Graduation Address

"Hon. O.S. Crocket Advises U.N.B. Class of 1928" Daily Gleaner (17 May 1928); Alumni Bulletin 6, 2 (20 June 1928): 13-14. (UA Case 67, Box 1)

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Graduating Class:

You have today achieved the ambition which as possessed you since you entered upon your different courses of study as undergraduates of this institution and received your coveted degrees some in arts, some in science and some in law.

These degrees much as you have reason to prize them, are but badges indicating that you have passed all your examinations and attained to that standard of education which the University of New Brunswick prescribes for their bestowal.

The great thing is the education which you have acquired and the resulting enlargement and enlightenment of your minds and souls, if that education has not entirely failed of its purpose, for this latter is the true end of all sound university education.

Well Equipped

Your Alma Mater hopes and believes she is sending you out into the active life of the world, well equipped mentally and morally, not only to make your way in whatever vocations you may choose to follow, but to render effective service for the general welfare of your country and your fellow men.

See to it that you do not disappoint her.

Different vocations demand different qualities and temperaments, but resolution, diligence and prudence are essential factors of success in all alike, whether you go to the area of finance, journalism, industry, or commerce or to that of the learned professions, or with whatever native genius you may be endowed.

In whatever field of activity you cast your lot, take care that you start right. Honest, faithful application to your work, from the beginning, is the easiest and surest road to success in every walk of life. Early mistakes and failures may be retrieved, but only at the most exacting cost.

Diligence

Diligence, which is but another name for honest, faithful application, comprehends promptness, punctuality, concentration, perseverance and care, but does not necessarily involve drudgery or slavish toil, or exclude healthful and legitimate recreation.

Indeed, the latter forms a necessary complement to the former. Recreation provided always it be clean and healthful will sharpen your diligence, while diligence, with the satisfying sense of having achieved something worth while during your business or working hours, will in turn add zest to your recreation.

Neither does diligence in your own vocation, whatever it may be, bar you from other wholesome interests which will keep you in touch with your fellow men and women, broaden your vision ands stimulate you to even greater effort in your whole life work.

Lord Beaverbrook

Our own Lord Beaverbrook, to whose unrivaled munificence, in association with his late lamented beautiful and gifted wife, the cause of higher education in his old home province, and this university in particular, is so deeply indebted notwithstanding that he never had the advantage of a university education himself, has furnished in his own career an example of all round success which had rarely if ever been surpassed. By dint of native genius, fostered and developed by persistent, tireless and well directed energy, he has attained a position of such influence and power in the British Empire as few men within the Empire have ever enjoyed.

In his own book, entitled Success, written and first published in 1921, Lord Beaverbrook emphasizes well directed industry as the great predominant factor of business success. This is another name for well directed diligence, with all that it imports, and is born of resolution which if health and bodily vigor is given to you, is as His Lordship says, capable of breaking down any and every bar to success. Although describing industry as the most potent handmaiden of success, he makes it clear that moderate diversion and amusement and a knowledge of men and affairs are not only not incompatible with diligence but are a most helpful and, indeed, an indispensable stimulant to it. For instance, speaking of health as the foundation of both industry and judgment he makes the striking statement: "The future lies with the people who will take exercise, and not too much exercise. Athleticism may be hopeless as a career, but as a drug it is invaluable;" and again he says: "A life of sheltered study does not allow a boy to learn the hard facts of the world – and business is concerned with reality."

Agreeable Occupation

Don’t imagine, therefore when you are exhorted to diligence, that you are being advised to a dull, monotonous existence, without relaxation or recreation or contact with men and affairs in the days of your youth and vigor.

On the contrary, you will find, if you resolve to acquire it and make it part of yourself at the outset of your career, that it will soon convert that might otherwise be dull and laborious toil into the most congenial and agreeable occupation. You will make easy what would otherwise be hard and accomplish the tasks of each succeeding day and week and month and year with every increasing facility and efficiency. Then you will love and take pride in your work. This itself does not ensure success, but is indeed itself success.

Don’t get discouraged if your first endeavors fail. Stick at it with steadfast purpose, and you will overcome every obstacle and win out in the end. In the practical affairs of life, fair natural ability, reinforced by resolution and diligence, is a more valuable asset than natural brilliance without resolution and diligence, and will outstrip it every time.

All this, of course, presupposes a regard for truth and honour, for, without that enduring success can never be attained in any department of life.

Duty and Service

It is not, however, only to the development of your faculties for the pursuit of your own worldly prosperity that your education here has been directed, but it has been directed more especially to the development of character and the creation of high ideals of duty and service to your country and mankind, and if it has achieved its full purpose, you will, all of you, now go out into life looking higher than to your own material success, important as that always is.

Proper Use of Wealth

High ideals, of course, are not confined to university bred men and women, as the careers of Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Strathecona, Lord Mount Stephen, Sir William MacDonald, Sir Mortimer David and other great Canadian philanthropists so strikingly show. It I, indeed, one of the most significant and refreshing signs of these materialistic and pleasure seeking times that so much of the world’s wealth, which might otherwise have been dissipated, has fallen into the hands of keen, discriminating, generous and magnanimous men, who are applying it in every increasing amounts to educational, religions and philanthropic purposes for the advancement of all the higher interest of life and the general welfare of mankind. The gather of wealth is only to be depreciated when it becomes an obsession, rooted in greed and selfishness or in vanity. It is not money, but the love of money in this sense, that is condemned as the root of all evil.

"To catch Dame Fortune’s golden smile,
Assiduous wait upon her;
And gather gear by every wile
That’s justified by honour.
Not for to hide it in a hedge
Nor for a train attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."

Is the way Robert Burns put it – Robert Burns, described by Sir James Barrie, in his memorable rectorial address at Saint Andrew’s University, Scotland, in 1922, as the greatest Scotsman that every lived, who, though, writing himself down a failure, could make things new for the gods themselves, and , though struggle all his life against penury and want, achieved immortality.

Character

After all, character, which is the outgrowth of the mind and soul, is the essential thing which will determine your destiny. These are the repositories of all your instincts and aspirations, and, according as these instincts and aspirations are nourished and exercised so will they mature. If wholesomely, they will point upwards; if otherwise, downwards. Your Alma Mater has done her best to point them all to fine issues. Look well to it, when you go out into the noise and speed and bustle of these noisy, speedy, bustling times that you don’t lose the direction she has given you.

A few years ago I found among my father’s papers a sheet of University of New Brunswick paper, of foolscap size, typewritten with typical Scottish economy on both sides, from top to bottom. It bore at the top the University of New Brunswick crest, clearly embossed, with its motto "Sapere Aude," and over this a penciled note in my father’s hand: "read to me by Dr. Jack shortly before his death." This at once interested me, and I read the faded typewriting, though with no small difficulty in consequence of frequent handling having split the sheet at its middle fold and of that honest spirit of Scottish thrift, which sought to save this public institution one sheet of its best stationary. I was surprised it was typewritten. I found it to be a copy of some extracts from an address delivered by James Russell Lowell at Harvard University, in 1886, on The New Education – extracts which it would appear from what I have just said, deeply impressed the highly cultured mind of Dr. Brydone Jack, the honoured head of this institution from 1860-1885.

Spirit of the Age

I have preserved this paper as a thing of value, but there is only one thought I have now time to give from it. It is about the necessity of keeping an eye on what is so glibly called The Spirit of the Age. The Spirit of the Age, said this great American scholar, poet, essayist and diplomatist, in this address of 42 years ago, "may be after all only a finer name for the mischievous goblin known to our forefathers as Puck. I have seen several spirits of the age in my time, of very different voices and guide in very different directions but unanimous in their propensity to land us in the mire at least."

We are now completing the first decade following the conclusion of the Great War – a decade of so-called reconstruction, which ahs given us a Spirit of the Age of a most dazzling plumage, though begotten of the unrest and confusion into which the world was thrown by the unprecedented devastation of that fearful scourge. This new Spirit of the Age would cast aside everything that has come down to us from the past, and embrace and adopt anything and everything that was new, regardless of the lessons of history or the dictates of reason. Wholesome rules of life and conduct, long and well tried principles of government and law, and even the most sacred standards of religions faith, would disappear from the face of the earth. If it had its way, not because they are wholesome and well tried and sacred, but simply because they are not new and of its own making. Novelty, speed, extravagance, ostentation, superficiality, materialism, transient pleasure and sensuality are its favorite goddesses. Happily, a wiser and saner world is already turning again to the old well springs of stability, prudence, truth and spirituality, the only reliable sources of sound, well balanced progress and true and lasting happiness.

Watch, therefore, at all times the Spirit of the Age, and, if you find that it menaces those higher and nobler things which make life worth while and with which it has been your Alma Mater’s aim to inspire you; set yourselves against it with all your might.

Never before have there been grander opportunities for trained minds of conviction and courage.

As Sir James Barrie told the graduates and undergraduates of Old Saint Andrew’s in the address I have already referred to, "There are glorious years lying ahead of you if you only choose to make them glorious."