Dartmouth Remembers' Craven

Donald B. Aldrich '17 Speaks for All Dartmouth Men In Memorial Service at Commencement

(Following is the complete text of Mr.Aldrich's address in the Chapel, June 16.)

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—CRAVEN LAYCOCK. Who among us can think of the College and not think of him? In our hearts this day, and in the hearts of hundreds of Dartmouth men, the continuing tradition of the College, its meaning, its genius, has lived and moved and had its being in Craven Laycock. Throughout the far-flung realm of graduate and undergraduate friendships Craven Laycock has become Dartmouth. In his portrait we can see the background of the College. In his features we can see the continuity of the College revealed.

How the meaning of the Dartmouth "Succession," from Wheelock until now, comes to life in him! For the Dartmouth succession has ever been a succession of spiritually responsive men. These men never held the human soul to be expatriate, without a spiritual country. They believed, to quote Dr. Sperry, that religion is more than "the civil government of the race; that there is a State Department of the Soul, since the Soul has Spiritual Foreign Affairs." For them this citizenship involved no "entangling alliance." On the contrary, they believed that only in such a spiritual relationship could the safety, honor, and welfare of the College securely rest. Such men—let's out with it—were straight idealists. "We are born believing," said Emerson. Moreover, these successive leaders never allowed their idealism to be deceived by any of the forces of contemporary Naturalism which might alarmingly alight on the scene disguised in the wrong uniform. They believed that the advance of civilization is measured by progress; but that to progress is to translate into individual and social action certain eternal verities, out of the moral law; and that the moral law was created for our governing by God, supporting human society "as the basic rock supports the hills." Let us out with it again—and in words of Dr. Tucker-"the gift of the 18th Century to the colleges of America was the gift of the religious spirit. It was the great educational endowment, and it was very great because it was creative. It took possession of fit men and taught them to lay foundations upon which men and states might afterward build broadly." Without such a background there could have been no such person as Craven Laycock. And without Craven Laycock could the continuity which has kept Dartmouth so distinctly Dartmouth ever have been preserved?

So as we pick up that golden thread of spiritual idealism which Wheelock the founder, Webster the re-founder, and Brown the saviour so faithfully wove into the early fabric and pattern of Dartmouth's destiny, we see that same thread constantly shining in the life of the Dean. How succinctly the Dean summed up the strain of those earlier generations of Dartmouth leadership, and preserved their genius in life's choicest medium—the simplicity of straight human terms. He revealed the meaning of the College because he was the very pith of it. How at one he was with the rugged idealism of Dartmouth's founder, how true to the pioneer form! One day I chanced to meet him on a train. He was returning from a tour of the so-called experimental colleges. I asked him what he thought of them. "You can grow mushrooms overnight," he said, "and you can grow California poppies overnight; but in New Hampshire we know it takes time to grow hard wood." Never . his the easy choice, ever his the rigorous way.

CRAVEN'S ELOQUENCE

Again, had not the fire of the great refounder's eloquence itself touched his tongue? How he would turn and play and parry with a phrase to arouse us to indignation, to trick us into laughter, or with tender feeling bring us subdued by his simplicity to soberness and tears!

Again, the history of the College for him was a history of sacrifice—and its destiny inseparable from devotion to our country. Therefore for him patriotism was a precious word. It told him of the sacrifice of pioneer patriots; of youth dying that North and South might be one; and when the nation was threatened, in the Spring of '17, I remember his fighting face as he preached that human values and America's spiritual inheritance of freedom and liberty are a faith to be defended at all costs. I believe he would preach the same gospel today, that only through sacrifice to save this faith can we remain a nation under God. Of our Civil War brothers Dr.

Tucker wrote " 'Dawn was theirs, and sunset.' They had no intervening day." Happily for Craven Laycock, and happily for us, his intervening day was long. Of him one wrote, "He had everything—achievement against odds, stimulating working years, a contented autumn, the long years of joy and pride in his family and finally when the cup was full to the brim, a quick farewell."

CRAVEN LAYCOCK'S FAITH

If in the character of Craven Laycock we see the essence of the College of the more remote past, it is in the College of our own knowing that we find him the clearest interpreter of her continuity. He graduated, as did many of us here this morning, under William Jewett Tucker, in days when personality was not stressed as a means to success, but was something in its own right, rather more profound, the growth of the relationships of a man's own soul. Dr. Tucker speaks in his writings so repeatedly of this sense of "eternity" set in every human heart. He himself made of this chapel a spiritual laboratory in which he welcomed the doubting mind as a part of the believing mind, and then by the alchemy of his own spiritual integrity wrought in men a metal which would ever resound to Something true.

How Craven Laycock himself awakened this same faith, in his own unique and imaginative way! There is a report, for example, of a man who since leaving college had markedly distinguished himself in his field. He had, however, not graduated with his class. Did he often remember Dartmouth? Well, Dartmouth through Craven Laycock, I am told, remembered him. One day when this man was returning from Europe, as he sailed into New York harbor, whom should he see on the dock waiting for him but Craven Laycock. Of all men, why should Craven be there— and College twenty years gone! Was this on Craven's part just a whimsical thing, or an audaciously tender thing—to meet a man at such a time to present him with his wanting degree? How utterly incongruous, this gesture—from anyone but Craven. To him an alumnus, however old, remained always the same undergraduate at heart, ready to respond to the touch of the College's confidence in him. He saw in us at forty—and it must have taken a far-seeing eye—that which he saw at twenty. And he ever brought it to life again. Little wonder that for Craven Laycock life never grew stale. He held it to be only the world that can weary, and only the body that grows old.

LAYCOCK SYMBOLIZED DARTMOUTH

We have been thinking of Dartmouth, the institution, symbolized by Craven Laycock, the person. Somewhere Dr. H. G. V. Allen has defined an institution as "the permanent possibilities of personality." Thus the Dean continued to define the institution during the administration which followed Dr. Tucker, days devoted to a particular enlightenment under the Presidency of Ernest Fox Nichols. And here, I trust, a personal expression of my indebtedness to Dr. Nichols may not be an intrusion. When Dr. Nichols stood in this chapel Sunday evenings, to my student mind he represented par excellence the possibility of a reasonable faith. Here I saw the search for truth for truth's sake not unidentified with the search for truth for God's sake. That this distinguished physicist in the field of light could preach and could pray bridged the gap between those then seemingly opposed worlds, the new world of science and the old world of religion. And I learned from him what I am sure is true, that only through a true person is what Man discovers and what God reveals found to be one—and convincing.

Craven Laycock gave to academic truth a moral meaning. Such truth had to be properly geared to use in order to demonstrate its truth, else it might be but one more idle or destructive fact. So for him, truth for truth's sake, I venture to affirm, was not that cry of a deluded liberalism by which man hopes to gain the millenium just by knowing more. We know to our dismay, that knowledge, unprincipled, can be abused as well as used. His was a faith in a Being who inspired the moral use of what we know. I would not play -with terms, but it seems to me that the truth which Craven sought had vitality. It had a moral punch and a spiritual meaning. It came close to being truth for God's sake. Of Dr. Nichols, I remember it was said that this great physicist could measure the force of a single candlelight at the distance of a mile. If Dr. Nichols believed the light which he discovered was in a sense revealed, that what he found is discoverable because it is given—Craven believed that the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world is a given and a sacred thing, and must reflect the spirit of the Giver. He was as sure of its source as he was of the source of the stars and of the sun. Hence his faith in Dartmouth men. Hence his hope for Dartmouth College.

And, finally, to speak of the present era, in which Craven Laycock served his bestwith what pride we acclaim an administration second to none in the development of the College, full of achievement, full of promise. And how much one might say further of a partnership which took so much of its initial inspiration from the character of Dr. Tucker! "No man is a man," I heard President Hopkins remark at a New York banquet this very winter, "who does not feel something in life greater than himself leading him." Do I not imagine truly when I think I can hear Dr. Hopkins say concerning any man who comes to Dartmouth College, "Make a scholar or a scientist or an artist of him if you can. But make a citizen of him you must."

Throughout a decade of shifting standards, until now when the whole economy of the whole world hangs in the balance, Craven Laycock represents to many of us those true disciplines of liberty—the roots and title to that enfranchised citizenship which is our freedom. For we are free as a nation as we are right and act rightly as individuals. Confidence in our national integrity cannot survive the loss of personal integrity. Every American who through lack of integrity fails another American is an internal foe, and weakens the faith in those democratic processes which make our Republic endure. The integrity and character of Craven Laycock stand in these days like a great rock in a weary land—so strong in every department of personal living as to be alike the justification and the secret of our democratic faith—the truest patriot, the real American. To train men for a democracy—so Dr. Hopkins has described the aim of Dartmouth College. If the disciplines of liberty, as the character of Craven portrayed them, be the discipline of Dartmouth training, her sons will not only serve our College and our Nation well, but will gladly commit themselves to Him whose service is perfect freedom.

"NEVER MOURN A MOMENT'

This was to have been an Alumni service. He was to have been standing here. Now it is a memorial service. Were he standing here speaking in remembrance of another as we now meet in remembrance of him, with what tender heart he would have touched upon the traits and features of our friend; with what restraint he would have remarked this virtue or hinted that grace; with what kindly eye he would have singled out those valors and those virtues, and by his constant faith in them given them life again until remembrance became reality and the life beyond and the life here would seem to be the same, and so eternal. Perhaps he would have anticipated his own utterance later—"Never mourn a moment," he said to a loved one, "but come soon." He held the distance not great, nor the two worlds apart, and the reunion sure.

"Here by the windy docks I stand alone,But yet companioned; there the vesselgoes,And there my friend goes with it; but thewakeThat melts and ebbs between that friendand meLove's earnest is of life's all-purposefulAnd all triumphant sailing, when theshipsOf wisdom loose their fretful chains andswingForever from the crumbled wharves oftime."

DONALD B. ALDRICH '17, D.D

LAURENCE A. JUMP '36 AMERICAN ambulance driver atL tached to the French army reported missing May 16 in the Flanders' offensive. It was not known untilJune 5 that he was captured by theGermans near Saarbrucken on May12 and imprisoned in Weinberg. TheU. S. State Department assured relatives in this country he would be returned home according to provisionsof International Law. After his disappearance it seemed certain, andwas so announced in press dispatches,that the young Dartmouth volunteerfor France had become the firstAmerican casualty in active service.Richard Nelville Hall '15 was killedwhile driving an ambulance forFrance on Christmas eve 1915 andwas the first American to die in theAmerican Field Service.