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WHAT has been written in these pages is based on authentic documents and sources rather than on tradition—on fact rather than on rumour. Necessity required that it should be the story of epochs rather than of individuals. It is sometimes said unwisely that “epochs are but resting-places or halts in history.” But that is not a truthful definition when applied to the epochs of McGill, for they have all been times of progress. With steps sometimes accelerated, sometimes slow, sometimes even faltering, its movement has been always onward. There have been no stopping-places in its life. It has not been possible here to give adequate notice or even reference to all its benefactors and to all the noble and unselfish men and women who helped in its advancement, to the distinguished graduates and sacrificing professors who brought honour to its name, to the discoveries, the theories and doctrines for improvement, whether intellectual or social or political, first fashioned in its shadow. Through the medium of these men and women, and their theories and doctrines carried into practice, it has won undying glory. Their names are safe in our University's past; we can leave their memories in its keeping.

When James McGill made his bequest he was dreaming of a University that would first serve Canada and assist in its development. He himself had set his face westward. When he made his will he knew that he was of the past, but he had faith in the coming youth and manhood of his adopted land. He saw the possibilities of the vast new country in which he had prospered but which he was so soon to leave, and he had a firm belief in its future greatness. The Founder's dream has been realised even to a greater extent than perhaps he hoped. The men who in its hundred years of life brought to McGill the largest portion of its fame, whether graduates or professors, were products of the new country in the young manhood of which he had such unbounded faith. They were, for the most part, native Canadians whose feet were rooted in the soil. They were men whose ancestors, like the Founder himself, had crossed the ocean in comfortless craft to face unknown hardships in forest and on plain, to build homes from the wilderness in which they might find happiness and fortune. Dawson in Education, Osler in Medicine, Laurier in Statesmanship, and a host of others, these are gone; they are behind us; their achievements are part of our century story. Elsewhere than in McGill their services, their doctrines, and their theories have been assimilated; they have ministered to the nation's and the world's life. And the men and boys who went out from McGill to die for their principles during the world's five years of tragedy were similar to them in sacrifice and spirit; they contributed in another form to the advancement of civilization. In their ideals they were typical of the Canadian youth of James McGill's vision. They justified the Founder's faith.

With this reference to our great dead we bring these chapters to a close. The next, unwritten, chapter in McGill University's history is one of which we do not see the end. It must be left to other hands and other pens. When it is written it may or may not revolve about individuals. Like its preceding chapters it, too, will more probably be the story of an epoch. For while the individual must always vanish in his due time, the College must survive. One fact is certain—after one hundred years of struggle and of ultimate triumph, life still beats strongly in the veins of the University—more actively than in the days of its youth, and more hopefully than at any period in its history. There is a new spirit in McGill. To-day its pulsing life, under the guidance of its great Canadian leader, reaches through all grades and faculties and departments of its students as it has never done before. There is a general forward movement, unhampered and undivided by considerations or competitions of sections or of faculties. The University is closer, too, than it once was to the current of national feeling. It is seeking to minister to Canada, the land which gave it birth and from which its greatness sprang. But while it will serve Canada, it will continue to draw its students, like the true Studium Generale, from every country on the globe, and to send them back to serve their individual countries to advance the enlightenment of the world. McGill's first century has been a century of trial, but a century of great accomplishment. Its struggles and its triumphs are an inspiration for the coming days. If we but follow the ideals of the men who made our University, with their noble sacrifice, their splendid achievement and their unwavering faith as our heritage, the unwritten story of McGill's future will be more glorious even than the record of its past.