President's Thanks

THE GRATITUDE OF THE COLLEGE for the superlative results of the 1942 Alumni Fund campaign were expressed by President Hopkins in a letter to Harvey P. Hood 2nd '18, chairman of the Fund Committee of the Alumni Council. His statement follows in full:

"Now that the final returns are in on the Alumni Fund campaign and the results are so supremely reassuring in regard to the future of Dartmouth, I want to seize earliest occasion to express appreciation and thanks to you and to all of the Class Agents who have made possible the result achieved.

"In the thankfulness which I have, I cannot quite disentangle in my own mind my feeling as a Dartmouth man and an alumnus from my sense of obligation as an official of the College. As it happened, at the time of the meetings of the Class Agents, I had recently been in academic conferences tinged with great gloom about the future of American institutions of higher learning, wherein particular concern was expressed as to whether the privately endowed institutions could survive this period or not. I have had few more stimulating experiences in my life than in contrast to these conferences to learn of the meetings of our own alumni who were taking over the responsibilities for raising the Alumni Fund and to hear of the optimism which they expressed. Even without the privilege of attendance upon meetings of the Class Agents, I became imbued with the quiet confidence of the Class Agents in regard to the financial support which might be expected from the alumni body.

"These men who have so willingly given thought and time and effort to putting the Alumni Fund across this year, as it has been put across, have done something more even than to give reassurance in regard to the future of Dartmouth, for they have made Dartmouth an example to all privately endowed colleges and have indicated what the potentialities for support are for a college from its own alumni body, if that body is given understanding and becomes solicitous for the welfare of the institution which it represents.

"Among the many individuals to whom Dartmouth is under obligation, there are few to whom more is due than to these men who as Class Agents have undertaken and carried through to such complete success in a critical time such an effort as is represented by the Alumni Fund. In such way as may seem most desirable to you, will you kindly bespeak the appreciation and the sense of gratitude which I have to each of these men, as well as to those others who have helped in the campaign and to those whose generous contributions made possible the large total which was realized?"