7 ATL § ATCO AND WW ey
THE ALUMNI DINNER.
The Note of Patriotism Frequently
Sounded—Minister Woodford
Present—Some of the
Speeches, .
President Dwight opened the speak-
ing at the Alumni dinner by calling at-
tention to the evidence before all of the
need of a new hall. The smoky,
sweltering crowd, two hundred of them
on their feet, appreciated the point.
The President said that if there was
not a new College hall by the bi-cen-
tennial, the Yale spirit has departed.
He inierred from what he heard of the
afternoon before and from what he
heard the night before, that the spirit
was still here. The President urged
all to take hold of the Bi-centennial.
When the President proposed as the
first sentiment of the afternoon “The
President of the United States,’ of
course all the hall was tumultuous
sound, When the President called the
audience to their feet and proposed the
Yale cheer for the President, Mr. Cur-
tiss started the Brek-ek-ek-ex, which
was given with a whoop, and which
was followed by the hip-hip-hooray led
by Samuel Scoville.
Hon. Charles Andrews, ex-Chief Jus-
tice of the New York Court of Appeals,
said: To me, the scene at the Chapel
this morning was an inspiring one.
The sight of six hundred young men
just entering into the activities of life
with all their possibilities of thought
and action, was of the extremest 1n-
terest. The speaker thought it of prime
importance that the great advantages
of an institution like Yale should be
kept open for the average man. Genius
needed only opportunity. The wealth
of greatest privilege should be showered
upon the average man. ‘The speaker
declared that what he had seen that
day was in line with what the country
had witnessed for the last few weeks
and negatived the claim of a decadence
of national spirit and virtue.
Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, who was
very enthusiastically received, was in-
troduced as the man who had been en-
gaged in building castles in Spain.
The General had found the distin-
guishing trait of the Yale man, that
when he starts out to do a thing he
does it. “Yale gets there—except when
she rows Cornell on the Thames. I
suppose I say that because for forty
years I have been a trustee of Cornell.
If our College at Ithaca is forging
ahead in any direction, it is because it
had Andrew D. White for a president,
who has made another Yale, Yale re-
born, in the State of New York.. I
would gladly speak of my experiences
in Spain for ten weeks, if the State De-
partment had not decided that I was
still the minister to Spain. In that case
I must prove my office by showing that
I can be the still minister to Spain. If
I deserve a tithe of the honor that has
come to me, it is because I was work-
ing under the direction of a chief at
Washington who was determined to
go to every honorable length to the
end that peace might be preserved, and
who, now that war has come, is bent
on striking such blows as will quickly
bring again peace.”
BISHOP BREWSTER RESPONDS.
Rev. Chauncey Bunce Brewster, ’68,
Bishop Coadjutor, who received his de-
gree of Doctor of Divinity that after-
noon, had at first some little fun with
the letters of his new diploma. He re-
ferred to his last visit to one of the
ships of the Navy and his interest in
examining the reports made on the
condition in which the sailors who had
been given shore leave had returned to
the boat. Beside one name he saw the
lettecs C. S., and was told that meant
clean and sober. Against another name
he saw the imposing letters D. D. The
translation of this degree for the sea-
man was drunk and dirty.
Bishop Brewster spoke of the im-
pression made on his mind by the sight
of forty young men in army blue going
into Battell Chapel that morning to re-
ceive their diplomas from the Univer-
sity of Yale. It proved again to him
that the manhood of Yale was built of
the stuff of honor and simplicity and
courage and that the life of Yale was
full of the best spirit of the nation. The
sight of those young men in the Chapel
that morning made him feel that old
Yale was still young Yale, that her
blood was as ever ready to leap to the
call of a nation rising to a noble anger’s
height. Bishop Brewster said _ that
when he looked to the future, with its
altogether new and untried problems,
he counted on seeing the men who were
educated at this University rise to its
opportunities, face its danvers with a
sober courage and meet its problems
with the spirit of educated manhood.
Col. Jacob L. Greene, president of
the Mutual Life Insurance Company,
of Hartford, who had received his de-
gree that morning as M.A., was next
called out by President Dwight. He
spoke as follows:
Col. Greene’s Specch.
Mr. Chairman, none of the ordinary
and conventional expressions of appre-
ciation and acknowledgment can con-
vey the grateful sense with which one
whose daily labors call him too much
apart from the ways of scholarship, and
into the currents of secular activities,
comes to receive adoption from this
great nourishing mother of men, and
to be named with the name of her
great family, whose members, trained
in her ways, filled with her inspira-
tions, grounded in her learning and
exercised into wisdom by her disci-
pline, have in every part of this land,
through all its history, and in every
vocation of high manhood, borne
the fruit of their birthright to their
mother’s high praise. For, the recogni-
tion of the sane and thoughtful of one’s
generation always comes as a sign of
hope that at least some of his lines of
sight have been clear; that some of his
attempts, however slight, have been
conceived in truth of purpose, and that
he has at least been in sympathy with
the builders of their time. To every
watchful man trying to bear his part in
these pregnant days, it is being made,
how clear, that all our past is but the
seed of a near opening future; that all
its good to us is but the substance of
broader duty for us, the bud of blos-
somings, yet undreamed; that the glad-
ness of his toil must be the prevision of
that he may never see; its abundant
reward must be the growing harvest
for those to whom he will never be
known; the glory of it must be the
knowledge that every true effort of his
will be always repeated by true men in
all the coming ages, and so may rise
in ever widening cycles of better and
more fruitful operation. Therefore the
call of the mother’s voice and the touch
of her approving hand bring him the
reviving sense the laborer has, who lifts
himself for a moment from his toil,
straightens the bowed back, fills his
cramped lungs with the sweet air, feels
his pulses all unbound, and lets the
broad, benignant light flood his eyes
and soul. He is oriented anew; and his
new fellowship gives him the elbow-
touch of those who march in disciplined
strength to the new conquests of man
over himself.
THE WORD TO GO FORWARD.
For this is what we are seeing to-
day. The spirit of a new time is call-
ing in the hearts of our soberest and
strongest, and pointing to the yet un-
defined work this people must do for
the whole brotherhood of humanity.
They have heard the unexpected word
to “go forward” out of our long self-
content, to issues whose divinely
ordered event is all unseen; though “in
to-day already walks to-morrow.”
It is reported of one of Hobson’s
heroes that as they were parting on
their desperate errand, being asked of
his hope of return, he replied: “I guess
we stand a fair show of getting out;
but they can’t stop us going in.” No
word yet uttered better speaks the pres-
ent spirit and attitude of the hitherto
unwilling American people toward the
new and surprising duties of the hour
with its unknown burden of labor,
waiting, and may be of suffering. And
it was not the speech of rashness, vain-
glory, or of headlong venture. Rather
was it the simple recognition of the
plain facts: a work to be done, one’s
own qualification therefor creating duty,
the uncertainty of the issue, but the cer-
tainty that it must be undertaken and
carried to the uttermost of single-
hearted strength and skill.
But if we, as a people, are being
called to a new mission of instruction
and leadership, is there no new re-
sponsibility upon us for our own con-
ditions? Are we realizing our ideals,
the visions our fathers had? If we are
to show new ways to men, are all our
ways the best we can show them? If
we call men to follow us, who are lead-
ing us? If we call them to high self-
mastery, who, in our half vexed, half
amused, half ashamed complaisance, are
our masters: the true leaders, the in-
structors and inspirers of men, or the
traders in their ignorances, indolences,
vices, and infirmities? How completely
fit have we made our own civilization
and its methods to regenerate and revi-
vify the old and worn-out fields?
We need to address ourselves to our
civic duties with a new comprehension
and a quickened conscience and a sober
resolve. For it is no longer the heri-
tage of freedom for ourselves alone
which we are left to carelessly enjoy;
but a heritage of new labors to a new
freedom for others. We, standing at
the divine disposal, are, apparently, be-
ing called, not to conquest nor to em-
pire for the sake of empire or of gain,
but to the ministers and guardians of
a new life for unblest peoples; and the
light of the rising of our protecting
power breaks in Dewey’s gun-fire on
the eastern edge of a world that waits.
And to whom may it look for light and
leading, for knowledge, for wisdom, for
spiritual truth in life and the living
power of it, if not to the men nurtured
by all the treasures of these things, at
this venerable foundation, by this faith-
ful alma mater, whereby she makes her
meek ones the strong inheritors of the
earth that is to be, and that can be,
under God, only at the willing hands
of such as they?
HON. H. C. ROBINSON SPEAKS.
When the Hon. Henry C. Robinson,
53, of Hartford, was brought to his feet
by the President, he was told that he
could speak on anything except the
Class of Fifty-Three; to which he re-
plied by saying that the President had
taken from him the best and most in-
spiring theme. The inadequacy and
discomfort of Alumni Hall, the speaker
said, were continually thrown at every
Yale man or friend of Yale. Yale could
answer as did the man with a cold,
to whom his friends sympathetically
said: .“That .1s .a< very bad cough.”
“Yes,” he replied, “it is a very bad one,
but it is the best I have got.”
Mr. Robinson devoted some time to
developing the idea for the benefit of
the graduating class, that virtue was its
own reward. This he did by repeating
the composition of a little girl on this
theme. It described a poor young man
in love with the daughter of a rich
candy merchant, who refused him her
hand on account of his poverty. To
him in his despondency the tempter
came and said “Here is $25. Go down
street and get drunk.” The young man
took the money and went down street.
At the door of the saloon he turned
around, stamped his foot and said to
the tempter: “I will not go in. Take
back your cursed gold.” And then he
went home and before he had walked a
block he picked up on the sidewalk a
purse containing a million dollars.
And then he went.to the candy mer-
chant, and he said ‘‘Take my daughter”
and they lived happily ever afterward.
“My friend, General Woodford, thinks
that Cornell beat Yale because he has
been a trustee up there for forty years.
He hasn’t got ahold of the right end of
this at all. There is a fatal combination
against Yale when she rows the crew
from Ithaca. On the diamond or on
the football field or on the track, the
blue may yet be invincible, but when
Yale runs up against the red and white
of Cornell on the blue waters of the
Thames, she meets a combination that
nothing in the heavens or on the earth
or in the waters under the earth can
vanquish.”
Minister Woodford, by his demeanor,
seemed willing to accept the amend-
ment.
Mr. Robinson dwelt on the record of
Yale in every patriotic crisis of the
nation. In the Revolution, of a total
of less than a thousand graduates, two
hundred and fifty of her sons were in
the war. She sent eight hundred of
her sons to the Rebellion. That day
forty young dragoons had come to her
for their degrees and in the Light Ar-
tillery of Connecticut; Troop A of New
York, the Rough Riders and every-
where, her sons were wearing her coun-
try’s uniform. Mr. Robinson spoke of
the scars of the Civil War, but asked
who could now find any trace of them.
No engineer was keen enough to dis-
cover that mythical Mason and Dixon
line. The Vermont man Dewey and
the Georgia man Hobson were the
heroes of the day.
Mr. Chariton T. Lewis, following Mr.
Robinson, said:
Speech of Mr. Lewis.
I feel helpless before this occasion.
Who can worthily express the senti-
ments it suggests? These rare meet-
ings, stepping stones with vast chasms
between, on the rugged way of Iife,
kindle feelings too broad and deep for
public words. Hence commonly the
overburdened heart seeks refuge in
trifles, and all that is uttered here is but
the ripples and foam on the surface of
a fathomless sea. “The shallows mur-
mur, but the deeps are dumb.’ Nor
can I at all agree with my classmate,
who has just said that these meetings
belong to the young men of Yale.
These gatherings belong rather to us,
their elders, in a sense which they can-
not yet appreciate; and are ours more
and more as our numbers grow smaller,
and as the multitude of those fallen
silent by the way, and whom we meet
most peculiarly here, is recruited from
among us.
From yet another utterance, which
you greeted with loud approval a
moment ago, | must beg indulgence
partly to dissent; that which so elo-
quently attempted to characterize the
Yale spirit. To me the supreme dis-
tinguishing note of this Yale com-
munity, in contrast with human society
at large, is something other and better
than even that get-there-ativeness
which my friend so impressively de-
scribed. It is that here a man is, so to
speak, weighed without his clothes;
that, for all purposes of esteem, influ-
ence and achievement in the Univer-
sity, he is himself alone, and the trap-
pings of wealth, rank, birth, the ac-
cidents of life and circumstances, go
for as near nothing as is possible
anywhere on earth. When young men —
come together here, it is much as if a
new race were created and started in a
new world, each member with his own
faculties and capacities, and with
nothing besides. In such a _ society
wisdom and strength come to the front;
the high places are filled by merit. I
know not any community’ in which, so
completely as at Yale, it is realized in
life, that
“The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gold, for a’ that.”
God grant the day be far distant when
the fixed law that worth makes the man
shall be changed or modified in old
Yale!
This reflection is forced on us now by
the familiar fact that the great political
community, our common country which
we love, is not controlled by the same
principle. In political strife the high
places of power are reached, less by
those fittest to fill them, than by those
most dexterous to win them. The abil-
ity to manage a canvass, to control cau-
cuses, conventions and elections, is not
always, nor commonly, the same as the |
ability to govern and guide a nation.
Hence where politics flourish, states-
manship too often languishes; it is as
if the martinet drill-master were set to
do the work of Napoleon or of Grant.
A REVOLUTION NEEDED.
The elements of greatness everywhere
are wisdom, strength and opportunity;
and the happiest organized commun-
ity is that in which, as in the Uni-
versity, wisdom and strength are always
assured of their opportunity for dis-
play and exercise in its service. But
the essential failure of our democracy
hitherto, and its supreme danger for
the coming on of time, is that oppor-
tunity is so far closed to the best wis-
dom and strength; that its representa-
tive places are so largely filled by the
cunning and passion which but ape
these great qualities; that politicians
wield the weapons and sway the forces
of statesmen. The prime need of the
republic is a revolution which shall
open the way of fitness to all leadership,
and close the way to unfitness; which
shall link opportunity inseparably to
wisdom and strength.
How can this revolution be wrought?
How can the Yale spirit be extended
through the public life of the nation?
