Seniors Valedictory

RICHARD F. BABCOCK '40 SPEAKS FOR CLASS AT COMMENCEMENT

ALL TOO SOON OUR STORY ENDS. After a brief moment we walk out of this Bema, past Dartmouth Row, leave Main Street behind us and scatter until Baker Tower may be seen only in our memory.

I would challenge any man in our class to speak the thoughts he may dream regarding these past four years: it is impossible to tell of Dartmouth College—that must be lived.

I would ask of any man the necessity of vowing his loyalty to Dartmouth—if he has not proved that, of what avail words? Instead, let us turn to Dartmouth and evaluate her in a different and more important light. Let us realize that this college is more than a multicolored fall morning, more than a cold winter afternoon, or a wonderful, sentimental spring evening.

Dartmouth, you have given to 500 men, as you have to thousands before us, the opportunity to construct a social and individual frame of thinking undistorted by any social or economic prejudices which may face many of us soon. You have taken us through that period of doubt and skepticism which is so necessary to any liberal education. But, far more important, you have given us the opportunity to go further than mere skepticism: you have offered us the chance to lay the foundation of a constructive process of thought with which we may guide the remainder of our life. Whether we have justified these opportunities and these sacrifices must be answered by our individual consciences.

The full impact of the seriousness of this challenge comes only with the realization of the unique nature of these years in college.

Let us, in retrospect, realize the great difference between our secondary education and that of the past four years. We were, before coming to Dartmouth, receiving the tools with which we could later mold our minds and bodies into efficient human mechanisms. Though we may have been prepared, we were not tested.

LOOKING FORWARD

Moving swiftly over these years we are now leaving, we look anxiously into the future. In all humility, we know very little about the push and pull of this century. But we must realize that from this day forward we will be deep in responsibilities which will tap our time and sap our energy. We may spend the rest of our lives thinking for others. Perhaps for the next decade, others will be thinking for us. We will find ourselves reasoning according to the social or economic pattern in which we move. That we must expect. Our family and our business will demand all of our intellectual as well as our physical strength. The important and startling fact we will discover is that it will become increasingly difficult to think and evaluate clearly and without prejudice unless we have developed that technique during our moment in college. Our ideas will change. Our thoughts, today perhaps a little too clever and, perhaps, too little wise will be altered. But, Dartmouth, the method by which we will arrive at those ideas which shall possess us will find its touchstone in the chance for independent and honest thinking which you have offered to us during these past four years.

There must be a purpose to such an institution as Dartmouth. Dartmouth cannot merely be a chance for a four year evasion of responsibility. And yet, what is that purpose? Dartmouth, you have not taught us a trade. You have not schooled us in the rudiments of any profession. The answer is clear and just a little frightening when we analyze its implications. This college has given us the opportunity, as in any liberal college worthy of the name, to build a technique of thinking, at least the skeletal structure of a philosophy of life without which we shall be lost during the rest of our lives. There can be no more important justification for a liberal education. If we have not made use of this one chance which is to be found in only four years of a lifetime, our education will all but cease the moment we pass out of Hanover. If, during our membership in the undergraduate body, we have found a real reason for being a college graduate, our education will increase in stature every year.

We love to think of Dartmouth in terms of the gayety and independence of such a way of life. Yet are we willing to realize the challenge which Dartmouth has thrown down with that independence? Freedom demands responsibility in return. Dartmouth has made ours the responsibility of taking from her men and her classrooms the ability to think clearly and honestly for evermore.

This challenge is so important and yet so evasive.

Important because we dwell on it now when our last chance has passed. Evasive because we cannot realize, in relation to the remainder of our life, the amazing liberty of these four years.

We say au revoir to Hanover—to the physical being of Dartmouth College. Au revoir, because we shall be back again. We say good-bye however, to the opportunity given a very few men for a very few years of their lives to develop an honest and independent mind.

That opportunity met us soberly four years ago and bids us adieu hopefully today.