ROYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 54, 5 March 1914, Page 4

ROYAL COLONIAL INSTITUTE.

Probably to many people the Royal Colonial Institute appears a somewhat; exclusive and inaccessible institution.l with a necessarily limited membership, •but,the Christchurch Press points out, i Earl Grey, the president of the Institute, disposed of that view in a speech in .Melbourne recently. During! the three years he has been president much has been done to make the Institute democratic. The subscription used to be three guineas; now any] man or woman can be a member for a guinea a year. The membership has grown from 5000 to 9000 in the three years, and it is the Institute's ambition to raise the number to 100,000. Earl Grey mentioned, as an instance of the interest taken in the Institute among remote I'ritish communities, that in the little Central American Republic of Guatemala there are 100 members, who have their club and library, and hold weekly gatherings at which addresses are given on important- public questions from a non-party point of view. Earl Grey claims that the Institute, which, he hopes, will soon adopt the name Britannic, is the most powerful Imperial orgaisation outside the British Navy League, with its 1,000,000 paying members, as setting an example of size and influence which British people might emulate.