A CALL FOR DOING
president Dickey's Dartmouth Night Address to Students
MR. MCLANE, MEN AND FRIENDS OF DARTMOUTH:
Twenty-nine years ago President Hopkins concluded his inaugural day and began his great leadership with a Dartmouth Night celebration.
You've all heard about the man who spent three years instead of one as a freshman not, as you might think, because he was a little slow but rather as his mother explained, only because he was so very thorough. Well, I'm one of those thorough fellows. My inauguration began a week ago yesterday but for me it won't be over until tonight's celebration is on the books. For Dartmouth Night is certainly one of the moments—and there are many others—when the Dartmouth Spirit walks abroad. And whether a man be freshman or president, his induction to Dartmouth is not complete until he and that spirit have walked abroad together.
Tonight's gathering marks the fifty-first anniversaryof the institution of Dartmouth Night. President Tucker founded it in 1895 for the purpose both of bringing the freshmen into the Dartmouth family and of bringing the entire College together— to use Hovey's words—in a pledge of fellowship. Today this Night is set aside by men of Dartmouth the world around as a time when worldly masks are laid aside to share again the joys of a common fellowship and to pledge a new and ever greater devotion to the College and its cause.
No man, I think, is entitled or is able to tell you just what Dartmouth is and what is its cause. But each man of us, I also think, owes it to himself and perhaps to others in the fellowship to have some notion of what he expects of the College and what he wants for himself. I do believe that as we know these things we will better understand Dartmouth and her cause.
From the first Dartmouth has been a liberal arts college. It has been often said that the historic college is more concerned with men's lives than their livelihoods. And as far as I am concerned that is well so long as we do not lose sight of the fact that there is some relationship both back- wards as well as forwards between leading a good life and the way a man keeps alive.
The historic college has always insisted its right and its duty to pursue the truth without let or hindrance from prejudice or any other interest and to make that truth known. And again as far as I concerned that is well so long as .we are sufficiently humble to grant to providence, and the next generation, the possibility that the truth of the day for us may not be an eternal verity—and also so long as this spirit of humility is not in practice carried clear across the spectrum of tolerance to the point where men of knowledge and good will become incapable of action and leave the world's doing either to those who don't know, or who don't care or, as in all too recent times, to those who do evil gladly.
This is not the occasion to speak too seriously too long, but because there is so little time and because we meet too infrequently these days let me say just this much more on this point.
As you gradually discover for yourselves the things you care most about—and I hope for you they may be the right things —don't take them for granted. In all your learning get not only wisdom but also build the will and acquire the capacity for doing something about those things which need doing. I personally care not very much whether your doing be in the public service or in the ranks of the citizenry. I do want very much that this generation of educated men of Dartmouth should
"Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves."
And remember this: there is so little time.
But I have spoken of understanding Dartmouth and that is not just understanding the basic liberal arts objectives to which Dartmouth College as one of the great historic colleges subscribes.
Some have said that Dartmouth is not a college—that it is a religion. I take it that what is meant by this is that men who have lived together on Hanover Plain believe in Dartmouth. And whatever else may be said, surely that is true and surely that must be good. There are few things, or so it seems to me, which give as much satisfaction to a man as belonging to something in which he really believes.
Some may, and often do, ask why do men feel that way about Dartmouth? Is there really any such thing as the Dartmouth Spirit? I doubt for my part that there is any one answer to those questions unless it be that these men who feel that way about Dartmouth lived together on Hanover Plain and that ever since the days of Eleazar Wheelock this plain has also been the dwelling place of the spirits of the men who over the years built this College. As any good country man will tell you, you cannot live with a spirit but that spirit gets inside you. However else the Dartmouth Spirit may manifest itself, it does give rise to a sense of family, to a sense of belonging to something together. Hovey has done a better job than any one else in putting it into words. A time comes to almost every man who has lived on this campus when as he sings those words "as brother stands by brother" he suddenly realizes that he belongs to a larger family —and is the better for it.
A week ago the Trustees of Dartmouth College took an action which characterizes as -well as any single thing I know that sense of family which exists among Dartmouth men and between the College and her sons. The evening before President Hopkins retired the Trustees voted to establish the Ernest Martin Hopkins Scholarships for the benefit of the sons of Dartmouth men who gave their lives in military service during World War II. The holders of such scholarships will receive tuition, room and board and be known as Hopkins Scholars. This means that during the next twenty years there will be men on Hanover Plain who bear the proud title of Hopkins Scholars in honored memory of their own fathers who as members of a generation of Dartmouth men coming under the influence and concern of Dartmouth's great and beloved Hopkins, gave their lives that Dartmouth and its causes might live. I can imagine no greater honor to any college than that it should so honor and so tangibly perpetuate the spirit of its sons who died to keep men free.
Having spoken somewhat more seriously this night than I probably shall on future Dartmouth Nights, I especially want to remind you that above all the Dartmouth Spirit is a joyful spirit. Twenty-nine years ago President Hopkins on this occasion concluded his inaugural day with Stevenson's words at the end of his tale, "The Lantern Bearers": "But those who miss the joy, miss all." I doubt that I can ever tell you more of the spirit of the great man who led Dartmouth through these past thirty years than by telling you that in his closing words to the faculty and trustees at last Thursday morning's ceremony he came back once again to those same words "... those who miss the joy miss all."
Gentlemen, thanks to Ernest Martin Hopkins, in greater measure than men can express, you and the oncoming generations of Dartmouth men will not miss the joy. It is yours for the keeping.
PRESIDENT DICKEY shown delivering his first College address at Dartmouth Night, November 9.
