ALUMNI CO-OPERATION

The demands which will be made upon the college in the years immediately before us will be insistent and heavy. The knowledge of this compels us to strive with unwonted effort to realize all our resources, and to have all our assets quick assets. There will be few such possibilities of added vigor to the college as in the development of what has come to be known as the alumni movement until, in far greater measure, the solicitude and the intelligence of the alumni,—more truly even than their financial means,—are directed to furthering the true interests of the college.

Such strength as the American college lacks it lacks, in the main, because of the too great confinement of interest among its men to the college of their undergraduate days. Many a man, through lack of opportunity for anything else draws all the inspiration for his enthusiasm for his college from his memories of life when an undergraduate, and feeds his loyalty solely upon sentimental reverence for the past. The misfortune of interest thus confined falls alike upon the individual and upon the college. In general, the alumni of our American colleges have little knowledge of educational movements or college responsibilities on which to base any interest that they may be disposed' to give to the evolution of college thought. It is needless impoverishment for a man to be the recipient of the bounty of his college for the brief season of his membership and thereafter to miss being a participator in its affairs as a going concern.

The ability of Dartmouth to continue to justify its existence m a large way will be greatly increased or seriously curtailed by the degree of willingness of the alumni to seek knowledge of what the function of this College should be, and how its function should be accomplished. Any college which could have the really intelligent interest and cooperation of a large part of its alumni body in working out its destiny to major usefulness would become of such striking serviceableness as to be beyond comparison lam a great believer m the desirability of organized effort to get every individual alumnus enrolled as a financial contributor, but I believe in this most largely because of my conviction that, as a people, we are so constituted that where a man gives his money he there gives his interest.

There has been no phase of college activity which has been of such personal interest to me as has been the alumni movementthere has been none in which I have believed greater possibilities of good to exist. I am convinced however that this movement will fail of major usefulness unless it bases itself, and s based by the college, upon intelligent understanding of the problems which education must face. This movement may indeed become detrimental to any given institution if it accepts the privilege of reviewing college actions without accepting responsibility to review them with the utmost discrimination and without accepting accountability for opinions which it may express. Knowledge of con ditions in the time of a man's own undergraduate course will not be sufficient He must know the problems of today, and foresee the general characteristics of those of the future, and his efforts at all times must be rigidly to hold the college to fts highest ideals. The age of a college is one of the rights of every undergraduate'; but as truly, to every alumnus should belong the spirit of her eterna youth. It is a recollection to be cherished to know the glorious none but our boast is incomplete unless we can say of the present that w crave the privileges and claim a share in the responsibilities of our brotherhood and of our sonship.

in urging that the alumni make a special effort to have their relations with the College based on continuing intimacy of contact I do not forget that a share of the responsibility for developing the alumni movement aright belongs to the College.I give most unqualified support the attitude already taken by the Trustees of Dartmouth that the request of the Alumni Council of the College for some definition of the educational intent of Dartmouth should be answered in the fullest possible manner. I likewise am very sure that the contribution of the College to its graduates ought to be continued in some more tangible e way thai exists at present. The tendency of college men to seek careers outside the pro fessions, the tendencies of the professions themselves to become so highly cialized as to necessitate the complete engrossment of thought of the men follow them and the ever increasing demand of the age on all, requiring constantly neater intensity of effort and more exclusive utilization of time in men who wish to do their respective shares of the world's work impose a duty upon the college which formerly belonged to it m no such degree, if at a . Contacts with what we broadly classify as the arts and sciences are less and less possible for men of affairs. In many a graduate the interest in or enthusiasm for these which the college arouses is, therefore, altogether) likely to or even die for lack of sustenance. If the College, then, has conviction that its influence is' worth seeking at the expense of four vital years in the formative period of life is it not logically compelled to search for some method o giving access to this'influence to its graduates in their subsequent years. The growing practice of retiring men from active work at ages from sixty-five to seventy and the not infrequent tragedy of the man who has no resources for interesting himself outside the routine of which he has been relieved, make it seem that the College has no less an opportunity to be of service to its men in their old acre than in their youth, if only it can establish the procedure by which it can periodically throughout their lives give them opportunity to replenish their intellectual reserves It is possible that something in the way of courses of lectures by certain recognized leaders of the world's thought, made available for alumni and the College during a brief period immediately following Commencement season, would be a step in this direction. Or it may be that some other device would more completely realize the possibilities It at least seems clear that the formal educational contacts between the College and graduates should not stop at the end of four years, never in any form to be renewed.