Your Graces, Your Excellency, My Lord Mayor, and My Lords,
To speak on so auspicious an occasion and after the conduct of such foundational business must necessarily invite not merely reporting but retrospection, not merely projection but prediction.
The Romans had a saying, Tempora mutantur et nos in illis, The times change and we change with them: a sentiment expressed more defiantly by the nasal-voiced bard of popular culture some twenty-seven years ago, as this great project of Restoration was beginning. Certainly, neither Sir Lewis Kopp and I, talking in our cadet barracks at Culver, nor that intrepid band of Diplomacy players in Harvard's Thayer Hall the following year, nor even perhaps "the Peers and Commons and other Representatives of His August Majestie's loyal subjects in Council-General assembled" at 6 Ash Street in Cambridge on a seasonable day in March twenty-fiour years ago--none of these, I think, even if they had imagined that we might be meeting in this Twenty-Fifth Council-General, would have anticipated the changes in the world which have led us to change with them. Certainly, when Sir Lewis and I were learning Fortran by punching holes in Hollerith cards, we had no inkling of a World Wide Web which would allow me to contact the High Commissioner of the Forodrim by the simple expedient of e-mailing to Stockholm for his address. It is an unremarkable business today; twenty-five years ago, it was, rather, unimaginable.
Such foreign affairs as I have to report today--and it has not been a busy year--have in fact been conducted almost entirely over the electronic media. Pursuant to directions from the 24th Council-General, I found the web site of the Kingdom of the East and, using the convenient mail-to page, gave notice to the King and Queen of the East that as of the Midsummer Day just past, the Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor would no longer consider themselves or the Kingdom of the East bound the terms of the treaty signed by King Cariadoc of the Bow and me in 7528. To this message I received no reply: which fact confirms our initial impression that the treaty had fallen, in the helpful terms of Her Grace of Belfalas, into desuetude.
Our relations with the Kingdom of Rhovanion continue on a stable footing, and in keeping with my theme I might note that Tar-Morondil of Rhovanion has become a local Internet service provider for his area of New-York.
As I have already suggested, electronic communications have actually made it possible to communicate with our allies of the Forodrim as easily as we do with each other. As a result, I have had several exchanges of notes with Stockholm, and I believe that one or more of the Forodrim will have been added to the Minas Tirith Community College list server when it is put up again. I welcome the High Commissioner here today, and send respectful greetings to the Grand Council.
In concluding this survey, I could not omit to mention our oldest friends and closest allies, the Commonwealth of Esgaroth, with whom His Grace the Steward maintains regular contact; nor could I fail to thank the Baron Hunnewell-of-Tuckborough, whose energy and knowledge of the world of Tolkien fandom make him a Secretary of State upon whom I constantly rely.
What, then, of the future? Having begun with so detailed a denial of the powers of prognostication, I can hardly claim now to see the future spread out before me, like Anchises showing Aeneas the future course of empire. But in an age which claims to be rediscovering virtues, one may perhaps be permitted to hope that at least friendship, if not "justice and mercy and truth and virtue and peace," may preserve this noble fellowship until the King return.
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