Third Panel Discussion

CHAIRMAN

PRESIDENT DICKEY suggested to me yesterday evening that since the program placed me in the Chair at this last of the panel meetings, it was clearly my duty to end it by summarizing everything that had been said. I told him that my gratitude to him and to Dartmouth College for the hospitality they have shown to their guests - hospitality extending even to the final graceful touch of arranging a beautiful sample of English weather this morning - was such that I would attempt almost any task conceivably within my powers, but that alas to summarize what has been said in these panel discussions lay far beyond that frontier. President Dickey then retreated on the statement that at least the Chairman shoul say something more than just simply, "The meeting stands a journed." So by this chain of accidents, of which I was given no warning, I now find myself in the position of having to pronounce a benediction.

I invite your attention to this beautiful symbolic design that has presided over our discussions. It seems to me to be not only beautiful in itself, but to perform most admirably the functions of a symbolic device. The foreground is occupied by those three lozenges blazing in the royal and imperial colors, the Lion, the Leaf and the Eagle. They are placed against the background of the whole world, of which again the symbolism is clear; though there is one detail, the meaning of which does leave me in some doubt, and that is the concentric circles marking, as I understand it, the position of Hanover, New Hampshire. Whether that is intended to suggest that this campus is, as indeed for these few days it is, the hub of the Western World, or that Hanover is a target of some kind, I'm not quite sure. But these three lozenges against the background of the whole world are presided over and held together by the crest of Dartmouth College, which in this context I take to stand for the constructive and cohering force of the human intellect exercised in freedom. That is what we have been concerned with in these panel meetings and I commend it to you as a final thought. If we have reached no conclusions, it is because the endeavor here symbolized has no end. I hope that these discussions will be resumed at some place and time and in some manner. And I'd invite your attention to one last piece of symbolism, that between the three lozenges there are dividing gaps. Let my benediction be that when we next meet to discuss these questions, we shall find that the gaps have become narrower.