The Undergraduate Chair
Student Editor, Ending V-12 Course and Dartmouth Days, Asks Some Trenchant Questions About College Education
THrs is MY GOODBYE to Dartmouth. It must be a hurried one and I am glad for that—lingering farewells can too easily be embarrassing and painful. It is awkward to begin rehearsing memories before they have been completed, assimilated and to a degree digested. They never really are finished, of course, but they improve with age.
As a Dartmouth graduate of today I will not be forced abruptly into the wide, wide world as a slightly comical spectacle in a cap and gown and told it is mine now or told it is not mine and a very bitter place or told that with a college education, I should at least be a bank president or told that the college education doesn't mean a thing and I'll probably be a soda jerker. I've already been told quite a while ago that I will go to war. That's a bit dramatic, putting it that way, but the point is that for the next few years my career is fairly well carved out for me. There won't be much deciding what to do. There won't be much looking for a job. I won't be faced too obviously with the tremendous apparent gap between the print in books and the bluntness of reality.
The reality will be both more subtle and more plain. If I come to see it, the blood and death of war will offer enough of what is termed reality. But in war this is faced under the protection of military discipline. It is a great protection. One is told in the main pretty well how to face it—how to shoot a gun, how to march, how to kill, how to obey. The reactions can become soothingly automatic. You do not worry. You are told.
The more subtle reality is much harder to comprehend under the regimentation of war than the freedom of peace. It is harder because you really don't have to think about it. You don't have a plentiful amount of time to think, first of all, and then military authorities commend an abbreviated amount of short-term thinking that involves cleaning a gun or knowing when to salute an officer. From their point of view and the immediate view of society in this country, they are absolutely right. But from one's own point of view and the long-range good of society, it is stupid. The subtlety is the composing of the truly liberal, non-scientific absorption of the print of books with the fact of blood and death and the war and living. It is a hefty order, but if one is going into this war with the supposition that he will have a lot of life to live after it, it's about the only way to give meaning to the life.
I guess it is very nervy of me to assume I will know what to think and what other men should think when gunpowder is scorching their skin and pals are leaving life too quickly for even a hurried goodbye. But I am somehow positive that if I completely forget what I have gotten out of Dartmouth, the fight within me will be a lot tougher than the fight without.
And what have I gotten out of Dartmouth? I could duck out of that question by saying that this was to be a hurried farewell to Dartmouth. I won't duck out of anything. I merely have no intention of answering it. To become dramatic again, my life will answer it. In fact, anyone who does answer such a question must be on his deathbed. The question is asking: What is education? What will your life be like? What did you do in Hanover, New Hampshire, during the years 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943? What books did you read during those years? Whom did you meet in that time? What are your hobbies? Can you ski? The question is idiotic.
I can say I've gotten something a little different from most in a purely physical way. I represent the last remnants of the Class of '44. Except for a large number in the classes of '45 and '46, not many Dartmouth men can or will be able to say that they have been a Dartmouth undergraduate both as a civilian and a man in service. Those here now have seen a remarkable transition. Under the shell of Navy regulation a liberal education is offered. I say offered because, as always, you can take it or leave it. It is a grand chance to face part of what I called the subtle reality. If one can compose books with the orders of a petty officer, he has done a lot of fighting already.
I imagine that if I could kill a Jap, recognize what I have "gotten out of Dartmouth" and remember a military life at Dartmouth I would be doing a lot of mixing and a lot of composing. I want to try it anyway.
And so goodbye.
MILESTONES
DARTMOUTH LOG: Assistant Editors, B. D. Nossiter '47, New York City, and Paul J. Muller, A.S. USNR, New York City; Feature Editor, Robert B. Hodes '46, A.S. USNR, Brooklyn, N. Y.
CROSS COUNTRY: Captain, Donald L. Burnham '44, MC USNR, Lebanon, N. H.
FAREWELL SECTION of The Undergraduate Chair is written this month by George H. Tilton III '44, who is an Apprentice Seaman finishing the Navy V-12 course on Oct. 23.
