THE DARTMOUTH GREEN

The Dartmouth Green is inevitable! Suppose that we read in a newspaper this morning:

"Dartmouth's Rose and Gray waved victoriously above Brown's new stadium yesterday in Providence.'

Or, suppose that the sports' writers of next Saturday were to say something like this:

"The Big Lavender Team of Hanover is trained to the minute for the biggest contest of the year against Cornell's red and white."

Imagine it! Rose and Gray ? Lavender? Or any other color combination? The Dartmouth Green is simply inevitable,. And it is not merely a matter of habit or custom, not merely an arbitrary or artificial selection of a college color. The Dartmouth Green is inevitable.

Do you know the story of Dartmouth's color? (The best article on the subject, by Professor E. J. Bartlett, was printed in The Dart-mouth Bi-monthly, April, 1908.) Just after the Civil War, a great epidemic of college colors swept over the country. Thomas, '67, apparently caught the fever first; he was a spectator at the YaleHarvard boat race in Worcester in the year of 1866, and was so struck by the brilliant crimson and blue landscape that he came back to Hanover saying, "We must have a color, too !"

In the same year, 1866, nine Amherst students came up into the North woods to teach the Hanover collegians how to play this new game, baseball; when the sting of the defeat was softened, Ketcham the catcher, Dartmouth '67, Civil War veteran, began to talk about Amherst's purple and white, and said, "We must have a Dartmouth color."

That same fall, 1866, the senior class came to the point. There was a hot session one morning after chapel, there in old Dartmouth Hall; Thomas, Ketcham, Hill, and the others, presented the idea, saying, ",Let us choose Green." But the battle was long and warm.

Said Ketcham, Thomas & Company: "We must have a primary colorfor Dartmouth is one of the oldest colleges in the country—and all the other colors of the spectrum are already taken. We'll have to choose green."

Said the opposition : "Green ? It is absurd. The world will say that we're all Sons of Erin (for in those days the Fenian riots were stirring the world). Our college song would have to be, "The Wearing of the Green."

And said; another: "Green? That color is all right for freshmenbut everybody will say that we'll never grow up beyond freshman year. Verdant green—that's a fine college color!"

And Ketcham countered, saying: "If the college doesn't have standing enough to get away from the Fenian idea, or the general impression of verdancy sometimes associated with the color, we are not fit to have the color at all."

Finally, a ballot was called, and Green was elected as the Dartmouth College color. In a sense it was an artificial, arbitrary choice; but in a truer sense, Dartmouth Green was inevitable ! And why was it inevitable ? Once more we quote Ketcham:

"I have always been fond of that color," he said. "The green hills of Vermont, on which our eyes look out every day and hour, were to me very attractive. . . .No, we, did not want nile green, or invisible green, (or Paris green, or bottle green), or any of the many shades of green . . . but just simply plain green."

But "plain green" means nothing, perhaps. Does "plain green" mean grass green? Or apple grqen, or pea green? What did Ketcham mean by "plain green?" Dig out of the Library vault the little strip of ribbon, preserved since the fall of 1866, the original standard of Dartmouth Green. And then we begin to understand what Ketcham meant by "plain green"; he meant the color he saw daily on the Norwich hills,—pine green. It was not by accident that the Lone Pine up on the hill has bec-n a favorite symbol. It is not by accident that succeeding generations wear the Dartmouth Green, which is pine green.

Men need symbols, some color, some flag, to express strikingly their love and loyalty. Every country has its flag. Each college has its color or its colorcombination. But almost always the selection of the symbol is purely arbitrary or artificial.

You recall the old yarn about the naming of the animals in the Garden of Eden ? Adam and Eve we,re walking through the Garden when they met an odd-looking animal hopping along.

"What's that?" said Adam. "Why !" said Eve. "It looks like a frog!" "Let's call it a frog," said Adam. And they called it a frog.

Often the choice of a symbol is just as arbitrary as that! We have seen, for instance, the Crimson and Harvard together for 60 years now; the association has become a habit, but it is merely an arbitrary relationship. But Dartmouth men need no flag at all—merely lift your eye;s; every hill is a living Dartmouth flag. Dartmouth's color is real, vital, inevitable. It is a symbol—but it is something more; it is the expression of the Soul of Dartmouth, so far as a color or any physical phenomenon can express the invisible.

We have, very little scientific knowledge about the effect of colors on the human soul. But at least we know that red excites—the Red Flag of Bolshevism, for instance, is something more than a symbol ; it is a reality. Red excites—white purifies—black and dark brown and drab and gray depress the spirit. And in like manner, all the world loves green. When I am heart-sick and lonely, "The Lord," says the Psalmist, "maketh me to lie, down in green pastures." Green rests and calms us; green gives us quiet strength and courage. God must like green, for he has given us so much of it! Is it not the best-loved color in the spectrum? No wonder, therefore, that Dartmouth men love the Dartmouth Green.

And remember that Dartmouth Green is Pine-green! I love to picture the days when Eleazer Wheelock came up from the haunts of civilization, and raised his mighty voice crying in the wilderness. He chose a spot on Hanover plain, then a trackless forest of virgin pines, he and his associates wielded their axes, cut and burned a clearing, and built a pine log house, the first home of Dartmouth College, the early promise of this stately campus.

Have you ever seen virgin pineg ? They are magnificent trees—tall, straight, majestic. Dartmouth, then and now, is tall and straight, majestic and stately !

It is a vigorous tree, the pine—it is a virile tree, full of abundant sap; its wood is most usable and useful, and durable. I have cut with an axe into a fallen pine, moss covered, and apparently rotten, where it has lain for half a century or more—and found the heart of the tree just as clean and sound as on the day it fell. Dartmouth, then and now, is vigorous and virile, durable and sturdy. The virgin pines were deep rooted in the everlasting hills of New Hampshire, with their lofty heads lifted up into the clouds far above the ordinary brood of trees. So with Dartmouth—she is built on deep and strong foundations—and her spirit, her ideals, her aspirations soar to the skies.

It is a grqat tree, the pine. And Dartmouth was built of pine—and through these 156 years, Dartmouth College and Hanover pines have belonged togetherboth deep-rooted and stu rdy, straight and lofty and majestic, virile, and durable, clean and sound.

Dartmouth Green, I have said, was inevitably Dartmouth's color—plain green, that is, Pine Green. And the color is just as sturdy and steady as the tree—it doe,s not change! Green is always Green—in the full life of the spring time, in the abundance of the summer season, in the harvest time and when the freezing blast of winter congeals the whole Northlandit is always green! There is no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning. It is perennial! It is evergreen! lam glad that we have a forest of pines right here in Hanover, even though small and young;—they help us, they encourage us and strengthen us! I say, you men of Dartmouth, that the, ancient Lone Pine is a symbol; and Dartmouth Green is a symbol. It was inevitable.

"I wear the Dartmouth Green—and that's enough !" It is not enough ! Anyone can put on a green jersey—but that is not enough! What is Dartmouth? I have said that the Dartmouth Green is a vital symbol—what is the reality behind it? It is easy enough to tell the world what Dartmouth is not.

Here is a spacious Campus and dignified buildings; all summer long, there is a constant string of cars going thru the town—and the tourist from Oklahoma or California says audibly—"This is Dartmouth." But this is not Dartmouth.

Last spring in the American University of Beirut, Syria, we talked a gre.at deal about the splendid report by Professor Richardson, on "A Liberal College"—and, especially with the two Dartmouth professors there, Bacon and Brown, we had some great discussions about Dartmouth—Dartmouth liberalism and educational pioneering. The educational world is waiting for the next word from Dartmouth—but all that is not Dartmouth.

Rotogravure sections of the Sunday supplements have constantly pictured Dartmouth. The Outing Club, ski jumping, the Dartmouth trails and cabins, have literally gone around "the girdled earth"; and the very name of Dartmouth has come to suggest "the still North," and the vigorous sports of the winter. The winter sports have attracted many of the "sturdy sons of Dartmouth." But winter sports are not Dartmouth.

The sport writers spill a lot of green ink these days about a "Big Green Team,"—and there is a reason. They talk about Dartmouth power, and Dartmouth brains, and Dartmouth dash and cleverness. The whole world knows and talks and writes about a victorious football team—but even an ocean of green ink is not Dartmouth.

No, a spacious campus, educational pi- oneering, Outing Club, and the Big Green Team—none of those, nor all put to- gether, is Dartmouth. Those things are an expression of Dartmouth. But Dart- mouth is an idea, a spirit, a soul. We see the visible expressions of Dartmouth—but Dartmouth herself is invisible, though real, and living. Many Dartmouth men talk lightly about the Dartmouth Spirit, almost as a synongm nym of a weekend peerade; many lightly "wear the Dartmouth green, and call that enough." Some have spent four years in Hanover, gone thru all the motions, without ever entering into the Holy of the Dartmouth Holies. Some have never known Dartmouth, have never caught her spirit, have never lived with her .Soul' It is not enough to wear the Dartmouth Green! Some shout Dartmouth without ever living Dartmouth. Some talk Dartmouth without ever acting Dartmouth! Goethe says, "The highest cannot be spoken" ; it has to be acted. None will ever catch the Spirit of Dartmouth until he practices it, by acting Dartmouth honor, sturdy manliness and virile courage, Dartmouth fair play, Dartmouth breadth of mind and liberalism, Dartmouth pioneering, Dartmouth loyalty and Dartmouth friendship.

The Spirit of Dartmouth means to put the Dartmouth creed into the deed—"To stand as brother stands by brother! Dare a deed for the old Mother."

The Dartmouth Green was and is in evitable. It is the symbol of a splendid history; it is the symbol of a present reality the symbol of the aspirations and ideals for the greater Dartmouth that is to be; it is the expression of the Soul of Dartmouth. Every true Dartmouth man will wear the Dartmouth Green, not carelessly, but honorably; he will think, and live, and act the Spirit of Dartmouth. Every loyal son of Dartmouth will make himself worthy of the Dartmouth Green.

A Chapel Talk byChapel Director of the College