UNIQUE WORK OF CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION
So far as is known Dartmouth is the first College to send out a deputation team to various preparatory schools in the country. Four Dartmouth students spent their Easter vacation in this work. This account of the trip as written by one of the team should be of interest.
"Leaving two feet of snow in Hanover March 30th, the Dartmouth Gospel team composed of a couple of football players, a 'Phi Bate' and a Cherokee Indian landed at Tome school in' sunny Maryland. We were out to spend our two weeks of Easter vacation traveling some two thousand miles visiting the larger preparatory schools of the middle Atlantic states and bringing to them the message of Jesus Christ as interpreted by busy college men.
In all we spoke to 4000 men and had personal interviews with 165 about the more serious things of life.
"From Tome we went to Mercersburg. Here we were rushed from the train into their regular weekly Y. M. C. A. meeting. The crowd was slim, but just as Husky Merrill was reading the scripture the school regiment, which had been drilling, marched in to our meeting en-masse. It was a funny crowd to talk to but by sugar coating our religious pills with a little athletic 'dope' they became enthusiastic with us in our work. A stop of three days in this place gave us a chance to eat, sleep, and play games with the boys. They saw that we were human and before leaving it was our good fortune to be able to give many of them counsel about going to college, about their part in the war work and about the Christian life.
"One of the most interesting places visited was the Carlisle Indian School. I wish that you could have seen Chief Walkingstick, the man who gave Dartmouth her new Indian yell, stand up there and talk to his people. With perfect English and an oratory possible only to those of his race, he stood there telling them in no uncertain terms that no other race of men had become civilized in as short a time as the Indian and all because they had been in touch with the white man's education and Christian ideals. Government restrictions made personal interviews with the boys practically impossible. This was our last long stop but we made one day stops at the Mackenzie School, Peddie Institute, Lawrenceville, and Blair. In these places the boys received us well and we felt repaid for visiting them although the time was too short. The school paid our traveling expenses.
"No other college has ever sent a team out to preparatory schools in this way. It was a unique stunt and I believe the future will prove it another piece of pioneering by men of Dartmouth."
