Dartmouth Awards Honorary Degrees to Ten
In recognition of public service on theinternational, national, state and homecommunity levels, Dartmouth Collegeawarded honorary degrees to ten men atthe 181 st Commencement exercises in theBema, June 11. Three of the five men whoreceived the College's highest honor, theDoctorate of Laws, were Dartmouth graduates, and both of the recipients of thehonorary degree of Master of Arts wereDartmouth men. Two men received theDoctorate of Humane Letters and one theDoctorate of Letters. Following are thecitations read by President Dickey in conferring the degrees:
GEORGE FROST KENNAN Counselor of the Department of State Washington, D. C.
SINCE graduation from Princeton in 1925 you have served your country as a career officer of the American Foreign Service. The world-wide spectrum of your duties has ranged from an apprentice viceconsul shepherding indigent citizens and distressed seamen to responsibilities which have placed you at the right hand of American Secretaries of State as Director of Policy Planning and Counselor of the Department of State. In you the values of a free and decent spirit have combined with a respect for the power of both facts and the human intellect to produce an expert who, to put it very precisely, if somewhat lightly, knows his foreign policies at least from A to "X." As lecturer and author you are no stranger to Dartmouth, as the uncle of three seniors you are well-nigh already an intimate member of this graduating class, and as perhaps the preeminent representative of the finest group of career diplomats America has ever had at her service, this college is proud to welcome you into the ranks of those upon whom with cause and pride she confers her highest honor, the Doctorate of Laws.
LESTER KNOX LITTLE '14 Inspector General of the ChineseMaritime Customs Service Pawtucket, Rhode Island
SINCE your graduation from Dartmouth in 1914 your life has been spent in China serving the Government of China as an officer of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. In 1944 you were appointed to the head of this Service, the first American to be so honored in 90 years of Chinese customs history. Thanks to those foreigners and Chinese who for almost a century man by man built fidelity and quality into the Chinese customs, this Service became one of the unique wonders of the political world—a vast governmental operation in tax collection functioning efficiently and honestly, under advanced civil service principles in a land where tradition in such affairs has been, shall we say—otherwise. Even today the traditions and standards of this Service remain as they have remained before through smuggling, war and internal strife. By your part in this achievement in advancing the welfare of China and thereby the work of good government everywhere you have honored your College and it is her privilege today to acknowledge the fact by conferring on you the degree of Doctor of Laws.
HAROLD RAYMOND MEDINAJudge of the V. S. District Court,Southern District of New York New York, New York
GRADUATED summa cum laude by Princeton University, graduate and for long a teacher of the Columbia Law School, for nearly four decades you have worked in the law with the vigor of one possessed of the precious truth that no calling is great unless greatly pursued, and that thereby all callings may be great. In time of war you were assigned by the court and assumed the duty to defend an American citizen charged as a Nazi sympathizer with aiding saboteurs landed here by submarine. Your tenacious and ultimately successful defense in time of hot strife of this unpopular defendant on an odious charge gave fresh reality to the ancient principle of justice—won sub homine sed sub deo atlege. On the record of your writings, your teaching and your advocacy, you were appointed to the Federal Bench in 1947 with the acclaim of both the bar and the community. With admiration for that record and with respect for the ideals of justice which you have honored throughout your career, Dartmouth honors you as one eminently worthy of her Doctorate of Laws.
HAROLD HALE MURCHIE '09 Chief Justice of the Maine SupremeJudicial Court Calais, Maine
BORN "down in Maine," as we say in these parts, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1909, educated in the law at Harvard, and since 1949 Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, you are noted for a career of exemplary citizenship in a state where good citizenship and, shall we say, a certain quality of rock-ribbedness are still usually taken for granted—in a native. Your career as a leader of the bar, member of the legislature, trial judge and now holder of the highest judicial office in your native state is a timely and tangible reminder that most sagas of success and service are home grown. In testimony to that truth and in tribute to the fruitful life you have led in fulfilling the purpose of this college in the only way it can ever be fulfilled, namely, by the individual doing of its graduates, Dartmouth awards you her honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
SAMUEL SOMMERVILLE STRATTON '20 President of Middlebury College Middlebury, Vermont
DARTMOUTH B.S. of the Class of 1920 and ten years later a Harvard Ph.D., your early career represents a heresy, now unhappily rare among economists, whereby you left the fortunes of business to pursue a Ph.D. rather than contrariwise. There are some who might avow that in subsequently becoming a professor, a War Production Board official and then a college president, you were never able to arrest the dread decline which ensued from that first backsliding moment. We here, however, are glad of the course you chose and rejoice with you in the opportunities it has brought. Since 1943 as President of Middlebury College you have put the breadth of your experience and the strength of your leadership at the service of one of the great historic colleges. It is with family pride and neighborly affection that Dartmouth today acknowledges her gratification in the achievement of a son and salutes with admiration the institution he now heads in the year of its 150 th anniversary. In token of the esteem whereof you and Middlebury are held by your alma mater, she confers on you the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
EDWARD AUGUSTUS WEEKS JR.Editor of The Atlantic Monthly Boston, Massachusetts
A BUSINESS address at 9 Arlington Street, Boston, and a home on Beacon Hill have not traditionally gone with an educational pedigree which began above Cayuga's waters, not to mention the small matter of a New Jersey birth. However, as the holder of a Harvard B.S. and as one who also holds the Croix de Guerre and membership on the boards of Harvard and Wellesley College, your rightful possession of those august addresses will find no challenger here. Yourself a deft craftsman in both the spoken and written word, you have excelled in perhaps the harder business of bringing to pass as literature the ideas and feelings of others. This work you have done with taste, enthusiasm, idealism and courage. Today you are the prowling guide of a literary enterprise which you keep very much on the move despite its venerable 93 years as a national asset in the world of letters and thought. It is with profound appreciation for the quality of your contribution to the continuing cause of liberal education and the culture of a free society that Dartmouth confers on you her Doctorate of Letters.
WALLACE KIRKMAN HARRISON Architect and Director of Planningfor the United Nations Headquarters New York, New York
FORMERLY professor of architecture and city planning at Columbia and Yale, you are one of a long line of office boys who remind institutions of higher learning that getting educated is an individual and not an institutional affair. You have had a hand in fashioning the contemporary sky-line of our greatest city, you have guided the building of a home for the United Nations, you have been a leader in the cause of hemispheric unity, your counsel and friendship are prized by all manner of men; and yet in the doing of all these works of creation and cooperation you have had the grace, the humility and the integrity to make the good and decent life seem the normal business of the day, well within the reach of any man who will bother to want it. It is a joy to commend you to your somewhat younger colleagues, who have today received their first arts degree, as a practitioner of the liberating arts whose life and works are those worthy of one entitled to the designation, Doctor of Humane Letters.
HAROLD WALLACE ROSSEditor of The New Yorker Stamford, Connecticut
IN less time than it took Aspen, Colorado, your birthplace, to revert from silver to snow, you converted an idea for a new magazine into that indispensable journal of the literate world, The New Yorker. While some frantically strive to edit so that those who run may seem to read, you are that mysterious phenomenon who edits so that those who read may enjoy reading. And your triumphs have not been confined to the written word. Thanks to the victory for silence you won this year over the raucous dragon which had taken up residence in Grand Central Station, the byways of that great cavern are again safe for those who prefer to run without having either to read or to listen. This year also marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the discovery of The New Yorker and whether we now celebrate it with you cast in the role of a triumphant St. George or as a successful Ponce de Leon is perhaps unimportant. In either or both capacities Dartmouth's honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters was never more fittingly awarded for high service to letters and the human spirit.
PARKER MCLAUTHLIN MERROW '25North Country Publisher Center Ossipee, New Hampshire
MEMBER of the Class of 1925, you are one Dartmouth man whose daily life enriches all our lives. Monthly through your North of Boston column in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, the men of Dartmouth, "though round the girdled earth they roam," are brought back once again to the values of the North Country by which you do your daily living as newspaper publisher, journalist, magistrate, businessman, Rotarian, gun collector, trout fisherman, family man, owner of a Labrador Retriever, trustee of the Ossipee Cemetery Association and citizen of Center Ossipee, New Hampshire. In gratitude for your service to this College and your community and above all else in honor to the good life you have shared with us all,and parenthetically let it be recorded that we often wish we "could of been there"Dartmouth delights in awarding you the honorary degree of Master of Arts.
ADNA DAVID STORRS '99 Proprietor of the Dartmouth Bookstore Hanover, New Hampshire
MEMBER of the Class of 1899, New Hampshireman by lineage since provincial days, this plain is your ancestral home and you by wide consent are its first citizen. Historians may well search in vain for a position of major trust in this community which you have not filled with honor, wisdom and good humor. To your leadership in these civic affairs the men of Dartmouth owe a happy debt for much that gives this village they love its charm and beauty. As in your person is represented the indivisibility of town and gown, so the emporium over which you preside is iterally the corner-stone of the community where the morning talk of news and views makes somewhat superfluous the daily journals there purveyed. In you this day your college honors, with her Master of Arts degree, a good son, good citizen and good neighbor; in short, what she most highly prizes, a good man.
HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS at Dartmouth's 181 st Commencement June 11 shown with President Dickey are, left to right, front row, Dr. Samuel S. Stratton '20, George F. Kennan, Dr. Dickey, Judge Harold R. Medina and Chief Justice Harold H. Murchie '09. Back row, Parker M. Merrow '25, Adna D. Storrs '99, Harold W. Ross, Edward A. Weeks Jr., Lester K. Little '14 and Wallace K. Harrison.
THREE BROTHERS GRADUATE TOGETHER: Some sort of precedent was set when three brothers received degrees in the same class June 11. Shown wiih their father, Eugene Hotchkiss '22 of Highland Park, 111. are Frank E. and his twin brothers James K. and Eugene 111. Making the occasion even more of a family affair was the presence of their uncle, George F. Kennan, who gave the Commencement address.
