Graduation Address

"Canada’s Business Needs College-Man, Says Speaker" Daily Gleaner (14 May 1937). (UA Case 67, Box 1)

Pledge of Loyalty

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

May I, at the outset, express my deep sense of gratitude for the honour which this ancient and renowned seat of learning has been pleased to bestow on me this afternoon. It is trite to say that a university, with a faith that is almost unparalleled, entrusts her honour and, in the deepest sense, her reputation to anew and larger group with each succeeding year. On behalf of myself and all my fellow recipients of degrees I should like to pledge to you, and through you to this revered institution of which you are the distinguished head, not only our loyalty but our determination that she shall in no way suffer hurt through any action of ours.

Canadian Business Calling

It is a great pleasure too, to have the privilege of addressing a few words to those who have completed work of such quality as has justified the university in setting the seal of its approval upon it. So, I am come to rejoice with you at the success which you have attained to bid you if you have found the academic way of life satisfying, not to stop longer than for refueling or other necessary delay, but to push forward along the shifting paths to still higher goals. But I have a word also for those who inclinations do not lie along these lines. Educationists, pretty well everywhere have learned that these heights are not the destination of everyone. Not everyone who has attained to the baccalaureate should be encouraged to proceed to the doctorate. This simply means that many of you can make a greater contribution, with greater satisfaction to yourselves and to your day, through investing your trained abilities in other activities. Canadian business needs, never more than now, young men and women capable of sound thinking, with a sense of social responsibility and the vision to discern clearly that unless all prosper there is no real progress. Business, both big and little, needs college-trained men and women, but only if along with that training there is to be found unshakable integrity, and the willingness to accept civic and social responsibility.

Old Times Recalled

Mention must be made, too, of the very tangible evidences of the continued good will of the people of New Brunswick and of other friends of the university. To one of the vintage let us say of 1900, the campus of to-day present a picture which is heartening in the extreme. Thirty and seven years ago "we sat where you sit" and it is my conviction now, as it was then, that so far as a university is concerned its worth is not to be measured by its princely endowments, the size and magnificence of its physical equipment, nor even by the numbers in its student body. Sound training, inspiration to service, personal influence of professors are still amongst the most prized possessions of the small college. The ravages of time have removed from these halls all those at whose feet we sat. There is a chapter in Ecclesiasticus of which Kipling was very fond. It begins "Let us now praise famous men." Do you know his poem "A School Song"?

"Let us now praise famous men
Men of little showing
For their work continueth,
And their work continueth,
Broad and deep continueth
Greater than their knowning.

"And we all praise famous me
Ancients of the College;
For the taught us common sense,
Tried to teach us common sense,
Truth and God’s own common sense
Which is more than knowledge.

"Wherefore praise we famous men
From whose bays we borrow—
They that put aside To-day—
All the joys of their To-day,
And with toll of their To-day
Brought for us To-morrow!"

Security and Adventure

And now the adventure is ended. To-morrow we being another. In the profession in which I work we hear a great deal about security of tenure. Security is undoubtedly very important but if you all knew that next week there was a job waiting which you might hold as long as you wished to say in it, a great deal of the zest of life would be gone. Your four years here should have put you in possession of that poise and balance which will enable you to estimate at their true value the relative merits of security and adventure. May I suggest some of the evidences of the possession of this balance of which I am thinking:

Self-Appraisal

(1) The ability to form a true estimate or picture of one’s self. Most of us deal more leniently with ourselves in our appraisals than when we are sizing up the neighbours. I am urging the same sort of objectivity that we use when making up our minds about others. This means ridding our mind of all illusions concerning ourselves, every notion that we are different from other people, that we are more beset, that we have been harshly dealt with and so have a license to be sorry for ourselves. If you can honestly say that you can stand off and look at yourself in the same detached manner that you habitually use with others, your university experience has been truly liberalizing. If not, you have an objective right to hand which will at once mark you as an educated person. When we have developed this capacity we are in a position to build an ambition picture commensurate with our abilities. Long before the University course is finished we know that there are certain lines in which we are destined never to shine. It has, on the other hand, revealed fields in which we are likely to be successful. Then we must consider whether these offer an opportunity in which to express ourselves, not only our aptitudes but our ideals, attitudes and desire to make our contribution to the general good—in other words, opportunities for a satisfying life. Any such ambition picture demands of us faith in ourselves, faith in others, and faith in the work on which we are embarking.

Emotional Control

(2) The next evidence should be emotional control. Considering the tremendous part which the emotions play in our lives it would seem that we have been very backward in attempting either to understand their physical relationship, or to train them until they are, in a considerable measure, under the control of the will. Everybody recognizes and admires the person who is so even of temper as to make it possible to predict his reaction beforehand, but few of us know how this stability was attained. Emotional instability has of course blighted many an otherwise successful career.

Truth or Falsity

(3) In the last place it seems to me that there should be evidence that we have developed some technique for testing the truth or falsity of a proposition. It should neither be possible to sell us magic nor should our minds be entirely impervious to new ideas. I am sure you have a much larger store of advice on hand than you could possibly, were you never so willing, put into practice. So I will not follow that lead, tempting as it always is to those of us who have seen more of life and flatter ourselves that we have learned something from it.

Envies Them Youth

Again I want to congratulate you and say that I envy you, your youth, your idealism, your high hopes. May the best of them be realized. Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind. Youth means temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old be deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Whether seventy or seventeen there is in every human heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars, and the star-like things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events: the unfailing childlike appetite for what is next, and the joy and the game of life. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hopes, as old as your despair.

In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage and power from the earth, from men and from the infinite, so long are you young. When the wires are all down, and the central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then you are grown old indeed.

Words From the Past

Thirty and seven years ago Chancellor Harrison, your predecessor, Sir, addressed the graduating class and closed with this quotation from an ancient Hebrew prophet: "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." I trust that some of you may hear and treasure these words as I have done throughout these years.