Article

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE OPENS

OCTOBER, 1907
Article
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE OPENS
OCTOBER, 1907

Formally Begins Its One Hundred Thirty-Ninth Year by an Address to the Students by President Tucker

The one hundred thirty-ninth year of Dartmouth College officially opened Thursday morning, September 26, with an enrollment the largest in the history of the College. The gathering of this large number in the elegant Webster Hall afforded excellent evidence of the growth of the College both in numbers of students and in its increasing number of buildings.

The College was addressed by President Tucker, who spoke his usually strong words, and who was listened to with earnest attention. Doctor Tucker said :

In the opening address of this year I continue the course of thought which I began two years ago, designed to emphasize the distinctive objects of college training. At that time I discussed the more personal bearing of college training, especially through its social influences, calling your attention to the increasing obligation, as it seemed to me, of our colleges to train men to become gentlemen. Last year I discussed the question — Are the colleges of today sufficiently honoring the claims of pure scholarship ? lam now to speak of the relation of the American college to citizenship. I may add that it had been in my thought to conclude this series by the consideration of the question — Are our colleges now producing under other forms the equivalent of that altruism, which, at the origin of the older colleges, found its immediate and most vivid expression in religious consecration ?

These four objects are, as I conceive, the objects for which our colleges and universities exist — personal culture, scholarship set toward truth, some superior qualifications for citizenship, and the spirit of altruism in some compelling form. The first aim, personal culture, is our inheritance from the English colleges. The second, scholarship in the modern sense, is an importation from the German university. The third, some superior qualifications for citizenship, is from the necessity of our national life more distinctively American. The divorce of scholarship from politics is at once the strength and the weakness of the German university. The English colleges have furnished in large measure the statesmen of England and the rulers of India, but chiefly because of that restricted type of leadership characteristic of a democracy led by an aristocracy. The American college stands committed, alike through its freedom of investigation and discussion, and through its early consecration, I can use no weaker term, to state and church — the American college stands committed to the production of the superior qualifications for citizenship. This obligation to the State has always found a place among the best traditions of our historic colleges. What is relatively new is our gradual recognition and understanding of the fact, that in a pure democracy like our own there can be no progress and no security, unless everything within it which has productive power for good, is disposed and prepared to contribute to the public good according to its capacity and according to the relative value of its product.

I must be brief in the discussion of this subject, but before I say more upon it, I wish to recall each of the two preceding subjects for a word of renewed application.

The personal culture which.marks the gentleman is based on self-control. The greatest test of self-control in college life is found as things are today in connection with college sports. Are we gaining in our ability to meet this test ? To put the question bluntly, can college men be counted upon to play without getting mad ? Can our colleges carry on intercollegiate contests without being obliged, from time to time, to suspend relations with one another ? I do not recall an instance in the long rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge when it has been found necessary to suspend relations. It is relatively quite immaterial that we should spend time in improving the game, if we cannot, as we go on, improve the temper, the behavior, the spirit of fair play on the part of players and of their supporters.

Still further and to the same point, are we holding our gains in the interest of amateur as opposed to professional athletics? Apparently the temptations to evasion, or deception, or to open surrender to commercialism, in connection with baseball are too strong to be resisted. The academic player has not been able to maintain his separateness, his distinctness from the professional player. More demoralization, in my judgment, has come into college life from the commercial seductions of baseball, than from all the liabilities of any sort inherent in or associated with football, the really great and genuine academic game. If this demoralization continues, I am prepared, as a lover and defender of college athletics, to advise the elimination of baseball, as an inter, collegiate game, from college sports. I would confine academic games to games which have no outside market value, unless we can make the price we pay, and which we do pay most liberally, a sufficient reward — namely college honor.

Recalling in like manner the subject of scholarship, I ask, are we gaining in the spirit of scholarship? The results of enforced scholarship show I think a commendable gain. Through the careful certification of schools as well as of students, through the consistent advance in the requirements for admission, through the refusal to admit special students, and more recently through the abolition of the makeup system and the second examination, the faculty has changed very perceptibly the lower grades of scholarship. We have also gained somewhat in the results of stimulated scholarship, through the wiser use of the elective system, through the more suggestive and inviting arrangement of the curriculum, through the better adjustment of suitable courses to professional aims and methods, and especially through the growing freedom of intercourse between students and instructors. What we still lack in too large a degree is the free, courageous, exuberant spirit of scholarship. I should not like to believe, I do not believe, that half the men who go to college here or elsewhere are not capable of realizing the joy of the intellectual life. But I should not be willing to affirm that half the men in any college in this country do realize that joy. The scholar will come to his own in college sentiment when he shows the same zest and enthusiasm which the born athlete shows for the game, provided he shows himself equally human, able to make full and ready contact with his fellows.

Returning to the subject immediately before us, I take up the third object of college training — training for citizenship. The college man, as I have said, ought to be the man of superior qualifications for citizenship. What are the superior qualifications for citizenship? I name first without hesitation, because always important but now necessary, the willingness to subordinate private interest to the public good. Why should I speak of anything which has become a necessity as a superior qualification? Because it is so rare. For generations the people of this country have been so rooted and grounded in individualism that almost instinctively a man's first thought of himself, in relation to the State, is as an individual and then, if at all, as a citizen. In consequence as the opportunity has presented itself in so many tempting forms, men have not hesitated, some thoughtlessly, others by all inventions and devices, to plunder the state, or the people through the State. We have become familiar with the process — the inflated tariff, the improper franchise, the special and often corrupt legislation, anything to convert public utilities into private gain. It is often charged by the supporters of a given monopoly that any attack upon the system tends to suppress private enterprise. No sane man has any contention with private enterprise except as it makes its gains at the public expense. It is the utter indifference of so many persons of power to the responsibility of citizenship which is awakening the surprise and fear of careful observers at home and abroad. Foreign observers are discussing the effect upon the life of the nation of this decline in patriotism. One of the most recent of them has written this ominous word — "America, the model of nations, on the downward path." It is not necessary for us to accept this judgment or even to sympathize with it, but we cannot learn too early or too eagerly how to associate patriotism with the subordination of private interest to the public good. This is everyday patriotism, the only kind which avails a nation in the long years. I therefore say to you that unless you are willing to plan your lives to meet the demand of this kind of patriotism,' and to so plan them that you will be able to resist very great temptations, you will graduate without any claim whatever to this superior qualification for citizenship.

A second superior qualification for citizenship lies in the ability to aid in the formation of public opinion. Public opinion is not the haphazard opinion of the many. It is made up in large degree of that moral sentiment which usually permeates the masses, but it can never accomplish even moral ends without an intelligent and well defined purpose. No man can expect to contribute much to public opinion who is destitute of genuine moral sympathies; neither can one contribute much who can not help to interpret, to inform, to vitalize, and on occasion to organize public sentiment. True, there are times when wise men hold their peace and leave the field to experts. The contrast between the issues which centered in slavery and those which center in the currency, or the tariff,or taxation, or any strictly economic question is very marked. But soon or late every public question broadens into the wider ranges of discussion. Anyone can see the broadening process which is now going on from the economic into the political. Just over and beyond the questions of trusts, and tariffs, and transportation, there is emerging the far greater question of governmental authority — the supreme question of sovereignty, where does it reside, how is it to. be distributed, how enforced? Such questions as these inhere in the political responsibilities of citizenship. They cannot be ''let out'' to experts. In time they lead every man to the ballot box.

It is partly in anticipation of the return of these fundamental political issues that the department of Political Science has been enlarged and strengthened. Certainly every college man should have the opportunity for some clear understanding of the prerogatives of government and of its limitations, with a view to informing and advising his fellow citizens, as the proper occasion may arise, as well as for his own action.

This particular illustration is but one showing the present opportunity for the exercise of some superior qualification for citizenship. In the matter of forming public opinion the press may be supposed to cover the field. Indirectly the press does cover the field. It gives us for the most part the facts on which we form our opinions on public questions. But directly its influence might be greater. We ought to have more organs of reflective opinion. I marvel at the sanity, and accuracy, and insight with which some of the editorial editors on our dailies judge the passing issue. Probably something would be lost in their case if you should attempt to change this practice of ready judgment. But the average daily has become, through the enterprise of the trade or through public demand, so largely a newspaper, that I believe we are now ready, in much larger proportion, for the weekly organ of editorial opinion and criticism, assuming of course, that the man who takes more time to think will not think himself away into cynicism, or pessimism, or some other dehumanizing "ism."

A third superior qualification for citizenship consists in the fixed purpose, which should acquire the force of a habit, to relate one's work, one's business or profession, to the public welfare. We have already carried the idea of patriotism beyond the sacrifices incident to war. We are growing familiar with the. extension of the idea to the discharge of all civic duties of an official sort. Governor Hughes has given impressive utterance to this enlarged view in the sentiment that the flag which floats over the offices of the government declares the same obligation with that which floats over the field of battle. Gradually the idea is being extended farther still. Dr. Ray Lankester, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in a recent address protests against the restriction of the idea of patriotism to the work of soldiers, statesmen, rulers, or any socalled public men, affirming that it covers equally the work of the more advanced scientists, and calling upon the universities of England to recognize this fact in their training. The sanitary work of science has gained popular recognition, as in the physical reconstruction of Panama,and in the treatment of the sleeping sickness in Africa, results of national significance. Many more captains of industry might be recognized as patriots if they were willing to rule out questionable methods of success, or to hold purely commercial rewards in' abeyance. Why should not the process go on. Why should not every man's work be related, consciously related, to the public welfare. Popular recognition of the idea will follow, it cannot precede the fact.

You ask me if a man should choose his business or profession with reference to its capacity for public service. I answer, yes, this is an honorable ground of choice. But under present conditions I think that it is equally, if not more honorable, to compel the business or profession which one may have chosen from personal fitness, to render just service to the community or nation. Just now the demand of patriotism is for the enforcement of moral obligation upon, or the infusion of moral life into, some unwilling businesses and some reluctant professions.

The last superior qualification for citizenship, which I name, may be found in the very honorable ambition to serve the State in the way of official duty. This may or may not involve seeking for an office. A man who is actuated by an honorable purpose ought not to be scared by popular terms of reproach. One man may honorably seek the same office which another man may as honorably decline or even despise. But my suggestion at this point does involve a political career, a career which I have no hesitancy in urging upon some of you: for in my judgment nothing short of a political career will allow you to accomplish much politically. Politics is too intricate and serious and continuous a business to be taken up and put by at will,or at the suggestion of one's friends, or even on the demand of a community. Politics is not really a business at all, but an "estate" after the language of the Prayer Book, and as such "not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly," nor, as must be added, temporarily. The chief reason why so many political reforms never come to a conclusion is that those who oppose them know perfectly well that those who urge them are not in politics to stay. They have only to wait in the majority of cases, for things to resume their natural way, which is also their way. When the political reformer really camps upon the enemy's ground, he is quite sure to win the field — that field; but then, what next? Where has the enemy gone and what is he doing ?

In American politics there is one foe to a career, more deadly in some localities than in others, but almost everywhere a curse to political life, namely rotation in office. Ido not refer to the spoils system, which has been so greatly curbed by the civil service, but to that foolish habit of mind on the part of the American people which considers office holding as an honor to be passed around. A man of some dignity, or wealth, or influence wants to be Mayor or Governor for the distinction. Why shouldn't he have a chance? And as a good many men want the position for the same reason, why should not the time of service be reduced to the minimum so that as many as possible may have the distinction? What plans can be carried out, what policy established, what progress made under such an arrangement, compared with the results which might be expected under more permanent service ? Especially is the loss by this policy most seriously felt in municipal government, where the contrast with the government of European cities is so often taken to our discredit. The latest criticism which I have chanced to see is from Rear Admiral Chadwick :

"After such study as I have been able to give the subject, I have become convinced that the main cause of our failure is in placing city administration in the hands of haphazard short-term men. A change to a greater permanency of office is our primal need. This necessity is everywhere else recognized. In England we find the actual administration wholly in the hands of technical experts.

"But it is Germany which recognizes in the greatest degree the business aspect of municipal administration. The Mayor in Germany is a Mayor by profession, a highly trained and experienced city administrator. He may be called, if he acquires a reputation, from city to city."

This criticism overlooks certain methods to which we are bound politically, but I believe that the main point of the criticism is right.

In spite, however, of some outward conditions I am confident that the present times are favorable to the choice of a political career. From first to last a man seeking such a career must be honest, intelligent, courageous, and manifestly unselfish. Given these qualities, there is room as well as a demand for college men. The motives of such a career are upon you in common with men from other colleges. Perhaps the traditions of this college are specially urgent. I have had occasion to say to you elsewhere that from the beginning of the national life Dartmouth has always had representation in one or both houses of Congress, more frequently in both, as well as in other governmental positions. And its representatives have been influential. The late Commissioner of Education, Doctor Harris, remarked that his observation of men in Washington had led him to consider that the characteristic of public men from this College was directive force. I had not thought of this characteristic as worthy of special notice in the history of the government, but upon reflection, I recalled such illustrations as Senator Proctor's speech forcing the issue on the freedom of Cuba, Mr. Dingley's persistent development of the tariff which bears his name, Thaddeus Stevens' policy of reconstruction, Salmon P. Chase's financial conduct of the Civil War, and Mr. Webster's permanent establishment of the principle of nationality. Opinions may vary as to the wisdom of some of these efforts and the value of their results, but the fact of directive force is clear. This force held in honor in our traditions may be perpetuated in many ways. A political career offers one permanent, and I think, a most timely opportunity for its exercise.

I express the hope, Gentlemen, that the mind of this College will always be hospitable to the claims of citizenship. I express the hope that your minds may be open to these claims here and now. The State cannot exist free, safe, and abiding without the devotion and sacrifice of the best. You have no right to expect to live in freedom and safety upon the devotion and sacrifices of other men. Whatever you may accomplish, or may fail to accomplish in the furtherance of your personal aims and ambitions, may you know" in the final reckoning with yourselves, that you have given something of your best thought and purpose to the advancement and perpetuity of the nation.