The Constancy of Change, The Constancy of Devotion

The 50-Year Address

IN preparation for this afternoon's exercise in recall I have recently been going through the pages of The Dartmouthfor our senior year. Those of you who have done this yourselves will be fully aware of what a nostalgic experience it is.

Even the ads are evocative: the 20¢ Nugget shows; the steak dinners for $1; the Melachrino and Fatima ads - "What a difference a few cents make"; the fourhutton suits; Jim Campion's "more than a toggery - a Dartmouth institution"; the late-night eateries; the jiggers at Allen's Drug Store; the hair grooming ads (who among the present generation ever heard of "Slickum," or seemingly ever wants to hear of it!) And by mid-April the Dartmouth Coop, though more snow was certain. began promoting its linen knickers.

Then "there was the world news which penetrated our cozy life in the New Hampshire hills — its portent unguessed. For example, the collapse of a beer cellar revolution in Munich and the escape from the police of one Adolph Hitler, and, in another direction, the Japanese Exclusion Act passed by an inward looking Congress.

But beyond the campus trivia and the foreboding events elsewhere, The Dartmouth recorded in our senior year a truly remarkable series of happenings. The "new intellectualism," to use the rather self-conscious expression of the day, was making itself felt, as the College began to outrun its earlier fantasies — all just as Percy Marks tardily published his PlasticAge describing a present which had largely become a past.

The "rah rah," as The Dartmouth called it. was beginning to disappear, or at least in take a distinctly secondary place. Exhortations to show up at huge rallies began to fall on less and less responsive ears. The freshman picture fight dropped by the wayside, the sophomore class simply declining to take part in the melee, despite the egging on of the upper classes who were safely non-participants. The long Practice of requiring attendance at morning chapel, frequently under attack in the pages of The Dartmouth, was allowed to lapse that spring - "experimentally" the powers said, but we all knew it would be forever.

It is to be supposed that the falling away of some of the more parochial aspects of life was part of Dartmouth's transformation from a small essentially upper New England institution to one drawing its students selectively from all over the country, and directed toward what Mr. Hopkins called, somewhat prematurely to be sure, "an aristocracy of brains." By our senior year the enrollment of 1,500 recorded in 1916, Mr. Hopkins' first year as President, had increased to over 2,000. One of the by-products seemed to be a renewed realization on the students' part of what they were here for.

We still believed ourselves terribly isolated from the world, by which we often meant that there was considerable room for improvement in the means of getting to and from Northampton. But in fact were we really so isolated?

Consider the names of the people who came to Hanover to talk to us that year: William Jennings Bryan; W. Z. Foster; Donald Ogden Stewart; Oswald Garrison Villard; Heywood Broun; Rebecca West; Alexander S. Mieklejohn; Edna St. Vincent Millay; Rabbi Wise; Roger Baldwin; Bertrand Russell; Robert Frost. This was a rich diet indeed for a little country college in the wilderness, as we claimed to be.

It was not wholly fortuitous that as our senior year drew to a close Palaeopitus reconstituted itself, and in the process dropped the captain of the football team from ex-officio membership. Seemingly it was just what the team needed, for a year later they took the national championship. On the other hand the simultaneous appointment of the President of the Arts to Palaeopitus apparently doomed his organization, for not long thereafter it folded. To be sure these and other changes did not occur in our day without cries of distress from beleaguered traditionalists within the Dartmouth family. They are always with us, God bless them! Yet as always those changes emerged from the climate of the times, not from sinister design.

If we were to look for one single indivdual in our class who was most representative of what was occurring, I think we would have to select Hal Cowley. More mature than most of us - two or three years older perhaps, as he had spent some 'time in employment before coming to Dartmouth - Hal became editor of TheDartmouth our final year. Who can forget it? His editorials hammered ceaselessly at the purposes of education and what he believed to be its shortcomings at the College. He sought to put some of the less important activities in proper perspective, and in doing so his sometimes abrasive editorials tread on many toes. But he achieved his main end. namely to stir up discussion and debate. In those days TheDartmouth did not require that vox pop letters appear over the true name of the writer. Today I find myself wondering whether Hal did not on occasion himself write a vox pop, just to enlarge his opportunity for editorial attack and to keep the discussion going. If so. who would call it venal?

Hal's final contribution was to chair, with drive and zest, the Undergraduate Committee on Educational Policy which President Hopkins appointed in the middle of our last year. The report of that committee. brought in on the eve of our graduation, was the precursor of numerous changes in curriculum and policy which came about in the ensuing years.

As our final year came to a close, Whitney Campbell '25, who succeeded Hal as editor of The Dartmouth, wrote that "the Class of 1924 is largely responsible for a decided trend away from a follow-the-leader policy which was altogether too prevalent on the campus at the time the present seniors entered."

A handsome tribute indeed from the lowly Class of 1925!

We in 1924 are bound to each other, to the many who have gone before us and to the many who have come after — bound by a shared concern for Dartmouth College. At this our 50th Reunion we reclaim our identity not only with the College of half a century ago, but with the College of today. We belong to both, yet they are very different things. In the history of the College two constants stand out:

First, the constancy of change — the College can never be the same one year as it was the year before.

Second, the constancy of the devotion to the College's best interests of those who have responsibility for its day—to—day life — the Trustees, the administrative officers and the faculty. Holding them together have always been the Presidents of the College. None has failed since the days of John Wheelock. John Kemeny has our warmest wishes in the task he has undertaken.

"The gleaming, dreaming walls of Dartmouth" — may they endure forever.

Former lawyer and diplomat and CollegeLibrarian from 1950 to 1968, Mr. Morindelivered the 50-Year Address before theGeneral Alumni Association June 9.