from overseas, when I gave the sermon on a text chosen from those immortal verses of poetic beauty which have just been read by his successor (Revelation 22:4-5). Those, however, who laid down their lives for the cause of Empire and Humanity do not all sleep in Flanders and in France. Although in delicate physical health, he threw himself with abandon into the grim struggle from its very outset; he undertook the work of colleagues who had enlisted; he carried in his heart a tender solicitude for the lads from McGill who were exposed to peril; he acted almost as confidential adviser to the Government's Department of Militia; he advocated ceaselessly by voice and pen the cause so dear to his patriotic soul, until he inevitably broke under the strain; and to-day we memorialise as bonnie a fighter and as genuine a hero as any whose name is on our military Roll of Honour.

“Sir William Peterson was greatest as a scholar. It is hardly necessary that I refer to his brilliant career as a classical student at Edinburgh and Oxford, his priceless legacy to scholarship in the works of the Latin authors he edited and translated, his successful administration of University College, Dundee, at an extremely difficult time in its history, and his guidance of the affairs of McGill during its period of phenomenal growth from 1895 to 1919; for many of you who were his colleagues are better qualified than I to estimate the value of these activities. He preserved to the end the instincts and habits of the scholar. When he enjoyed a period of freedom from his administrative duties it was to the libraries of America and Europe that he gravitated in the scholar's quest for old documents that would yield the scholar's joy of new discovery; and on his last holiday visit to Scotland, deprived by the war of access to the libraries of the Continent, he happened upon an unpublished document of the seventeenth century by what he modestly called 'a lucky chance.' We know, however, that these happy finds come only to those who have the genius of the literary discoverer, and characteristic of the textual critic is his parting message to us in his delightful description of his new-found treasure given in a magazine article under the prophetic title—'A Last Will and Testament.'

“As an educationalist Sir William Peterson was a mediator between the champions of pure learning and the advocates of the practical sciences. To him the University had a two-fold function; first 'to make good citizens,' and second 'to hand on the torch of knowledge to successive generations of students.' He believed that in order of teaching pure learning should precede applied science, that classical subjects should precede professional; but in spite of his Oxford training he could never be accused of sacrificing the practical in the University to the disciplinary. He recognised that the development of the pure sciences was effected in history by the practical needs of life and that the marvels of modern scientific activity are based on abstract and theoretical learning. He found a place for the classical and the specialised, the humanistic and the utilitarian, and his ideal was that the University should give practical men a sound training in theory and also keep theory in touch with practice. It was a blessing to McGill and to education in Canada that we had as our guide a believer in the humanities at a time when our youthful enthusiasm for the practical was in danger of blinding us to the ideal of our educational ancestors that the function of the school is to develop men and women of character.

“Principal Peterson was widely known as an ardent champion of Imperialism, although here he failed to carry with him some of his warmest Canadian friends; but it is not so generally known that he did a great and needed work on this Continent in the interests of Anglo-Saxon unity. He frequently visited the United States and gave addresses to universities, learned societies, Canadian clubs and similar influential groups, and he always appealed for mutual good-will between the two children of the same British mother. In fact he earned a more generous recognition there than in Canada or in Great Britain. Harvard and Princeton, Yale and Johns Hopkins conferred their highest honour on the representative of our national University, and acknowledged that it was not a mere international compliment but a real recognition of a scholar who had made lasting contributions to the cause of higher learning and human progress. He was also elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Holding an almost unique place among the College Presidents on this Continent, his words reached influential audiences and carried great weight. His first visit to the United States was in 1896, during the first year of his incumbency at McGill for the purpose of addressing the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni of New York, and he chose for his theme 'The Relations of the English-speaking Peoples.' It was the time of the Venezuela incident when there was imminent danger of misunderstanding between Britain and America. His plea for friendship is of special interest to us to-day when there is a highly organised propaganda for stirring up strife between the two nations, a propaganda that is causing real anxiety to the spiritual descendants of Britain in Canada and New England. In these chaotic days we do well to heed and herald his message on that occasion. 'It is well-nigh inconceivable,' he said, 'that in this age of the world's progress the two representatives of Anglo-Saxon civilization will ever enter on a fratricidal struggle to decide which shall be the greater.... The best guarantees for the continuance of mutual good-will are surely to be found in that of which I know we are all equally proud—community of race, language, literature, religion and institutions, together with the glorious traditions of a common history.... A racial federation between Britain and America would probably prove a potent factor in hastening the era of general disarmament.... The authority, more fortunate even than President Monroe, will lay impossible, and then it will be seen that every man who by rash action or hasty word makes the preservation of peace difficult has committed a crime not only against his own country but against civilization itself.' That last sentence obviously referred to President Cleveland. I was a student at Harvard at the time and every Professor whose classes I attended took the same attitude. By such appeals Principal Peterson helped to strengthen the body of American opinion that exists to-day against the intolerable thought of strife between the two peoples who have lived for more than a century in peace and harmony and mutual affection, and his weighty words are a warning to Canadians who share his imperialistic ideals against irresponsible criticisms of our friends and neighbours to the South. His Imperialism, while it gave him the vision of a commonwealth of nations within the British Possessions, did not blind him to the larger vision of the unity of English-speaking peoples, and to the still nobler vision of universal brotherhood of which his fellow-countryman sang under conditions of unrest very similar to our own:—

“While Dr. Peterson was primarily a scholar and administrator, he was also a public-spirited citizen who mingled freely with his fellows in varied walks of life and who identified himself with many movements in the interests of human welfare. His last public address was to a group of our Greek fellow-citizens with whose propaganda against Turkish rule over their brethren in Asia Minor he rightly or wrongly sympathised. His chief public interest, however, was in education, and he not only served diligently on the Council of Protestant Instruction for the Province of Quebec but he gladly gave the encouragement of his presence and counsel to the teachers in primary and secondary schools throughout Canada at their annual gatherings; and one of his favourite pleas on these occasions was for the rightful place of English Literature—and especially Poetry—in the school curriculum. He magnified the office of the teacher and deplored the apathy of the public towards those entrusted with the training of the future manhood and womanhood of the nation. 'No expenditure,' he cried, 'is considered too great to be grudged on war and armaments by land and by sea, on construction works such as railways, bridges, harbours and naval stations, but the needs of the common school rouse little, if any, interest or enthusiasm. And yet it is there that the national character is being moulded.' He never ceased to protest against the narrow idea that education consists merely in the acquiring of knowledge and is to be measured by success in examinations; and he constantly held up to the teachers of youth the need of caring for such things as 'good manners, courtesy, consideration for others, respect for seniors, friendly politeness towards all.' He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the teaching of music in the public schools. He saw what had been accomplished by training in this department in Scotland and Germany, for example, among peoples not naturally musical, and he feared that through our neglect we might become a songless race. Himself finding in music one of his exquisite delights, he endeavoured to bring to the rural districts its elevating and enriching influence.

“Although not a social reformer in the popular sense of that term, he was deeply interested in efforts for the betterment of the community; and especially in the last years of his active life the social situation in Montreal weighed heavily on his heart and conscience. He beheld the city from his uptown coign of vantage and the vision troubled him. The social evils of this great commercial centre challenged him to do something for the alleviation of distress, the improvement of housing conditions, the prevention of such slums as are a blot on the fair city which gave him birth, the reduction of the infant mortality which is a scandal to our population and the bringing of the simple joys and pleasures of life to the greatest possible number. He saw so many worthy separate agencies trying to grapple with the social problem without unity of purpose and co-ordination of effort, he saw the churches so relatively powerless to effect any appreciable cure because of their sectarian divisions, that he dreamed a dream that McGill University might do in this respect what the existing agencies and churches were helpless to effect, that it might become not only the inspirer of a great passion for social redemption and not merely a school for the scientific training of social workers, but also a unifying centre of our manifold social efforts where existing agencies might be strengthened and stimulated and co-ordinated. This is really the thought that lay behind his organizing the Department of Social Service in the University. Whatever we may think of his method of ministering to the crying social needs of our time and place, we cannot doubt the sincerity of his purpose and the intensity of his desire. It was also his solicitude for the students coming up from the country and smaller towns to this populous centre, exposed to the moral perils of a great city, that kept him strongly appealing for dormitories under University supervision and control, an appeal to which we turned a strangely deaf ear, but to which, we are thankful to say, he lived long enough to see a fairly generous response.

“One hesitates to refer to the personal qualities that endeared him to his intimate friends. I always detected in his life a certain undefined loneliness. The scholar's shyness and the isolation of his exalted position hardly account for it. A humanistic scholar in a University where the practical departments were making greatest progress, engrossed in his intellectual interests in the solitude of his upper chamber while the busy commercial world went heedless by, always leisurely in the midst of a most active life, a man of religious reticence who was misunderstood because he did not make a noisy profession of his faith, an old countryman in a new land that he never could quite call 'home,' a controversialist skilled only in the use of the rapier and compelled at times to enter the lists with those who wielded the bludgeon, a subtle humourist who must 'carry on' with the prosaic and matter-of-fact, a lover of his own fireside who must of necessity be socially advertised with the vulgar, his spirit dwelt apart from the busy world in which he served.

“Loyalty was the supreme virtue in his ethical code, and disloyalty was to him the unpardonable sin. No man could have done for McGill what he did and not make academic enemies. He found a group of professional schools, each more or less autonomous, and he transformed it into a University. His ideal of the unity of learning made it necessary that he should run counter to the traditions of the various schools in seeking to co-ordinate all departments of study, and he exposed himself to criticism, just as President Eliot of Harvard did in his similar work for his University; but I never heard him speak a disloyal word of any of his colleagues. No man could have advocated Imperialism as he did without making political enemies, and many a vigorous attack was made on him by young Canadians; but I do not recall any spoken word or any printed sentence of his that dragged his advocacy of Imperialism into the realm of party politics or personal controversy. I know how true and generous he was to one of his friends who always found in him a congenial fellow-worker in the things of the spirit. I also know how large a place he kept in his heart for the students,—rejoicing in their success, proud of their manly conduct, heart-sad over the tragedy of guilt and shame that befell any one of them. He had a warm heart, although he did not wear it on his sleeve for daws to peck at. To me as I go about the College yard he is a spiritual presence, summoning me to do my best, to be accurate, fearless, loyal to the truth as I know the truth, and loyal to those for whom I hold the truth in stewardship; and such a spiritual comrade he will be while memory lasts. My experience is that of many of you who were fond of him and of whom he was fond, and our tribute to his memory, while quite unworthy, has at least, what he would most desire, the merit of sincerity.

“Students of McGill, our former Principal is gone and we shall see his living face no more. But the stimulus of his high example remains with us. It is fitting in conclusion that I repeat to you the inspiring and earnest words with which he ended his address to the students at the Memorial Service to his illustrious predecessor, Sir William Dawson, twenty-one years ago:—'My closing words to the students of McGill,' he said, 'must be the expression of a confident hope that the record of Sir William's life and work will be an abiding memory in this place. If you will bear it about with you in your hearts, not only will you be kept from lip-service, slackness, half-heartedness in your daily duties, and from the graver faults of youth at which his noble soul would have revolted, from dishonesty, sensuality and impurity in any form, but you will be able, each in his sphere, to realise more fully the ideal of goodness and truth, so that at the last you, too, may hear the voices whispering, as they have now spoken to him, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”'”