Note 10 — The Conditions of Success

The Cambridge Union is the home of the well-known debating society of the undergraduates of Cambridge University. To the Vice-President, a member of Emmanuel College, the college of John Harvard who founded Harvard University, was appropriately assigned the duty of proposing the resolution admitting Mr. Roosevelt to honorary membership in the Union Society. In supporting the resolution the Vice-President referred to the peculiar relation which unites the English Cambridge and the American Cambridge in a common bond and touched upon Mr. Roosevelt's African exploits by jocosely expressing anxiety for the safety of "the crest of my own college, the Emmanuel Lion, which I see before me well within range." There had just appeared in Punch, at the time of Mr. Roosevelt's arrival in England, a full-page cartoon showing the lions of the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square guarded by policemen and protected by a placard announcing that "these lions are not to be shot." The Secretary, in seconding the resolution, humorously alluded to the doctor's gown, hood, and cap, in which Mr. Roosevelt received his degree, as a possible example of what America sometimes regards as the gilded trappings of a feudal and reactionary Europe.—L.F.A.