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83 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1968)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry83 and id is 1 raw text is: 







              The World Today*













                                   HAROLD MACMILLAN
                                               London, England

             When   I was a little boy my mother used to assure
 me that to be elected a senator of the United States was to reach
 the summit of human  achievement. Since, however, she had mar-
 ried a Scotsman, resident in England, I was never able to see how
 it would be possible for me to realize such an ambition. Neverthe-
 less, if she were alive today, I think she would have drawn ample
 reward from the spectacle of her son being honored as a former
 prime minister of Britain by the authorities of Columbia Univer-
 sity, and invited to address so distinguished and notable an as-
 sembly as is gathered here. She would have felt a glow of legiti-
 mate pride at an event which so happily linked the country of her
 adoption wih the country of her birth.
   But this was not the only lesson which I learnt from my mother.
I used to listen with rapt attention to her stories of her childhood
in what  was then-I  am  speaking of nearly 120 years ago-the
distant and pioneering region of the Middle West. Even my memories
go  back nearly seventy years, when children received their first
teaching at their mother's knee.
  These  early recollections, followed by a close connection with
my   mother's homeland  during  all the years of  my  life, and

  * Address given on the occasion of the conferring of the honorary degree of
Doctor of Laws upon Mr. Macmillan at Columbia University, Thursday, Jan. iTi,
1968.


Volume LXXXIII Number 1 March 1968


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