Letters

Dartmouth Prayer

At the annual dinner of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of New York on April 26 the invocation was given by the Rt. Rev. Donald B. Aldrich '17, who recently assumed the post of Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor of Michigan. His Dartmouth Prayer at the alumni dinner so impressed the gathering that we have asked Dr. Aldrich's permission to reprint it here:

OGOD, whose living Spirit dwelleth in those eternal hills whence cometh our help, we beseech Thee for her whose name, as Sons, we bear. Keep our affection for her pure as her perennial snows and our loyalty constant as the green pines above her. May the. still north ever touch our hearts and the hill winds course through our veins, that the pattern of her beauty and standard of her truth and fashion of her fellowship and the sacrifice of her sons—may through us be traced again. We ask it in the name of Him who left a hill country to share his life among the common ways of men, the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Home Front Fortitude

Twice within three months the war has struck its most cruel blow at the family of Mr. and Mrs. Nelson B. Todd of Lynnfield Center.

Pfc. David B. Todd, youngest of their three sons, was killed in Germany last November.

This week the War Department notified them that another soil, First Lt. Charles Nelson Todd, was killed in action, also in Germany, on March 8.

These young heroes' father is a member of Selective Service Board 88, and has given countless hours of his time to the exacting demands of that position.

It has been Mr. Todd's duty to send other fathers' sons into the armed forces and many of them have seen overseas combat. Despite the leaden weight of grief in his own heart, Mr. Todd has not shunned his responsibilities as many another man might have been tempted to, under similar circumstances.

Here is the simple, unostentatious courage and patriotism that is America's most priceless asset. Here is gallantry in a typical American small town no less admirable than the dashing bravery of the leaders of armies and the commanders of fleets. These grief-stricken parents are symbolic of that vast, quiet under-current of fortitude running across the entire nation today as the casualty lists mount and gold stars blossom in windows in every city, town and hamlet. No bands play, or flags wave, when a messenger delivers one of those dreaded telegrams. It is a lonesome and soul-searing experience to receive one of them. Yet Americans, like the Todds of Lynnfield Center, are'rising resolutely above their grief and staunchly facing the future with the same nobility with which their hero sons faced their final grim rendezvous.

Lynn (Mass.) Daily Evening Item.

The two Todd sons mentioned in the above editorial were both Dartmouth men, David a member of the Class of 1946 and Charles a member of the Class of 1943. Their brother, Dr. Barnard P. Todd, is a Dartmouth graduate of 1932.

More than the Dartmouth affiliations involved in these tragic losses, our purpose in reprinting this editorial tribute is, in like fashion, to salute the home-front sacrifice and bravery which Dartmouth Parents have unceasingly displayed from the opening day of the war. The incoming notices of Dartmouth men killed or missing in action have been grievously numerous and the cause for sorrow has been great; yet in its contacts with the parents of these lost sons the College has learned unforgettable lessons of courage and faith and human wisdom. Among all these Dartmouth Parents surely none is more deserving of the College's sympathetic admiration than Mr. and Mrs. Todd, who have made a double sacrifice; but it is through their individual example that we pay honor to the parents of all the Dartmouth fighting men who will never return to Hanover Plain. It is because the College shares their loss so deeply and so much as a family matter that it also understands the heroism with which Dartmouth Parents are matching the supreme contributions of their sons.

The Editors