Sacrifice Always Hurts
Of course sacrifice hurts, if it is really a sacrifice. Up to now few of us have felt any real pangs because of what we have given to education or to charity, although most of us have talked as if we had. What's ahead of us at present is a situation in which whatever we give from our substance for the assistance of good causes is actually going to pinch—and the real question is whether or not we can face the test with credit.
It is peculiarly true of gifts to the Alumni Fund, which isn't a charity at all and which is only indirectly related to the war effort in which the country is engaged. There isn't the incentive that promotes generosity in giving to the Red Cross, or liberality in the purchase of war bonds. This is not a case of supplying hospitals to minister to the wounded, or of providing the wherewithal to buy guns, tanks, planes and ammunition. It is a matter of keeping in operation and good health an institution which we love, to the end that it may serve the country in war and be ready to serve it in the years of peace which will follow.
No one needs any nudging to appreciate the serious need which our own, like every other, college is experiencing. What necessities have in the past created the Dartmouth Alumni Fund are now increased many fold. What deficits we have had to meet in recent years are as nothing when compared with what this plunge into war is certain to entail tail. Student bodies everywhere are greatly depleted and with the depletion has come a proportionate curtailment in tuition fees. At the same time there has been a steady deterioration in the income from endowment funds. Yet the mechanism of the College has to be kept intact and in condition to go ahead when the war is over. It cannot be permitted to drop into disrepair, or become corroded with rust. Dartmouth isn't going to die, merely because for a year or two it may be forced to idle on a loose pulley. In due time it will have to pick up speed again and it must be adequate to deal with the load which will be put upon it.
Opinions differ as to how long this period of diminished academic action will be. For a guess it will be much shorter than pessimistic commentators would like us to believe. But be it longer or shorter, the need remains to keep Dartmouth in full readiness to function, as well as to operate within a more limited scope while the war goes on. To that end the Alumni Fund exists, and never in its history has that fund been more vitally essential to the College. It must and shall be maintained and if it be necessary to endure a real personal pinch in giving it support, that pinch must be, and will be, endured. "Give till it hurts" is going to mean something this time, but never mind if it does hurt. It all falls into the gigantic pattern of effort to better the world we live in, made wholeheartedly by Oliver.
