PHI BETA KAPPA ADDRESS BY THE HONORABLE ANDREW D. WHITE, LL.D

The Phi Beta Kappa oration was delivered at the public meeting of the society in the auditorium of Dartmouth Hall at 10.30 o'clock Tuesday morning by Ex-President Andrew D. White of Cornell University, formerly ambassador to Germany. Speaking on "Evolution vs Revolution in Politics," Doctor White began by saying:

"It is certain that the theory of an evolutionary method in the universe of some sort has taken fast hold upon thinking men. . You need hardly be reminded that from the rudest stone implements of the drift, down to the time when recorded history begins, we see everywhere proofs of this evolution from the lower to the higher; evidences that man, even if possibly in some sense, a 'fallen being,' is certainly a risen and rising being."

The speaker then went on to compare evolution by steady development in obedience to environment with evolution by catastrophe, and his first example was the war of the American Revolution. Making Burke and Pitt, in England, representatives of the evolutionary method, he said:

"Could these men of right reason have had their way, the American colonies would have remained for many years longer attached to the mother country; the sturdy, vigorous English and Scotch emigration, instead of being diverted into other channels to Canada, the Pacific islands, India and South America, would have continued to enrich and strengthen the civilization of this republic; the separation, when it did come, would have been natural and peaceful; the population of these states would thus have had a far greater proportion of that Anglo-Saxon element which would have enabled it to assimilate the masses of less promising elements which have since flooded us.”

Doctor White next illustrated his subject from the French Revolution, comparing the evolution urged and prepared by Turgot with that which took place at the behest of extreme conservatives, on one side, and extreme radicals on the other, and he ended his argument by these words:

"In spite of the work of Turgot and of all those who caught his spirit—men like Bailly, Lafayette, Mirabeau—who exerted themselves for progress by evolution, there was progress by catastrophe, and a whole line of murders, executions, sterile revolutions and futile tyrannies, each bringing forth new spawn of intriguers, doctrinaires, declaimers and phrasemakers.

The next example was taken from the American Civil War, and here comparison was made of the method advocated by Henry Clay, namely, the extinction Of slavery by purchasing the slave infants as they were born, with the process which was accomplished by the Civil War. Under the proposal of Henry Clay it was estimated that the cost would be $25,000,000. Under the evolution accomplished by the Civil War, the cost, including the debts North and South, with losses and expenditures of all sorts, was close upon ten thousand millions of dollars, and the abolition of slavery, instead of coming by fraternal agreement, without blood, cost "nearly, if not quite a million of lives—and these on the whole, the noblest lives the nation, North and South, had to give."

As to the present struggle in Russia, the speaker forecasted a long revolutionary process, involving civil war, ending, doubtless, in an imperfect form of constitutional monarchy.

He then said: "The question now arises, is this the necessary law of human progress? Must the future of mankind be no better than the past in this respect?" After alluding to the pessimistic arguments which had been made in favor of this idea that the future will be as bad as the past, Doctor White took a far more optimistic view and stated that the very law of evolution itself seems to encourage us. It would seem to show that not only better results but better methods may gradually be evolved, and he gave historical examples of various such evolutions, referring espcially to The Hague conference, as substituting an opinion favoring arbitration rather than war.

A quotation was now made from Goldwin Smith—"Let us never glorify revolution"—and the wisdom of this Doctor White supported by various examples in recent French history and by a reference to the causes of our own Civil War.

Doctor White then asked the question, "What, then, shall we glorify? This he answered by saying: "Let us glorify the evolution of a strong religious and moral sense in individuals and in nations; of well-being and well-doing; of clear and honest thinking; of right reason; of high purpose; of bold living up to one's thought, reason and purpose; let us glorify these, let these be our ideals."

The speaker then took up the evolution of the individual in the nation, and quoted Carlyle's great question—"How, out of a universe of knaves shall we get a common honesty?"

This he answered by urging the symmetrical development of all a man's powers, but, especially, an enlightened will power.

The next division taken up was the material evolution of the country at large, and progress by financial revolution and the efforts to outwit the laws of honest finance was contrasted with more steady progress in obedience to the great laws of nature. He quoted a remark made to him by a Russian minister of the interior, ten years ago, who insisted that certain methods of the American insurance companies were "too immoral for Russia," and Doctor White confessed that he was plunged into a sort of daze by such a statement, which never completely ended until the recent investigations in New York.

He also, in reference to American business methods to be discarded, referred to long and earnest efforts during his official stay in Germany, in behalf of the admission of American meat products, and the fact that, a great American meat magnate, visiting Germany at the time, pooh-poohed the whole effort, and said, "Germans must use our products; they can't raise enough in their own country."

He next took up as a type of material problems demanding attention at this moment, American railway management, gave sundry results of his own experience as a railway director, and then said:

Why is it that there is no stream of wealthy and cultured Europeans through our country approaching in number that of wealthy and cultured Americans in Europe? Why did so few Europeans come to the St. Louis Exposition? What prevented at that wonderful exhibition any adequate representation of our eastern and middle states? I answer : Mainly the bad repute of our railway lines, as regards safety. Our railways kill a vastly greater proportion of passengers than do any others in Christendom. Why is this? In a very considerable degree because money that should have been put into double tracks, abolition of grade crossings, block-signals and thoroughly efficient supervision, has been put into stock and bonds that represent nothing.

Showing the short-sightedness of this, even from a business point of view, the speaker said : "The most far-sighted man I was ever associated with was the first Cornelius Vanderbilt. He knew that to increase facilities and safety in track increases travel. He took cheap railways and made them into good ones. He doubled his tracks, and even quadrupled them. He spent no time in whining about hostile legislation or in corrupting legislators. He forestalled hatred of corporations by making corporations reasonable.

Doctor White then advised those who were to sit in legislatures or boards of directors, as follows: To those who become directors, he said: "Meet the people more than half way in satisfying their wants." To those who are to sit in legislatures, he said : "Insist on the fullest publicity of railway reports; protect shareholders by enforcing accuracy in such reports; protect the public by stringent requirements as to crossings and signals and double tracks on all railways in condition to give them. Do not leave it all to the civil law. Make your criminal laws 'with teeth in them.' Don't hesitate to imprison directors who cheat either their stockholders or the public. I rejoice to bear testimony to the wisdom and public spirit in this respect of some of your New England railways over which I passed in coming here, especially the New. York, New Haven and Springfield."

The graduates of Dartmouth were most earnestly urged to labor for a better development of the "idea of true mercy as against spurious mercy, " "the idea of mercy toward the great mass of hard- working, law-abiding citizens, rather than a contemptible lenity toward the vicious brute who refuses to control his passions or who lives by preying upon the law-abiding part of the community. "

He next took up a possible evolution of something better in improving the great agency of the American press. He especially dwelt on the meager reports of the most important debates in congress, and declared that in no other constitutional government in the world are the people put off with such insufficient statements regarding legislative work.

He alluded to various nostrums which various people have proposed, and said: "When each of these has had its little day, when all have flickered out, there still shines in the moral heaven this great truth, written through all history on the life of every people, on the heart of every true man, 'Righteousness exalteth a nation.' "

In closing Doctor White dwelt on the practical application of these ideas to the problems immediately before those now going forth from the colleges.