"DARTMOUTH: A GOOD RELIGION"

Chairman James P. Richardson '99 Sounds Stirring Keynote at 40th Annual Dartmouth Night Celebration

As THE FOCAL POINT of Dartmouth Night celebrations throughout the world, two thousand students and members of the College community squeezed into Webster Hall on the night of December 12 to hear President Hopkins, Dean Laycock and "Big Jim" Richardson '99 lead the 40th annual observance of this Dartmouth tradition. A roaring "Aye!" gave unanimous assent to the motion by Palaeopitus that the 1934 Dartmouth Night be dedicated to Edward Tuck '62, and a parchment scroll for Mr. Tuck was presented to President Hopkins, to whom the undergraduates also gave a stirring tribute on the eve of his departure for a vacation abroad.

Professor Richardson, who was present at the first Dartmouth Night as a freshman, acted as chairman of the Hanover gathering, and ofEered at the very outset of the program the keynote of the evening: "Dartmouth: a good religion." Recalling the first Dartmouth Night, over which President Tucker had presided in the old chapel in Dartmouth Hall, he called upon the undergraduates of today to go forth with the same religious fervor and the same Dartmouth spirit that has glorified the College in the past.

URGES MANLY SENTIMENT

Following a group of songs, led by the Glee Club and Band, Dean Laycock exhorted the students to cast off the growing reliance on mere ratiocination and to be unashamed to display manly sentiment for the College and for the associations of Hanover. He declared, "I say, let manly sentiment have its way with you now, so that by and by when you go away, your joys and the memories of your joys will be even deeper, finer, and stronger than those which have gone before."

Following the custom inaugurated last year, a new Dartmouth song was introduced by the Glee Club. President Hopkins was disclosed as the author of the "Dartmouth Challenge Song," for which Edward H. Plumb '29 has written the music.

President Hopkins spoke immediately after the singing of his song, and was presented by Chairman Richardson as "Hopkins '01." During his talk he compared the College to Rome, "who was not loved because she was great, but was great because she was loved." He pointed out a small part of the tradition on Hanover Plain, referring particularly to the historical associations of the names on College buildings.

President Hopkins' complete talk follows:

Mr. Chairman, Men of the College: I don't know any happier occasion than to have the opportunity of meeting with a group of Dartmouth men as I have the privilege of meeting with you tonight. I don't know of any happier omen for the College than that a meeting of this sort can be held as the center and focus, as it were, of the alumni meetings which are being held all over the world. I do not know, as a matter of fact, of any program in which I would rather participate than a program such as that of tonight, with the glee club, with the band, with all of you men who are interested in the College as undergraduates, with the officials of the College who are here, with my old friend Jim Richardson charitably introducing me, with my great friend Craven Laycock, with whom I have 'worked so many years as a side-kick and a partner.

become great because she was loved at those times. Like all colleges, she has had her cycles, her cycles of welfare and her cycles of depression, but there is not and there has never been a time when the affection for Dartmouth was not existent; there has never been a time when men were not available to give generously of their strength, to give of their love, and to give of their money in order that the College might again be that which it had been and be again that which it should continuingly be for years and centuries to come, as those men believed and as we believe. I have oftentimes, in talking to the alumni, used the quotation, the old-time story of characterization of Rome, that "Rome was not loved because she was great, but she was great because she was loved," and any one who studies the history of Dartmouth College or any one who has had the privilege of traveling about among alumni associations as I have knows that that is true of Dartmouth. She has been loved when she was not great, and she has

And so we meet tonight in that spirit the spirit of recognition of what Dartmouth has been through the years, and the spirit of recognition of the possibilities which lie in the College life today.

A couple of weeks ago Owen Young told me a story that was told to him by Sir Arthur Balfour at the time that the Young Commission was at work in Europe. Lord Balfour said that two Englishmen were fishing on the Thames, had had a remarkably successful afternoon, were rowing home, and one of them, breaking the silence, said, "Jamie, ye ought to have marked the spot." Jamie said, "I did; I cut a notch in the punt." They rowed on for a few moments in silence and his friend thought a while and then said, "How do you know, Jamie, that you will get the same punt next time?"

COLLEGE EXEMPLIFIES VERITIES

And in these days of change, in these days when everything is in vacillation, in these days of speculation as to what is to be the future, it is comforting sometimes to hark back to the verities, to know that there are realities in life, and to know that these realities continue to exist not only from decade to decade but from century to century, and to see the living exemplification of such verities as we see in the history of a college such as Dartmouth is.

I do not want even to approach the lugubrious, but I have been impressed at one recollection as I have been thinking of this occasion today—the stretch of tribute from friends of the College and those who loved it: John Wentworth, the Revolutionary Governor, a graduate of Harvard, but a man full of affection for the College, who gave a tribute that characterized it one hundred and sixty-five years ago as the most wonderful and most noble and useful institution in America. Last year on the night of the Theta Chi House tragedy, Bob Michelet said in my study, with tears in his eyes, "If it had to be, they would have liked to have it happen here."

Those things are more consequential than the smaller things of which we speak in criticism; those things are more deeply felt and those comments are made down through the ages. They are tar more significant of the life of the College and the affection held for the College than those things which are spoken of more at length and more in detail.

Everything about us has its associations. One doesn't have to go far from this hall, as a matter of fact, to find truth in that statement. Here is a hall dedicated to the memory of the great statesman, the man who gave of his time and of his effort and of his affection to save the College, the man who probably because of the emotional element in his speech, more than because of any reasoning element therein, swung the Supreme Court to a decision which saved the College. Here we have a hall honoring the memory of Webster, who said to the Chief Justice and impressed him, "There are those who love it."

FARMER AIDS COLLEGE

And it is interesting to think of another thing,—that in 1816, when the College was in dire straits and when there was no money available by which to take the College case to the higher courts and to find out whether or not it should become a state institution or whether it was to remain an institution privately endowed and independent,

the Trustees in session at that Commencement period heard a rap on the door. One went to the door and opened it and a messenger was there. A neighboring friend, not himself a graduate of the College, said In effect that he understood that the College was in dire straits, that he understood that the independence of the College was threatened, and that he felt that the work of the College was so good and its perpetuation was so necessary that he was giving such funds as he had in order that the case of the College might be carried to the higher court. That man was John B. Wheeler, a farmer in Orford, who gave very largely of his life's savings that the College might be protected. And the case was put into the hands of Daniel Webster, for whom this hall is named, and Wheeler Hall, which is hardly a stone's throw from here, commemorates the name of John B. Wheeler, who made it possible for Webster to plead the case.

Take another juxtaposition. There is something, I believe, in coincidence. The point I wish to make is that wherever one turns oil Hanover Plain, they find tradition and they find history and they find the links which tie them with the past. In 1857, a man who afterwards became one of the youngest justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court in Vermont, Benjamin Hinman Steele, solicitous in regard to what he believed to be the approaching war, solicitous that the students of Dartmouth should in some degree comprehend the imminence of that tragedy and that they should in some degree be prepared, organized a military company known as the Dartmouth Grays, and upon his graduation he turned over the direction o£ that company to an intimate friend o£ the class of 1859, whose name was Fisher Ames Baker. The world goes on; the Great War takes place; Dartmouth follows the vicissitudes of history through the succeeding decades, and in the last decade Sanford H. Steele, the brother of Benjamin Hinman Steele, builds in memory of his brother the Chemistry Building. On an adjoining plot, a great banker, George Fisher Baker, gives to the College a couple of million dollars to build a library in memory of his uncle, Fisher Ames Baker. Here we have two friends, two men whose mutual affection and mutual regard for the College was established and whose lives are commemorated on adjoining lots.

So I could take you about the campus. I imagine that these names on buildings do not mean very much to the undergraduates. I don't remember that as an undergraduate the names meant anything to me, and I don't even remember having any curiosity as to why the names existed, but these are the associations of Hanover Plain, and if one is interested in lines of succession, if one is interested in the details of College history, there is something quite far from melancholy in studying the tombstones in the Hanover Cemetery. All about us we have the ties which link us with the past and all about us we have the associations which indicate the strength which has built Dartmouth in the past, and also define the way in which Dartmouth is to be built in the future. But the point I want to make tonight is that, even acknowledging that money is as important as we do, and recognizing the contribution to the College that comes from material things, the greatest wealth which the College gives is the opportunity for friendship, the opportunity for human contacts, and membership in one of the greatest fellowships in the world, a fellowship into which each one of you goes within a short space of time, and wherein new values of the College will appear and new affection for the College will develop.

EMOTION INDISPENSABLE

I believe it is a great thing for us to come together as we have tonight— (the figure 10 was after my name on this program and it has already reached 11, and I approach my close)-it is a great thing for us to gather as we have tonight. It is a great thing once in a while to acknowledge that the emotional element is an indispensable element of human life. It is a great thing for us to think for a few moments once in a while upon the fact that there is no place in the world where the wealth of friendship is so available and abundant as it is here and now for one and all of us. To you men constituting the group from whom these telegrams are coming in a very few years, in years that will seem short to you a decade or two decades from now, you will be sending back your tributes from Alaska, from Shanghai, from Buenos Aires, from London and Paris, and from all the cities in the United States, expressing your love for the College, your devotion to it, and out of the sentiment which produces those messages and out of the sentiment of the heart which will be expressed by what you say in them will grow the strength which will be Dartmouth's in the days to come.

In 1774 Eleazar Wheelock looked over the student group at Dartmouth College. He spoke in serious vein, as was meet that he should speak, according to the standards of contemporary times, but in spite of the pious phraseology which characterizes a large part of his journal, he dropped most of it here, and this is the comment he made:

"Indeed, it appears to me that the coming of these boys to this school with allconcurring circumstances exhibits the mostencouraging and animating prospects offuture success to this great design that hasever yet opened to view in this land," and that is what I should write, if I kept a journal, in my diary tonight.

To Poward Tuch '62 Pucposing to mahe this Dartmouth Night a genuine expression of our beuotion to the College. and realizing that the ties that hind Dartmouth men are not brohen by histance or Lach of artive contact, we, the undergrabuate body, bedicale this evening to you, in whose life and personality we Fecognize a sumbol of that unique spiril which has animate our College for one hundred and sixty-five years. Banover Dartmouth Night December twelve. Nineteen hundred and thirty four. Dedication When President Hopkins departed for Europe he took with him this parchment scroll to be presented to Edward Tuck '62, to whom Dartmouth Night of 1934 was dedicated by the undergraduates assembled in Webster Hall.