LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Diagnosis: Spiritual Anemia

TO THE EDITOR!

I refer to your article in the June issue covering the tape-recorded discussions of the nine seniors, which is, I think, a distinct service to Dartmouth. Here we have, in black and white, a Case Report, afforded by the natural introspection of these students at an important juncture in their association with the College.

Such a Case Report deserves to be studied, just as physicians study the protocols which form the basis of our C.P.C.'s (Clinico-Pathological Conferences). In these, the principal objective, before any treament is discussed, is prompt, accurate diagnosis, preferably ante mortem!

If I may, I would like to make a try at the diagnosis based upon the protocol of the nine seniors and a quick look at the recent Family History, - where valuable clues can often be found: Pernicious Anemia ofthe Dartmouth Spirit. Then come the questions: severity?, duration of illness?, previous treatment?, central nervous system involvement?, prognosis?, and others which cannot be treated here by detailed analogy. Fortunately nowadays this disease can be very successfully treated in the great majority of cases, admitted that treatment must be continued throughout the life of such a patient. The known specific deficiency is corrected by liver extract and Vitamin B12 and the anemia relieved.

Granite alone will not overcome anemia of the Dartmouth Spirit. Nor will Alumni Funds, no matter how large and impressive. The life blood of Dartmouth depends more these days than ever before upon the wholehearted commitment of the corporate College to its original purposes and aims when Eleazar Wheelock founded "this school of the prophets" and expressed the hope "that it may long remain a pure fountain." This involves daily concern of the educational processes with the spiritual needs of students in the predominantly Judaeo-Christian tradition. The case for Disestablishment of the present-day College from its original religious foundations is very weak. In my view it hinders rather than guarantees the actuality of another avowed purpose: that of religious tolerance. Who, for example, could attend Evensong in King's Chapel of Cambridge University and not realize that much of the greatness and freedom of that institution is centered there?

We witness the College invoke God's blessing only at Convocation and Commencement. While the intervening days may invest a man with intellectual competence md a certain moral conscience to take up ife in Madison Avenue and Westchester, .hey regrettably leave him spiritually an infant. If the Tucker Foundation as presently constituted had been the answer to the Colege's concern for the spiritual needs of stulents, the discussions of the nine seniors vould certainly have revealed that it was. nstead, they reveal the opposite — serious confusion in their feelings toward faculty ind fellow-students and an ungainly lack of self-respect.

Or, to put it another way, if any weight it all is to be given the predictions of Mr. C. P. Snow and others that eternity is just a very few years off, should the curriculum not include at least some preparation for that state?

But if eternity is not just around the corner and there is time for Dartmouth to pursue greatness, in the real sense, she will achieve or fall short of her goals according to the quality of the transfusion which the Dartmouth Spirit needs now. And the key to the Blood Bank is to be found in a virile prayer once given by President Hopkins, the forceful closing phrase being all I remember of it: "And let the Dartmouth Spirit be Thy Spirit."

Philadelphia, Pa.

Recommended Trustee Reading

TO THE EDITOR:

Your feature "Nine Seniors Speak Out - "is one of the best and most appropriate stories run in the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE in our time. I only wish all the Trustees would read it out loud before every meeting. You will notice that none of the seniors seemed to care about the buildings and grounds.

Springdale, Conn.

Praise for "The Kids"

TO THE EDITOR:

In my opinion the June issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE was one of the finest that has ever been published. I was very much impressed by the bull-session which the nine seniors recorded. While I probably do not agree with a third or half of what the kids had to say, it does show that Dartmouth is turning out young men who can think for themselves. It is such a complete contrast with the Fort Lauderdale fiasco of last spring. I also enjoyed Dean Seymour's article and, in fact, the whole issue.

Troy, Pa.

1918 Addresses 1961

TO THE NINE SENIORS OF THE PANEL:

Your discussion in the June issue of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, in that it indicates you are far from satisfied with what to many seems the very best, is most encouraging as an indication of your own and of Dartmouths future! A very dear friend once said to me, "It requires the greatest finesse to erect and maintain even a slender bridge of understanding between a young man and a man in his sixties." If we were able to fully solve the problem of "communications, I am sure there would be no major trouble in the world today. If "communications" are so important, surely Dartmouth 1918 ought not to shrink from an attempt to communicate with Dartmouth 1961

By way of agreement with you, during my forty years in business I found nothing quite so effective as direct personal relationships. Even when I was a branch manager, however, it took a gruelling travel schedule to let me call on my chief distributors twelve times a year. It was a physical impossibility for me to ever make an individual call on many valuable engineering and trade connections. By the way of proof of the power of the Dartmouth faculty's influence on me, I give you a few quotes which I have remembered from the classroom (in no case from personal conference) for 43 years or longer.

George Ray Wicker — Economics: (Oeorge Ray was an avowed liberal of those days. All the following you may recognize from their original sources. But he thundered them at us in class week after week ) "New times demand new measures and new men!" - "I will not fear to follow out the truth albeit it lead along the precipice's edge!" - "And behold a lie may last a century longer if it lurk behind the shield of some fair name!"

Gordon Ferrie Hull - world-famed physicist: "I believe in miracles! A miracle is simply something which is done by a person or power acquainted with laws and forces which are not familiar to the observer. You have all heard the legend of Mohammed's coffin suspended between heaven and earth. We have here this morning an arrangement of electric coils which will support this copper collar in thin air when I turn on the power. There you have it, gentlemen, Mohammed's coffin suspended between heaven and earth, plain for anyone to see!"

"Cheerless" Richardson - Chemistry: "Gentlemen, on Monday morning at 8 o'clock in M and O Culver there will be an examination in this course. Do not bother to write on your cuffs. You are at perfect liberty to bring with you to the examination any texts, any notes, information in any form, which you elect. And I will guarantee that if you do not have the knowledge of this course which I require, there will not be time in the three hours at your disposal for you to work out a passing grade!" Those words have helped me avoid many a slipshod preparation in my later life.

President Ernest Martin Hopkins (his approximate words): "The purpose of a college of liberal arts is to teach men to live rather than to make a living. Nevertheless, I have observed that, although the man with more specific training is apt to forge ahead at the start, the man with the broader background often passes him in the final stretch." ...

I spent almost my entire business life with American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp., ending my work there as Manager of their Heating and Cooling Lines. I have done business in every state in the union and I know hundreds of men engaged in a multiplicity of businesses all over the land. Let me say two things to you. American Business is the foundation on which our entire economy is built! And American Business needs every really top caliber man it can get, even though it may not seem so when you are looking for a job.

I am terribly impatient with the general attitude towards American Business today! Of course there are some fools and some crooks. But it is wonderful how many, many splendid men work their hearts out to forge our economy ahead through the maze of government edicts and the misunderstandings of organized labor. These men are unsung heroes! ...

For five years I lived next door to the man most directly charged with New York civilian evacuation in case of nuclear attack. He told me many times that perhaps 300,000 out of 10,000,000 metropolitan New Yorkers can be saved. Following my retirement I have been studying for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church to which I hope to be ordained July 12 and where it is my intention to serve without pay. If God is God at all, He obviously can do anything! In my book if He is limited in one single degree He is not God. I hope we would not turn to Him simply to save our skins. But even if we do, I believe we will be welcomed if we are sincere. I cannot understand why so many allegedly intelligent Americans pay no attention to the only Being who can surely see us through! With all due respect to the Peace Corps, I believe there is a greater need and a greater opportunity for really top men in the Church today.

Pittsburgh, Pa.