ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF COLLEGE SEPTEMBER 23, 1915

Today Dartmouth College begins its one hundred forty-sixth year's work. It is of interest to note that while a few of our American colleges were chartered and some of them in operation before Dartmouth was founded, yet Dartmouth is the only college of colonial times which has kept in operation without suspension or interruption of its instruction since pre-revolutionary days.

As host on this occasion it is my privilege, in behalf of the Dartmouth family, to welcome the class of 1919 into the Dartmouth household.

You enter as a group strong in numbers; strong, eager and sincere in your purpose to train yourselves to give a larger, a better, a more enlightened service in your day and generation.

The year 1919 will mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the granting of our charter. Thus the time of your coming gives your class one signal distinction; other distinctions here are yours for the winning.

Kipling, after a recent visit to the French trenches, speaks significantly of the concentrated spirit of equality and brotherhood under the pressure of conflict and says:

"The French officers seem as mothers keen on their men, as their men are fond of them. These soldiers, like ours, had been welded for months in one furnace. As an officer said, 'Half our orders now need not be given. Experience makes us think together'."

You will soon discover, men of 1919, that this spirit of equality and brotherhood is a characteristic of Dartmouth men. They too think and act together. I do not mean that they think alike, nor do they act alike. No democracy which crushes individuality is worthy of the name. What I do mean is that Dartmouth men can and do concentrate thought and action upon a common purpose wherever their college is concerned.

Their officers too are keen on their men, and the need of giving orders becomes less and less as new recruits grow in loyalty and experience.

We who welcome you, college officers and upperclassmen, return to college refreshed, more hopeful, stronger to so do the work of men in college that we may better do the work of our country and of the world whenever and however the call may come.

Much has happened in our individual lives during these months of absence, and vastly more has happened in the great life of the world.

That we are still at peace with all men is a blessing beyond measure, for these are days to try men's souls, days calling, as days have never called fore, for understanding, for wisdom, for fortitude, for patience, for disciplined minds and self-mastery. There are times of stress when it takes more courage not to fight than to go to war.

The minds and hearts of thoughtful, patriotic and far-sighted men, the world over, are full of sadness and a grave concern. The world is in the midst of a two-fold revolution. The question of national ambition and international justice and liberty is being decided abroad by the sword in the midst of carnage surpassing the disordered vision of an unbalanced mind. What will be at the end of the struggle, and when will it come ? .

Here at home, on the other hand, a deeper, if more peaceable and less dramatic, revolution is in progress. We are moving rapidly toward a new social order, toward wider conceptions of social justice, toward larger ideas of personal liberty. Never before has the call for the highest citizenship been so universal, so insistent.

If the world is to pass from the old order to the new without destroying wholly all that is good in the slowly and painfully gathered experience of the race, we shall need in our citizenship more large-souled men of the soundest wisdom, enlightenment, and a sacrificial enthusiasm for brotherhood.

The great world need today is not the exploitation of natural resources, nor commerce, nor industry, nor finance, nor armaments; it is citizenship.

With the growth and spread of democratic ideas, good rulers alone cannot make either a strong or a good nation. Government depends less and less upon governors and more and more upon the citizenship of the governed, who make and break governors. The citizenship of the world will arrange the world to suit itself when the next hour for rearrangement arrives.

To save the best of the old in the new arrangement citizenship must be broader, better instructed, more responsible and possessed with a sterner moral purpose. Trained leaders, important as they are and always must be, will be useless if unsupported by an intelligent and morally strong following. Thus we must not only produce a few great citizens, we must lift the whole level ot citizenship.

When men speak of ways and means for developing a higher average citizenship, two great uplifting agencies are always proposed, education and religion. Different in sound, education and religion are alike in purpose; both insist that men shall know the truth and live by the truth they know.

Men achieve greatness in proportion to the breadth of their grasp of the truth, and their power and enthusiasm to apply the truth to men and affairs, —truth in the world of nature, economic truth, social truth, political truth, truth in the realm of ideas and that moral truth which builds men up in rugged and unflinching character.

Why are we here together working as teachers and students with all our might? We are not creating economic values; nobody is accumulating money. We are all spenders. Why are we here? We are here to teach and to learn as much of the truth as we have power to give and to receive.

The call of the college to the world is the message of our Lord: Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

Now instruction is the imparting of knowledge and real knowledge is a description or an interpretation of some aspect of the truth. That knowledge which a man has digested, assimilated, made into the substance and fiber of his mind, is understanding. And understanding ripened by human experience is wisdom.

What are our real relations as teachers and students ? As teachers we can give instruction, impart wisely chosen and related knowledge. We cannot impart understanding; we cannot teach wisdom. Whatever of understanding and wisdom you take from college and I hope you will take much, is wholly of your own evolving, the credit for it is justly yours.

But let me add one word of counsel, - don't let your hospitality for knowledge stop with its idle entertainment in your head. Rather seize upon it, work it over, make it your own, use it. Undigested knowledge often sets as ill on the mind as undigested food on the stomach.

Knowledge, understanding, wisdom, these three; to recognize the truth, to comprehend the truth, to speak, act and live the truth; these are the high qualifications of a noble citizen.

The college offers you as much as it knows of the truth. Ponder it, digest it, speak, act and live in accordance with it.

Let me give you one of the oldest guides to responsible citizenship, a guide far older than many of lesser worth:—

"Take fast hold of instruction, let her not go," said Solomon, "Keep her for she is thy life, And attend to know understanding.

Get wisdom, get understanding.

Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, Yea, with all thy getting, get understanding."