COMMENCEMENT 1923

Commencement in Hanover is always a joyous time, at least to those for whom the party is given. We suspect that certain of the administrative officials, who have, figuratively to cook the dinner and wash the dishes afterward, miss some of the high spots. But for the majority it's fun, rain or shine. And this year the elements, penitent over their series of misdeeds at Dartmouth's 153 rd, smiled on the gathering. A dozen drops of rain fell Saturday afternoon to remind a worried senior class marshal that he was human, but the sun shone, and shone hotly, for the rest of the celebration.

According to advance notices, Friday is devoted to "arrival of alumni". If one can take his business lightly, as it should be taken, it's worth while to come a day early just for the sake of the old, "established feeling that he has as he watches the others enter town twenty-four hours later. But it's no longer a case of sitting on the Commons porch and seeing trainloads of alumni walk up the hill from the station at periodic inrervals. From Friday noon till late Saturday there is a steady stream of Dartmouth cars pouring in at the village's 's three main gateways. The Chief of the Hanover police, by virtue this year of having a "force" under him, appeared resplendent in dress uniform to marshall the augmented traffic in truly metropolitan style; for the activity of Main Street during Commencement contrasts almost as vividly with the hectic conditions of term time as does the total and, to Hanoverians, blissful solitude tude of the two weeks between Commencement and the beginning of the "mountain trade".

Saturday morning was largely given over to greeting old friends, testing the quality of Hanover's eating and refreshmen ment places, and welcoming the latest arrivals. The real activities of the 154th Commencement started in the aftermoon noon. Few alumni follow the Class Day proceedings very closely. It is one of those rare events of Commencement that is left to the seniors and their parents and friends. If any alumni did chance to straggle to the Park and Tower in the wake of the gowned procession, they noted that if graduating classes grow any larger the College will be forced to extend the Bema and the Old Pine stump as well as the Chapel and the dormitory facilities. As for the ceremonies themselves, they are loved and time-honored, but it is for a senior class of serious young men to listen to their serious young classmates give voice to serious words of welcome and expressions of aspiration, while the alumni, temporarily disguised as pirates, convicts, or jockeys, or merely in nondescript costume of excellent and greatly-to-be-desired tan sweaters, disport themselves with marches, countermarches, and hotly-contested baseball games.

The President's reception, having moved, on paper, from College Hall to the President's home and back as the clouds lifted and lowered, finally took place in College Hall.

In the evening, the customary band concerts began to take place, and incidentally, if the cartoonists of the metropolitan dailies had attended the Dartmouth Commencement and had heard "Yes, We Have No Bananas" as many times as we did, they would relegate it from their pages along with the mother-in-law jokes. But the band filled in, and one could sit and remember past Commencements without being accused of anything more maudlin than listening to the music.

Dartmouth plays have taken to the road, and turn up at Commencement as established productions by experienced actors. "The Sahara Derby" in Webster Hall Saturday night was well attended and received its due meed of praise.

The size of Dartmouth's graduating classes has so overtaxed the capacity of the White Church that this year the Baccalaureate services were held in Rollins Chapel. The musical traditions which mark the exercises on Commencemen Day obtain as well on Baccalaureate Sunday in the annual use of Mendelssohn's "War March of the Priests."

The Reverend William P. Merrill, D.D., of the Brick Church of New York, delivered ah admirable Baccalaureate address in which, preaching from the text in James: "So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty," he urged the members of the graduating class to match the growing freedom from authority and tradition with a growing sense of the greater individual responsibility implied thereby. Both the Baccalaureate sermon and President Hopkins' valedictory to the senior class are printed as a supplement to this issue.

Monday opened with the customary alumni parade to the ball game. There seemed to be a slightly less violent holiday day spirit in evidence this year than at some former Commencement games. Perhaps times are changing, or perhaps the weather had been too good on Friday and Saturday. At any rate, the procession cession that filed past the half-completed stadium and around the diamond was an almost sedate group.

The Cornell team finally made the Roman holiday, but the butchering was no light task for the Green, and not until the ninth inning of a hard-fought 2-1 game was ended could the Dartmouth stands feel assured of their victory.

The Alumni Association met in the early afternoon in Room 103 Dartmouth Hall. We of a younger vintage cannot rightly refer to the room as the "new old chapel," but we can prove some an tiquity by clinging to "A" Dartmouth even as we glory in still calling Putnam's drug store "The Deacon's."

The Phi Beta Kappa Society held its annual June meeting a little later in the afternoon (thank heaven they've quit holding it at the unhappy hour of 9 a. m.), and re-elected President Hopkins president of the Dartmouth chapter. The other officers elected were Professor Ashley K. Hardy '94 first vice-president, Dr. Raymond Pearl '99 second vice-president, and Mr. Harold G. Rugg '06 secretary-treasurer. Six seniors were elected to membership, making a total of thirty-three members from the graduating class.

Greek letter society reunions and the Musical Clubs concert concluded the Monday program. Many alumni and guests of the College packed Webster Hall to hear the singing of the intercollegiate champions, and were well rewarded for their interest.

There is ever a thrill in the sight of an academic procession: headed by sobergarbed and sober-faced seniors (this year their double line stretched half-way across the campus) ; followed by trustees, guests, and the faculty with vivid and vari-colored hoods; and ending with a small and scattered group of alumni.

Prayer and the singing of the well remembered paraphrase of PsalmCXXXVI opened the ceremonies in Webster Hall. The four seniors who gave the Commencement addresses did rather better than is customary or expected on such occasions. Lloyd Kellock Neidlinger, speaking on "Student Self Education," startled many anxious fathers and mothers by proclaiming that the class of 1923 did not deserve their diplomas. But the class of 1923 knew that their diplomas were on the tables in front of the platform, and greeted the statement with enthusiasm sans perturbation. Elmer Isaac Phillips gave an historical analysis of capitalism. Arthur Ernest Gordon, Jr., expanded the now well known and evidently provocative theme of "The Aristocracy of Brains." And Karl Wesley Lundberg drew a smile, and later a comment of approval from Charles Evans Hughes by his discussion on of a World Court.

Following the singing of Hovey's "Men of Dartmouth," three hundred and fifty-three seniors marched by the rostrum to receive their diplomas from Acting ing Dean Bill and Professor John M. Poor, meticulously tossing the tassels of their caps from the right to the left side as they grasped the parchments and became bachelors. .

The conferring of honorary degrees is always an interesting procedure. This year Dartmouth had an extraordinarily distinguished gathering, while Professor Curtis Hidden Page presented the recipients and President Hopkins conferred the degrees with even more than usual felicity. Their ! characterizations of the various recipients are worth the printing.

(Professor Page) Mr. President: Teachers and administrators of the colleges are the first to recognize that there are other ways beside the passing of examinations in course to prove that a man has attained the self-discipline and self-development which are education. To suggest vividly that such education is a life-long task and test and that success therein is deserving of academic recognition, the College selects each year a few men who are outstanding examples of this success, and honors them and itself by granting them degrees appropriate to their achievement.

In this sense and spirit, Sir, I ask you, on behalf of the Faculty and Trustees, and by award of the Trustees of Dartmouth College, to confer the following honorary degiees:

MASTER OF ARTS

Fred Herbert Brown

(Professor Page) The degree of Master of Arts on Fred Herbert Brown: native son of New Hampshire and of Dartmouth; athlete, and Governor; who has condescended from control of the sphere, to control of the State. (President Hopkins) Militant and successful leader of that party within the State which previous to your incumbency of your present position had never held power by popular majority since first the present alignment of parties became operative. Governor of New Hampshire and ex-officio trustee of this college I welcome you today into the complete fellowship of Dartmouth men.

DOCTOR OF DIVINITY

Chauncey Corbin Adams

(Professor Page) The degree of Doctor of Divinity, on the Reverend Chauncey CorbinAdams: a graduate of Dartmouth in the class of 1896; beloved and honored pastor of the First Church in Burlington; diligent worker in many worthy causes; master of lucid, ordered, and persuasive speech; leader of liberal thought, believer in the progressive revelation, or evolution, of Truth; a state-wide influence for good, in both religion and citizenship.

(President Hopkins) Able representative of the Christian ministry in our neighbor state of Vermont; respected pastor, the influence of whose service spreads far beyond the limits of your parish; trusted spiritual guide to the people of your city, and accepted leader among them in all works making for civic righteousness.

Myron Winslow Adams

(Professor Page) I present to you also, Sir, Myron Winslow Adams: he too is a son of New Hampshire and of Dartmouth, and has been for many years secretary of the class of 1881; he has recently become President of Atlanta University, after serving as teacher there for more than thirty years; and he is also past President of the Association of Colleges for Negro Youth; one whose ideal of life is modest and unselfish work for others, and who has lived out his ideal; to whom honor comes unsought-for and unthought-of, yet, we hope, welcome; he is an ambassador of light to many who dwell in the shadow of darkness, a teacher of those who shall lead their race, a builder of men. I ask you, Sir, that he now receive at your hands the degree of Doctor of Divinity, as a small part of the recognition due him from his Alma Mater for years of faithful and devoted service.

(President Hopkins) Quiet but effective laborer in the Master's vineyard, in whom faith in the Fatherhood of God is accompanied by genuine belief in the brotherhood of man; practical idealist who, seeking for the common good, strives with broad sympathies and with keen understanding for social justice and educational opportunity for those from whom these have been long withheld.

DOCTOR OF LETTERS

John Drew

(Professor Page) For the degree of Doctor of Letters, John Drew, actor; for a full half-century one of the leading figures on the American and English stage; now successor of Edwin Booth as President of the Players' Club. He has already been for many years a true Doctor, that is teacher, of Letters, constantly presenting the best Enm glish literature, from Shakespeare to Sir James Barrie; giving, may we say, new life to the immortals. He has presented it vividly to our eyes and to our minds as well; not to our eyes only, through a film darkly. Meanwhile he has himself been, and is, "the glass of fashion and the mould of form"—in yet another way, an educator.

(President Hopkins) Distinguished worker for the American stage; modest and good-humored chronicler of his own generation of stage history; son of a famous actor-family and kinsman to another; high comedian whose life-task it has been to build for our national theatre a tradition of gentility and manners, whose discriminating interpretation of many roles covers the range of English comedy from Shakespeare to Pinero, from Plumper to Sir Peter Teazle, from the days of Daly to the days of Drew.

Fred Lewis Pattee

(Professor Page) Also for the degree of Doctor of Letters, Fred Lewis Pattee, another son of New Hampshire and of Dartmouth, and one who has expressed in winged words the epic spirit of early New England; author of a History of American Literature which worthily continues and brings down to our time the work of his own great teacher, Charles F. Richardson; editor, essayist, poet; teacher and exemplar of the art of human letters.

(President Hopkins) Learned scholar and great teacher; authority in the field of American literature, sympathetic in understanding of its ideals, discriminating in appraisal praisal of its merits and in recognition of its inadequacies; who lovest not the pose of culture but culture itself, who holdest scholarship arship not to be primarily for self-satisfaction but rather deemest it to be desirable as a means of service.

Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

(Professor Page) For the degree of Doctor of Letters, Nathaniel Wright Stephensonson; son of Reuben Henry Stephenson of the class of 1845, grandson and namesake of Nathaniel Wright of Hanover, of the class of 1811; novelist, editor, teacher, historian; above all biographer; one who, in his lives of Thackeray and of Lincoln, has conceived biography as Browning conceived poetry; with the emphasis on "the incidents in the development of a soul"—the subject best worth study.

(President Hopkins) Son and grandson of Dartmouth men, the College wishes to complete today the family line in the Dartmouth fellowship, and to enroll you in it as an honorary and honored member, because of that personal worth that has been proved in the work of the journalist, in the chair of the professor and in the field of literature. Writer of fiction and diligent and exact student of American history, you have made vivid one of its great periods, and by your clear knowledge, sympathetic insight, rare gift of interpretation and strong and graceful style have exhibited as more real, more commanding and more personally appealing the greatest character in the middle period of American life.

DOCTOR OF SCIENCE

Louis Bell (posthumously)

(Professor Page) It is the unvarying custom of the College to confer its honorary degrees only on those who are present to re ceive them. None the less, Sir, we now present to you, for the degree of Doctor of Science, the name of Louis Bell, in unique circumstances of absent Presence; he, too, was a loyal son of New Hampshire and of Dartmouth; born at Chester in December, 1864, graduated here in 1884; a scientist, lover of the truth and skilled to distinguish the true from the false;, an inventor, skilled in making new applications of the truth; now, as ever, a seeker—and a finder—of the truth.

(President Hopkins) Teacher, writer, investigator; pioneer in the development of electrical transmission; authority in the fields .'of illumination and optics; fruitful in the work of making the accumulations of the laboratory of service to mankind; whose scientific achievements have been combined with wide interest in literature and art, and who, as a writer and lecturer has brought literary finish and quiet humor to the exposition of sound common sense; loyal alum nus of the College, and ever interested in her welfare.

William Hood

(Professor Page) For the degree of Doctor of Science, William Hood: engineer, and pioneer; born in Concord, New Hampshire, some seventy-seven short years ago; Soldier of the Civil War; graduate of the Chandler Scientific School in 1867; since then for fifty-four years continuously—(l understand, Sir, that you took your first vacation only two years ago)—the planner, builder, enlarger, and conserver of a great transcontinental l railroad, who saw—and made—it grow from ninety miles to eleven thousand miles; for two-thirds of that time its Chief Engineer. The man who first conceived and created spiral tunnels; builder of the first track over the Sierras, of the first Rocky Mountain snowsheds, and of the first bridge across the great Salt Lake; a worker of modern miracles, joining sea to sea, and man to man; but most of all, simply a great worker, model of efficient action based upon hard study of underlying facts and principles. Incidentally, an enthusiastic hiker and photographer, worthy candidate for membership in the Dartmouth Outing Club. Still an active and a forward-looking man, full of the faith—and the works—that remove mountains.

(President Hopkins) Great among the greatest of your profession; brilliant in conception and accurate in execution of daring projects; whose attributes which men call genuine are but the disciplined marshalling of great talents; in whom the embodiment of the early pioneer spirit of New England has carried on; who in spanning the plains, bridging great waters and conquering the approaches to mountain heights leveled the barriers of a continent, opened gateways to new opportunities and gave access to the vastly enlarged resources needful for the growing population of this great nation.

DOCTOR OF LAWS

Channing Harris Cox

(Professor Pgge) Finally, Sir, may I present the candidates for the degree of Doctor of Laws: first, Channing Harris Cox, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massa- chusetts ; he too, like so many other political leaders in Massachusetts for the last century and a quarter, is a loyal son of Dartmouth and New Hampshire; a politician devoted to the welfare of the State, who has grown into a Statesman of national calibre.

(President Hopkins) The commitment of whose career to public service has been definitely welcomed and emphatically endorsed by an ever-widening constituency and by the continuous proffer of constantly enlarging opportunities; in whom are blended integrity, ability and courtesy; worthy associate in the long line of distinguished men who have given their interest and their ability to the affairs of New England's greatest state.

John William Davis

(Professor Page) Dartmouth delights honor the successes of her sons—and grandsons—but not of her own sons only. I present to you also, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, John William Davis, born in West Virginia and a graduate of Washington and Lee University; recently ambassador from the United States to Great Britain; who, coming after James Russell Lowell and Walter Hines Page in that high office, could add to it a charm and personal distincstill tion of his own; sagacious and sympathetic interpreter of two imperial peoples to each other.

(President Hopkins) Erstwhile astute counselor in the vital work of the Department of State at time of special crisis; later, personification of the highest traditions of American representation at the Court of St. James at a critical period, and wise up-holder of the nation's prestige; now honored in the presidency of the American Bar Association and an effective worker for the establish ment of policies in judicial procedure which shall make available for all men an approach to justice more easy and more simple than that now existent.

Charles Evans Hughes

(Professor Page) And last, for the degree of Doctor of Laws, Charles Evans Hughes, our ambassador to all the nations; graduate of our friendly rival Brown University; a loyal and a typical American College man; as undergraduate and graduate, always a leader in his college fraternity, as he is now in world fraternity; worthy successor of Daniel Webster in the Department of State and as author of great state documents; organizer and motive power of the one wholly successful International Conference, among a score of recent attempts; builder of future peace.

(President Hopkins) Fellow of one great university and trustee of another; long eminent in the practice of your chosen profession; whose manifold abilities and versatile genius have successively made available to you service of the highest import to the public weal, in widely varied fields; whose faithfulness in the things confided to you has ever made you ruler over more and greater things; scholar whose acquaintanceship with history gives familiarity with the back-ground of life, whose analytical mind gives perspective on the distorted proportions of problems lems of today, and whose trained vision searches the future for knowledge of those policies which adopted in the present shall prove of abiding worth through years to come.

The alumni luncheon in the very warm gymnasium was well (though never well enough) attended. President Hopkins spoke briefly of the gifts to. the College during the year, totalling over $950,000, and introduced Guy W.. Cox '93, retiring president of the Alumni Association, as toastmaster.

Francis E. Clark of Boston spoke for the fifty-year class and extended greetings to the latest additions to the alumni body. Bishop Walter T. Sumner of Oregon spoke for the twenty-five-year class.

Three representatives of the class of 1923 concluded the ceremonies. Clifford D. Couch, B.S. '23, responded for his classmates to the greetings of the semi-centennial group. Former Ambassador John William Davis, LL.D. '23, and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, LL.D. '23, spoke for the recipients of honorary degrees; and, except for the ball, which again is the seniors' and doesn't count, the 154 th Commencement was ended.

The Procession entering Webster Hall

The Ladies of 1908

Secretary Hughes and Mr. Parkhurst leaving Webster Hall

From left to right : Myron Winslow Adams, D.D., and Fred A. Mowland of the Board of Trustees, John Drew, Litt. D., and Harry H. Blunt, of the Board of Trustees