Graduation Address

"Twenty-Fifth Reunion of Class of 1943 - Alumni Orator Expects No Utopia But Better World" Daily Gleaner (13 May 1943): 5. (UA Case 67, Box 1) Note: The Daily Gleaner mistakenly named Hauck the Alumni orator, when he actually delivered the Graduation address.

It is a very great honor to be given an honorary degree by the University of New Brunswick. When your President wrote to tell me of the University Senate's invitation, I replied in all sincerity that "no honor could mean more to me, for no cause has been dearer to my heart than the promotion of understanding and friendship between two peoples of our two countries." The pleasure of this occasion is heightened for me because I can now call myself an honorary alumnus of the University over which my good friend, President MacKenzie, so ably presides.

The other day I ran across a document that greatly interested me. It has, I think, some significance for this occasion. You will recall how in the latter part of the eighteenth century the Loyalists who had come here from the rebellious colonies joined with the already settled citizens in demanding the establishment of schools. Petitions were again and again sent to Sir Guy Carleton and to the British Government praying for the benefits of education. Finally out of these efforts this University of New Brunswick came into being. In one of those petitions Doctor Inglis, later the Bishop of Nova Scotia, and the Reverend Charles Odell wrote as follows:

The founding of a college or seminary of learning in a liberal plan, where youth may receive a virtuous education and can be qualified for the learned professions, is, we humbly conceive, a measure of the greatest consequence ... If such a seminary is not established the inhabitants will not have the means of educating their sons at home, but will be under the necessity of sending them for that purpose either to Great Britain or Ireland, which will be attended with an expense that few can bear, or else to some of the States of this continent where they will be sure to imbibe principles that are unfriendly to the British constitution.

After the lapse of nearly two centuries you and I can to-day look back with understanding and sympathy to those on both sides of the line who regarded education as a means of protection of one people against another. Happily that day has passed. No longer is any such protection needed. Now we have come to a time when education, more than any other influence will join and hold our two nations together in a unity of spirit and a common devotion to truth.

The Universities of Canada and of the United States have been, now are, and must continue to be the most powerful agencies for the defeat of prejudice and for the gracious victory of good will. Of all the universities on this continent there are not two others that reflect in so many ways the same aims and purposes; that work under conditions so similar, as the University of New Brunswick and the University of Maine. For these reasons they have in a peculiar degree both the privilege and the responsibility of making ever stronger the bonds of friendship between our nations.

In the greetings and the felicitations of this occasion it is not possible to be unaware of the heavy weight that rests upon our wartorn world. This is, indeed, no ordinary Encaenia.

Your country has gloriously and effectively been engaged in this titanic struggle for over three years. Its effects are now reaching into the life of every individual on earth. They have come upon you. They have changed your college life and your plans for the immediate future. Your University like all other institutions has enlisted in the service. You, too, are to be enlisted, if not in an armed service then in some other activity where your talents and training will count. For many of you, the roads you will take after you leave this campus will not be the ones you would have chosen in times of peace. Where you go, what you do, until the victory is won, will be indicated by the needs of your country and on the behalf of the great purposes for which the United Nations fight. I know that those who have had the privilege of close association with you have complete confidence in you and in the parts you will play in the critical years that lie ahead.

Make no mistake about it. Together we are going to win this war. We shall win it because of the virtue of our common cause. We shall win it because we are ready to give all we have to the winning. We shall win it because in the youth of the United Nations, whether from field or shop or school, there is a generation that will not let go an inheritance of liberty; that will not forfeit the fruits of a civilization produced by centuries of sacrifice and toil. My first words to you, then, are words of faith and trust that the outcome is not in doubt.

In times like these when event crowds so closely upon event, when the issues of the moment are so urgent, so compelling, so dramatic, time loses its perspective and there almost seems to be neither past nor future. But I want to remind you that not one year, not one decade, no matter how crowded or difficult it may be, comprises all of life for you. It is not just a year or two of war that await you, but many years that reach far beyond. I should not be truthful if I should try to tell you that those following years are to be carefree and easy ones, that after a truce or peace is signed all will be well with the world. As a matter of fact, I do not believe that such a world would interest you very much. Indeed this chaos of war may be followed by a peace itself chaotic with unsolved problems, that will challenge to the utmost knowledge, ingenuity, and patience.

For a few minutes I ask you to take with me a brief journey into the past. When I graduated from college the First World War was already providing the terrible prelude to this still more terrible drama that has now followed. We called it the World War and we described it as the war that was to end wars. We see now how incorrect that term "World War" was, and we tragically realize that it was decidedly not a war to end all war. But now there is a war that in very truth is world war - and one - yes - I dare to say it - in spite of doubt and all misgivings - it can and must be made a war that will indeed end war. For the highest hope of mankind to-day is that somehow you and your contemporaries all over the world will approach the problems of peace with a firm purpose to control the current of events that might lead to another war.

But you ask, "Didn't the Allies of that war enter the post-war period with the same high hopes for the future?" And you add, without waiting for the answer, "Now look at the mess we are in again." No, we must admit that our hopes were not realized. But we did try. During the past twenty-five years, determined efforts were made to outlaw war. There was failure but that failure was not fundamentally due to a lack of idealism, but rather because of a lack of realism. We came, all of us, to the end of that last conflict with a burning hatred of war. Out of that hatred came the stern determination that such an evil should never come to the world again. Never must there be the awful waste of materials, the untold physical suffering, the misery and the cruelty that that war had visited upon the people of the Western world.

And so, disarmament conferences were held, pacifist societies were organized, and peace movements were promoted upon the campuses of colleges and universities all over the Western world. Those in the United States who advocated the maintenance of the R.O.T.C. in schools and colleges, and those who plead for adequate support of the Army and the Navy were called "War Mongers."

But at the very time that this crusade for peace was going on in some parts of the world, including your country and mine, something entirely different was taking place in Axis countries. Here, those in power were building for war and not for peace. They were constructing states which put war at the very center of their of their industrial and political structures. Preparation for war became the keynote of their education. It was the thinly veiled, yet often deceptive, central principle of their foreign policy. When these countries became strong in their military equipment, they violated agreements, they flouted international law. To them treaties became only "scraps of paper."

The rest of the world protested these attitudes and these acts. But no nation was willing or indeed prepared to do more than to protest. "We shall risk not one ship, not one dollar, to hold the aggressors in check," that was the attitude of the political leaders, an attitude unhappily reflected by the people, who argued that after all Manchuria, Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia are a long way off, and that vast oceans protect our shores and make us safe. So we continued, all of us, to do business with Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito protesting at times as they wrung concessions from defenceless people. It was realized too late that the appetites of aggressors bent on conquest and subjugation are insatiable.

For my part I now firmly believe that the costly lesson has been learned. In this shrinking world of ours no nation, no continent, however seemingly protected by geography, or however rich in material resources, can alone defend itself against an armed aggressor. In the realization of that one fact lies the hope of a lasting peace. We must not again miss the opportunity to insure that pace. I believe that we shall not. To maintain world order there must be set up machinery for collective action among the nations. Mere treaties and agreements upon principles will not be enough. There must be an international court with authority to hear cases and to issue binding decisions. And beyond that there must be some form of international police to see that accepted principles are applied and that international order is preserved.

"Is there some hope," you ask, "that these things will be done?" They must be done, or else we must be ready to pay the penalty of another war. And they can be done. This is not just a fight among nations. It is a conflict of ideologies. The thirty-one nations that are ranged on one side are united against aggression because they want to be free and secure. They desire that all peoples should live in peace and security with liberty to pursue their own ways so long as those ways do not trespass upon others. Above all, they intend that never in the future shall it be possible for an irresponsible dictator to bring havoc to mankind. Upon these principles, these intentions and these hopes they are united. Already the co-operative projects in which they are now engaged give promise that the United Nations can and will work together after the war to uphold a new world based on justice, freedom, and good will.

A great Chinese philosopher recently wrote as follows:

The bottom has dropped out of our human universe. The structure can no longer hold: something must break. Out of the shattered fragments of modern knowledge a new world of human values must be built all over again, and the East and the West must build it together.

Your graduates of 1943, for our Western world, will be privileged to share in the planning and in the building of this new world of human values.

As we now hopefully look forward, we are reminded that after 1918 there was in the United States and elsewhere in the world as well, a great desire to go back to things as they were. That desire was expressed in the slogan, "Let's get back to normalcy." Today I am sure that no thoughtful man among you or among us would want to go back to the normalcy of the past twenty-five years. I do not mean to suggest that the last quarter-century did not bring us many achievements that have enriched our civilization. Inventions and discoveries have produced many things that have advanced the welfare of the race. I predict even greater achievements in the next quarter-century in spite of the present horrible waste of material resources. The productive capacity of our continent in technology and agriculture will be greater than ever before. Through research, now dealing almost exclusively with improving the implements of war, new applications of science that will benefit mankind in many fields are being discovered. The advances being made in medicine, nutrition, and food processing will greatly increase physical well being. Improvements in methods of communication and transportation now being developed will add to the pleasure and comfort of everyone.

But "man doe not live by bread alone." What about the outlook for spiritual progress during the next quarter-century? I do not believe that we shall forget the great principles for the defence of which lives, fortunes, and sacred honor have been pledged. We are not fighting for territory or for power. Our countries are fighting against the enslavement of the individual by the state. They are fighting against inhumanity, injustice, greed, and cruelty. They are making great sacrifices to keep these great principles as the basis of our relations one with another. Yet when the fighting stops there will still be victories to be won over isolationism, defeatism, and selfishness. In another great crisis, Lincoln said, "In any future great national trial, compared with men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good." But Lincoln also said, "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?"

In the last war there was a parody of the "Long, Long Trail," in these words, "There'll be lots of drills and fighting until our dreams all come true." Here we are drilling and fighting again, once more taking to the battlefields and the issues which we had hoped to settle by better means. In our fight and in the days ahead we must keep undimmed our dreams of civilization as we want it to be. When the battle is won there will be much wreckage to clear away and much rebuilding to do. But it is going to be a free world - not a slave world dominated by a Hitler, a Tojo, or a Mussolini. So we shall have the opportunity to keep on building and rebuilding, making the mistakes that democracies make, but holding on, taking courage with every forward step.

You who in a few minutes are to become alumni of the University of New Brunswick may be asking, "But what does all of this mean to us?" we are but a tiny microcosm in this great and infinitely complex world. What can possibly be our relationship to problems and situations so vast? My answer to those questions is simply this. It is upon what you and your generation will think and do in these now pending years that the whole issue hangs. On your twenty-fifth reunion the world will be well advanced on the road to permanent peace or it will be once more putting on the armor of war. In coming to this University, and in remaining here, you have committed yourselves to responsibilities which you will find it hard to deny or to avoid. You have here gained some proficiency in one or another of the technical fields. You have acquired some knowledge of the humanities and, therefore, you know that wisdom and understanding are essential to the solution of any problem, individual or social. You have expanded your friendships and have thereby learned that human relations play an important part in the activities of life. You have come to a keener sense of values and have acquired the ability to discriminate more quickly and more certainly between truth and error. You have been witness here to the fact that among teachers and students there are conflicting views, honestly held. In consequence, the spirit of tolerance has grown within you. If you have been challenged to modify you own views, you have found that you must have the moral and intellectual stamina to stand your ground. You have acquired in this place a deeper understanding of what it means to be a citizen of Canada - and a citizen of the world as well and you go from this place with a firmer purpose to enrich by you words and deeds both these relationships.

You have sensed better the fact that no part of the human family can without offence or with truth claim to be better or more deserving than another. Above all you have learned that the road to world fellowship leads through mutual trust, confidence, and good will.

Every one of these gains will, wherever applied, be gains for society and for the world. Be assured the individual does count. We cannot penetrate the future to know where and how you will discharge the obligations that your education and your talents suggest. But whatever the special service may be or wherever it may be given, your University, this Province of New Brunswick and your country will look to you for examples of intellectual and moral leadership that will carry to more complete fulfilment the principles for which a war is being fought. You can and I believe you will give to the building of a lasting peace the same determination and loyalty you now give to the tasks of war.

A hundred and fourteen years ago on the occasion of the granting of the Royal Charter to the University of New Brunswick, and the laying of the corner stone, Sir Howard Douglas eloquently set forth not only the purposes of this institution that was to be likewise those principles of education which are of universal application. Said he:

The greatest blessing that can be bestowed upon man, next to the divine blessing, is the blessing of a good, sound, virtuous and useful education. When the human endeavor is well and properly applied to this great end, it cannot fail to be attended by that, without which no human endeavor availeth. May our endeavors here and those labors which are to succeed to be ours be eminently such as to merit the favor of God, secure the estimation, and promote the best interests of these, His people.

And, he added,

Firm may this institution ever stand and flourish - firm in the liberal constitution and royal foundation on which I have this day instituted it, enlarging and extending its material form and all its capacity to do good.

Upon the foundation that was then laid has been built an institution whose good works are varied and excellent. You, the members of this class are the heirs of a worthy past. But you are more than that. You, with your college-mates all over the Western world, are a guarantee that light, and truth, and liberty shall, under peace, be advanced among men. A quarter-century hence you will meet here for your twenty-fifth reunion. There will be no Utopia then, but I am confident that you will be living in a decent and orderly world. When you return for that occasion you will come with a wealth of experience to share with one another. There will be stories of service in far-off lands, of hardships endured, and of thrilling acts of heroism and devotion. How great will be your satisfaction then - to have had a part in this great project that now awaits completion, the restoration of freedom to the millions now enslaved and the establishments of a secure and lasting basis of future peace.

May the clouds of war be soon dispelled, may the years that follow be fine and rich and may your reunion of 1968 be a happy one.