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About Yale Alumni Magazine | View Entire Issue (May 26, 1898)
Vou. VLE: “N63. NEW HAVEN, CONN., THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1898. ~ Price Ten Cents. YALE 10 HER COUNTRY, How the University Spoke at College Street Hall Last Friday Evening— The Addresses in Full of Pres-= ident Dwight, Dr. Lines and Professor Perrin. At twenty minutes after seven last Friday evening, at College Street Hall, President Dwight of Yale opened a meeting entirely without precedent in the history of the University. It was called to send the message of Yale to her country. All of Yale was there to send it, by worthy delegates, and by as many of them as could crowd into the old church, body, galleries, aisles, choir loft and vestibule. The Yale under- graduate was there, full-hearted and full- toned; and those who had been Yale undergraduates one or fifty years ago perhaps; and the teachers of Yale were there,—the Dean of the College and the Dean of the Graduate School; profes- sors from the Scientific Department, teachers of Theology, the Director of the School of Fine Arts, Freshman year instructors, and one of the creators and builders of the Department of Music. It was hoped that it might be a repre- sentative meeting. Those who had counted most and worked hardest for its success had nothing more to desire after a look at pews and at platform. To make it perfect, Yale was there from the Camp as well as the Yale that is still at home. Just before the meeting opened, two young men in army blue were crowded unwillingly forward on the platiorm, and from the great crowd in College Street Hall rose a long roar of applause at the sight of Lieutenant Weston and Sergeant Chappell of the First Connecticut Light Artillery. The old church was all red and white and blue. A great flag almost covered the space behind the platform and others. draped the galleries and the speaker’s desk. At one side of the choir loft in the rear of the church were the members of the Second Regiment Band, and the seats directly in front of the platform were held by the Glee Clubs in full ranks. Glee Club and band were there for a good putpose and accomplished that purpose well. From the moment Presi- dent Dwight announced “America” as the first ceremony of the evening the meeting was a success. There may have been members of that audience who did not join in the national anthem, but they were obscurely hidden. When it came to the “Star Spangled Banner”’ later in the evening, the spirit was all the more intense, and the whole audi- ence followed the full verses of that rather difficult piece for congregational singing, with fine effect. song ‘Bright College Years’ was sung. It hadn’t, before that, been really sung, however superb have been the efforts of Glee Clubs to render it. The old church shook with it, and when the last line was reached the great audience took time and emphasis like a trained club, and rolled it out in such a volume that people stopped on the streets blocks away to listen. : “For God, for Country, and for Yale.” This last line, sung with such an em- phasis and impressiveness, was the text of the whole meeting. President Dwight closed his brief introductory address with it, and set the applause go- ing for minutes by the very happy ex- pression. The Rev. Dr: Lines made his most effective point in emphasizing the For a closing. AT THE YALE OUARTERS: righteousness of the cause of the war, and made his most effective appeal to the University audience present in ask- ing them to use all their means and in- fluence, whether they were at home or afield, to hold the country throughout the war, and aiter its close, true to the consecrated catise of the struggle. In Professor Perrin’s closing address the one glowing thought was the subordi- nation of every other need to the coun- try’s need, which, as he said, should close the University if occasion came, and the splendid affirmation of the prin- ciple that, whatever else a parent or a teacher may do in guiding young men at this crisis, they never could afford to check or blunt the spirit of patriotism. The meeting was the formal expres- sion of the Yale sentiment. This had been expressed frequently and emphati- cally with all the eloquence of action. The presence of sixty of the best under- graduates at Niantic, the march to the front of hundreds of graduates, and the eager rush to substantially thank the government and fit out the Yale, had all been in evidence. That night these various voices joined in a definite and simple and unmistakable message of the loyalty of all of Yale. | The meeting was called to hear the report of the Cruiser Fund Committee and to formally present. the guns and the colors; but that was the least it did. It listened to the report and was audi- bly pleased to hear that Yale, despite a policy by the Committee of discourag- ing subscriptions when the work had hardly begun, had increased the total asked for by fifty per cent. The meet- ing listened to the reading of the reso- lutions with the closest interest and ap- plauded them to the echo and stood up as one man in favor of their passage. But what these Yale men were there for was to express, as well as words and songs and cheers can express, a feel- ing which came to them when they found their united country facing a common foe and which had grown stronger and deeper with them with every day that had passed. That is what gave the ring to the cheers, the thunder to the applause and the soul to the songs. LIEUTENANT WESTON FOR SECRETARY. It was in order to have a Secretary and it was quite in order, the meeting said, unanimously and- with cheers, that Lieutenant Weston ‘should be the Secre- tary. . The President’s Address, President Dwight opened the meet- ing with a brief address, the earlier part of which was substantially in the following words: We are not assembled this evening to the end that we may by an effort, if possible, awaken within our minds the sentiment of patriotism. The senti- ment is characteristic of our Univer- sity. It has ever had an abiding-place here. It animated, at the very begin- ning, the souls of the ten ministers who met together and by a _ formal and solemn act laid the foundation of the institution for the well-being of the people, and it has come to us as an 1n- spiring force through all the successive generations from the earliest days of the eighteenth century to these latest days of the nineteenth. It manifested itself gloriously in the time of the Rev- olution, in 1775 to 1783, and equally so, nearly a hundred years afterwards, in the period of the Civil War. After a similar manner it has moved members of our own body to-day to devote them- selves. to the country’s service, and it moves the hearts of those whom they leave behind them here to attend them on their way by their wishes and hopes, and by their prayers for their safety an success. Our meeting is not for the purpose of awakening the sentiment of love for our country, but to the end of giving formal expression to an ever- abiding sentiment through the presenta- tion of a gift to the Government at this critical hour. We are not assembled—again I would say—that we may discuss with one another the possibility of our offering such a gift, or that we may devise of consider some plan by which we may,
