great demand everywhere and by everyone and could find no time for its preparation. Finally, a few days before the date of the occasion, he slipped away one night to New York, hid in the University Club, and wrote the lecture in a single morning. It is so full of allusion that to appreciate it fully one must read it with the Bible in one hand, the "Religio Medici" in the other, and "In Memoriam" near by. In this he gives his own confessio fidei to the effect that, as Cicero had once said, he would rather be mistaken with Plato than be in the right with those who deny altogether the life after death.
At seventy in the forefront of activities innumerable, of unusual physical vigor and buoyancy, coming of a long-lived race, William Osler's death may be regarded as a consequence of the war. No human being loathed strife more than he; few had been as successful in avoiding it in any guise. This characteristic made him suffer unduly from the very outbreak of the conflict. He nevertheless threw himself into it with characteristic energy in connection with the War Office, on committees, in hospitals, and as a senior consultant to the Forces he received a Colonel's commission. The British reply to the famous German professional note issued early in the war was, I believe, written by him and shows the man's spirit and, as always, his charity. The opening and closing paragraphs may be quoted :
We see with regret the names of many German professors and men of science, whom We21
