Valedictory to Class of 1941

President Hopkins Calls for Mental and Spiritual Conditioning of Dartmouth's Youngest Generation

Following is the complete text of President Hopkins' Valedictory to the graduating class at the Commencement ExercisesJune 15.

AT PREVIOUS COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES I have spoken to classes more exclusively in reminiscent vein than I can speak today. I have spoken somewhat as one might speak to younger brothers about the pleasant valley from which they were seeking trails to wider acres beyond the dividing watershed. I have asked men like yourselves to look back with me for understanding of the spirit of the College to the time of its foundation; to join with Wheelock and his helpers in felling the towering pines to afford an opening wherein the College might be built; to feel the sense of elation these pioneers had in glimpsing a great future when the first structure of the College was completed; or even to share in the minor happiness of that little group of founding fathers at the eventual finding of water in a well after unsuccessful results in earlier attempts.

I have rejoiced at the fact that at Commencement time there seemed to be renewed the spirit of the little College of twenty-seven members of whom President Wheelock wrote in 1771 that "love, peace, joy, contentment, and satisfaction reigned"; and I have liked to recall even with great sense of responsibility that Governor Wentworth, writing to Wheelock one hundred sixty-five years ago, asserted that he prayed to the Founder of all true wisdom "that under your care this seminary may be safely founded and long flourish."

Obviously the first petition of the prayer has been granted, and our appreciation and admiration go out to the hosts of Dartmouth men who, like yourselves, annually through the decades have refounded the College and have made it capable of ever greater service. Without any of these successions of Dartmouth generations, there might at the present day be doubt in regard to the safety of the foundation, whereas at this point there is no basis for concern.

For those of us who are alumni of the College or who are its officers, however, it remains to insure an affirmative answer to the second part of this petition: that the College may long flourish. It is an interesting coincidence that the life of the College is almost exactly contemporaneous with the period since the seeds of the Industrial Revolution were sown. Not until very recently, however, have we largely begun to understand the effects of that ex- plosive force which was this Revolution. In comprehension of those phenomena and in acquiring intelligent knowledge of how to establish our social controls lie the problems which education must show its ability to meet, if in the rapidity of change this college or any college shall long flourish.

Thomas New comen produced a crude piston in a tube, steam powered, in 1705. Final application of this in an engine which could turn wheels and drive machines was made by James Watt in 1782. Then began the concentration of peoples where mills and shops were located. Then began the growth of towns and cities. Then were greatly multiplied the problems of slums and poverty. Then began the development of those systems of industrialism and capitalism the complexities of which are so definitely before us in present days.

In order that to a small extent at least we may grasp the significance of the shifts in populations and the changed conditions of living brought about in the last century and a half, let us consider a few elementary facts. In the United States at the time of the origin of this college, in a population of less than four million, ninety per cent were farmers. Now, in a population thirty times as great, less than twenty per cent are farmers. Then, higher education had to consider simply the problems of preparation for three professions and legs than a score of classifiable occupations outside the professions. Now, not only has the number of professions increased, but they have been broken down into scores of sub-divisions, and according to the last Government census report, there are thousands of classifiable vocations. Then, knowledge was slowly acquired and there was ample time for the formulation of conclusions as well as for checking the validity of knowledge which was available. Now, action is dictated by the consciousness that a split second may be the difference between success or failure.

In these circumstances, then, and turning the future, what are we to say in regard to policies of the College which not only shall enable it to live but, in accordance with Governor Wentworth's prayer, shall enable it to flourish?

First, I think we have to take into consideration that the College is always dealing in futures and that education in regard to facts based on contemporary knowledge may be as completely out of date a decadeence as now are out of date what were assumed to be facts one hundred sixty-five years ago. The responsibility of the College remains to breed respect for learning, but its major obligation under circumstances of the present day is even more than anything else to develop the reasoning powers of its men for checking the validity of what for the time is accepted as knowledge, for knowing the technique of how to search for new knowledge, and for sharpening the discrimination which will enable men to distinguish between knowledge and fallacy when these alternatives are presented and quick decision must be made.

I see no possibility in modern life, however, of reaching any solution of our problems aside from acceptance of a theory of change, and I see no possibility of changes being wisely made except by educated men. America's philosophy in regard to higher education is entirely different from that of any other people. England has always argued that she could absorb only a limited number of university graduates into her society as it is organized, and therefore that she would limit higher education to the few. France has contended that she could not afford to educate any except the intellectually most brilliant, even in her secondary school system, where she has an en: rollment of thirty-five thousand, while we with three times the population have an enrollment a hundred times as great. Germany has insisted historically that only a small proportion of the population could be given education without danger to her oligarchy and has therefore drastically restricted the number of her youth to whom education is available. And now the Third Reich has outlawed the search for truth in favor of a cynical and perverted indoctrination. America, contrary to all of these, has argued that the greater the number of educated men, the greater the possibilities of the people's welfare. By implication, it has become an obligation of the College as definitely to develop those who will recognize and accept good government as it is to produce the governors.

Sir Arthur Salter once said that half the art of government was to have available capable governors, and that the other half was to have people capable of being governed—in other words, having people willing to waive minor differences of controversial opinion in acceptance of what may be necessary for the conservation of the common good. That is the responsibility of higher education in America today: to afford democracy a citizenry that will insist upon being well governed and will accept the government of those to whom it confides the task.

Men of 1941.

Youngest of Dartmouth's alumni, I cannot exaggerate to you and to men of your generation the importance of conditioning yourselves spiritually and mentally as to what you shall allow yourselves to feel and as to the sincerity with which you shall seek truth. Love of truth has to be cultivated; it is not instinctive. Upon such conditioning will depend what finally you decide to do. To you is given the inestimable privilege or the staggering responsibility—as you choose to look upon it—of being important and of being participators as no men before you have ever been in determining what kind of world this is to be in future years. Either it will become a mind-cramping and a soul-stultifying existence for you and your children or the ground will have been cleared and opportunity offered your generation for building a more beautiful structure of life than man has ever known. And upon each one of you depends in some measure which it shall be.

Events develop with incredible rapidity under conditions of our time. In the fall issue of "Foreign Affairs" three years ago, Julien Benda, describing the youth of his post-war France and speculating on what they would do to France, wrote of "Rightists" and of "Leftists" respectively: "Let us note that the policies vigorously advocated by these two groups of youth are not all based upon a strict examination of the facts, but on an ideal imposed upon the facts: for one group it is 'order,' for the other it is 'social justice.'.... And because both wish 'to know only facts,' both make the mistake of not taking into account desires, aspirations, and feelings, as though in history feelings were not facts, perhaps the most powerful facts of all."

This was the generation of French youth whose ideals imposed upon facts, whose contentions that all dictates of truth that did not fit into their own conception of a social pattern could be disregarded led first to lack of faith in democracy and then to affording totalitarianism its opportunity to assume the role of conqueror over a prostrate people.

Men of 1941, sons of this fostering mother of the north-country which we call Dartmouth, it is your generation that will determine, not in middle life but tomorrow, next year, or at the latest within a few brief years, whether the preconceptions you impose upon facts, the faults you visualize in democracy, and the ruthlessness you ignore in totalitarianism shall paralyze your will to defend the one and to defeat the other or whether with eyes wide open to reality, you accept freedom as an obligation as well as a privilege and accept the role for yourself of defenders of the faith.

And may the Lord "guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in."

ALUMNI PROCESSION ARRIVING AT THE GYM FOR ANNUAL MEETING President Hopkins and Harold P. Hinman 'IO, president of the Alumni Council, lead thereuning classes through split ranks of seniors and their fathers in the annual processionfrom the campus to the gym.