A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for those new ideas, and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is I believe, in the main, sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those great singers of the past, it seemed to me, I must confess that we are living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are given beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die