In recognition of the distinguished services he has rendered to the Country and the Empire as Governor of Bombay, Governor of Madras, Governor-General of Canada, and at the present time as Viceroy and Governor-General of India.
"Today in this city of Edinburgh and on an occasion for me so memorable, it gives me a peculiar pleasure not only to acknowledge my own debt for their counsel and support in times of doubt and difficulty but to express more generally, after many years of life and travel in many parts of the Empire, my admiration for the men and women of the Scottish race whose courage, initiative and tenacity have done so much to build up its fortunes in the past and are so great a present influence on all the manifold activities of administration, public life and private enterprise.
My experience of the Scot abroad has naturally tempted me to ask myself what exactly are the qualities, and whence does he get them, which have so conspicuously made him a pioneer and a pillar of Empire; that spirit which sends him across the waste of seas with an undying regret for the 'lone shieling in the misty island,' which combines a passion for metaphysics with the shrewdest judgment of practical things, which has made legendary alike his devotion to a falling cause and his unerring instinct for a rising market. It is a profoundly interesting inquiry but, as I am aware, my Lord Provost, not without its perils. I shall say only this. I have seen your beautiful grey city in all its matchless atmosphere of unbroken tradition and unforgotten history; I have seen something of the vigorous activity of a modern capital, in which, nevertheless, the wraiths of Scott and Burns and Stevenson would still be at home, and Sir James Barrie would meet with kindred spirits today; and of a university which draws from its great names of the past new inspiration for the present and the future. I have looked both on the ramparts of your ancient citadel and on the most beautiful and impressive memorial of the late war that in many journeyings I have ever seen. I feel that now I understand better the Scottish character, and the things that have built it up."