1932
My roamings 'round the girdled earth have landed me in Brussels on the day when I must finish these notes. Fortunately it's Sunday and I have a few hours before my train leaves for Paris, time for a little ruminating on how much of Dartmouth's spell has remained during these few weeks of Europe. Actually, lacking much news of classmates, my ruminations have turned toward speculating on Dartmouth's influence on all of us as viewed from near the end of a road stretching back 20 years to Hanover in 1932.
We ought to be able today to gauge that influence pretty well, and if the educational process, of which Dartmouth was a most important part, was technically effective, we ought to be able to write an intelligible analysis of it. I have the nerve to try, anyway, emboldened by the broader perspective I can use due to my present distance from the home scene.
We have been told that Dartmouth is what its student body makes of itself. We're no paragons, but in ao years most of us seem to have made fairly creditable members of our communities out of ourselves. In trying to appraise Dartmouth's part in the successes we have found, we ought to know what we mean by success. One criterion might be how much our fellows think of us. That can often be best measured by what they say when they lose us. By this standard John Clark would stand preeminent. Election to public office is another fair test, and we have a Congressman, school board members, city council officials, prosecuting attorneys, and numerous others to our credit. By appointment to public office, we can point to a chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals, an Assistant Secretary of State, even an assistant legal adviser, as well as many in State and local government. Our representatives on semi-public boards, committees and councils are legion: learned societies, medical societies, charitable activities such as Red Cross, Boy Scouts, Community Chests, and committees of bar associations. In my scale of values I place public service very high, so I am likely to test the good an education does by the amount of community contribution it evokes in its product. Still, in our U.S. society business position tends to be the major measure of success. Our class can hold its own; we have had vice-presidents of banks, even a president, high officers of major firms in aviation, merchandise, manufacturing, advertising and so forth. Many have their own enterprises, such as water- works engineering, shrimp fishing, hotels. I have an impression, however, that our class is just a noticeable bit less highly placed, less financially rewarded than our contemporaries in Dartmouth and sister institutions of learning. This gives me no concern, because I think we can match the rest in the field of creativeness. Our movie star, our professors and teachers, our writers in many fields do us more than justice.
What are we like at home? We must grade ourselves as husbands, fathers and judges of good living. Here is where I begin to see a pattern that might be traced to the Dartmouth spell, and more than a little of it has the same origin as the results we see in other fields. I find very good fathers—and surely no one is really a good father unless he's also a good husband—among our classmates. Their concern over their children doesn't stem only from their hope that their sons will get into Dartmouth and their daughters be Carnival queens. Very many of them just assume that they will spend a lot of time with children. This is something that our Princeton friends find harder to do because so many more of them must break through the barrier of nurses to get to their children. Nurses are a product of business success. I like to think that our lower scale of business income stems less from inability than from disinterest. If so, maybe Dartmouth has shown us a light that unconsciously makes us realize that it's more important to work hard at home than at the office, so that we produce happier, better adjusted children who will later populate our country with worthier citizens.
We all know of the hope in Hanover that Dartmouth graduates will be better members of the community as a result of their Dart- mouth experience. The more I have tried to analyze the nature of our class the more I have come to believe that its outstanding character- istic is a fulfillment of that hope. In all the things that make a good neighbor I find us stacking up well. Among Dartmouth men generally there is a lot of belief in the things that add up to our idea of democracy, and our class would be found in the forefront of the group. In a world where the realization of democracy is the most important goal of all, a group of widely scattered people whose ac- tions are guided instinctively by belief in it can be a very beneficent influence on the course of events in their communities and far afield.
How much of what we are do we owe to Dartmouth, how much to other influences? Does Dartmouth turn out men with a deeper belief in real democracy than other colleges? Are Dartmouth Republicans better than those from Princeton and Yale? I guess we like to think so, to believe that the hills, the closer companionship and the traditions that you absorb more than learn somehow do the trick. I shouldn't be surprised if it's true. We all get to like the place so much, always dragging our wives there on our honeymoons and vacations, that we would feel like traitors to something precious if we went back on the tradition of democracy, good neighborliness and community contribution that gets absorbed from the air of the place, the faculty and the countryside.
Anyway, them's my sentiments, and the column for the May issue is hereby reserved for comments on them. Write them during March.
I'll be back home when I do the next column, and I'll fill up with travelogue all the space the lack of news permits. The only news of the moment is that Don MacPhail and family (three kids) have arrived in Paris and Don has started working for the Office of the MSA Special Representative in Europe (Hotel Talleyrand), while Eleanor looks for a place to live.
The following delightful letter from JoeFanelli caught me in Paris:
"I hear that you are in Europe. Hence I thought I had better write you about my experiences in Europe this past year, so that you do not fill the class notes with your experiences. Since this will probably reach you while you are in Europe, I shall put my experiences in the form of advice to you, the neophyte.
"First: When you are in Germany, be sure to drink beer. The beer is out of this world. And so are the Germans. I found them the most courteous and punctiliously honest people in Europe. What they may or may not think of Americans is another matter. I was unable to get any real line on that. I saw, however, the real possibilities of another powerful Germany in just a couple of decades.
"Second: Watch the Paris night club. It isn't anything like an American one. It is very difficult to keep any francs in your wallet when seventeen violins are playing sentimental songs just for you (at least so long as your francs hold out). I like the independence of the Parisian. I should think there will always be a France; but I am certain that there will always be a Paris.
"Third: When in southern Italy one exchanges lira for charm. I am prejudiced in this connection —but surely there is no one more charming than the southern Italian. While he charms, however, you pay four times what he would be glad to receive.
"Politically, the southern Italian puzzles me. I do not think any government has ever made any great impression on him. I doubt that we are making any great impression. As far as I know, the only thing that moves a southern Italian is his family. But I wonder if that is so different in the rest of the world.
"Fourth: Contemplate the beauties of Geneva, and the cold physical beauty of the Swiss. There is the most proud nation in Europe. They really believe that they have a better government than we Americans do. And maybe they do. But in any event, it is good in Europe to meet a Swiss, who meets you on the basis of a citizen of one great independent nation meeting another. I used to think the Swiss were a joke. But I got over that.
"Fifth: See England and marvel at the British. There certainly is the country that lost the war. You will find things austere in England but their capacity for endurance is tremendous. I was also interested in ascertaining at least to my own satisfaction that the Englishman essentially is much more friendly than the American."
Keep getting ready for Reunion, June 13 and 14.
ROBERT COLTMAN '32, new Vice President in charge of the Trust Department of the Philadelphia National Bank, is also chairman of the investments faculty at the Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers University.
Secretary, 3909 North sth Street, Arlington, Va. Treasurer, 144 Brixton Rd., Garden City, N. Y. Memorial Fund Chairman, 99 White Plains Rd., Bronxville, N. Y.
