Graduation Address

"Address to the Graduating Class" University Monthly 40, 7 (May 1921): 201-205. (UA Case 67, Box 1)

I consider it a great honor to have been invited by the Chancellor to speak to you a few words on the day of your graduation. I do so with great pleasure as one of the Members of the Senate, and also because I had the privilege of serving our country overseas during the great war in common with many members of your class. In addition to this association I welcome any opportunity which brings me in closer touch with the student life and the work of this university, of which I am myself a graduate.

The history of your class embraces one of the most momentous periods in the history of the world. Four of you I know enlisted for overseas service at the commencement of the war. Indeed, your record of war service is a remarkable one, since eleven out of sixteen enlisted for service—all of you who were eligible. This record will be enduring and will ever be a source of pride and inspiration to the University and the students who follow you.

When your class history began in September of 1917 all the great nations of the world were at war, and most of them were entering upon their fourth year of the war. At that time the Allies faced the greatest dangers. The submarine menace was at its height, and there was no certainty that an adequate remedy had been found. While the year had seen the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadians, and later of the Messines Ridge by the British, the great French attack in the Champagne district had failed with tremendous loss of life, and French morale was at its lowest point. Early in the year Russia had fallen out of the conflict, the Americans had not yet landed in France any effective fighting force, and the German troops released from the Russian front were preparing to sweep down upon the Allies. In October followed the Italian disaster.

Before your first year was finished the great German offensive of 1918 was at its height. Even then, nearly at the end of the fourth year of war it was impossible to say which side would be victorious, or whether a victory on either side was possible. The call went out for more men, the age of conscription in Great Britain was raised to 55; the leader of the British House of Commons even announced that the Allies might have to evacuate the Channel Ports. In 1918 the Allies, however, were united under the single command of Marshal Foch. France, newly inspired by Clemenceau, the embodiment of the French war spirit, was resolved to conquer or perish. The British, with native doggedness, were determined to finish the job, and on the 18th day of July Marshal Foch made his great counter-thrust. The victory of the British and French in front of Amiens on the 8th of August made it possible to continue the offensive, with the result that victory succeeded victory until on the 11th of November, 1918, the Germans had been completely driven out of France, the British had once more regained Mons, the German army was demoralized, and Germany at the end of all her resources, had to accept the Allied terms for on armistice.

In your Sophomore year the Peace Conference assembled and in June of 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Then followed in your Junior and Senior years the great reconstruction period. Three of the greatest monarchies in the world had crumbled. Over six million men had been killed. More than thirty millions of men had borne arms. The map of Europe had been recast. In Russia the fearful experiment of Bolshevism succeeded revolution and is still going on.

More than all this, the relation of nation to nation and of class to class within the nations has undergone an immeasurable change as a result of the war.

Today will be a landmark in the life of each of you. It marks the close of your undergraduate years, and the beginning of your career in the wide, wide world.

Those of us who belonged to the Second Canadian Contingent were in great fear during the summer and fall of 1915 that if we did not at once get to France the war would have ended before our arrival. In the same way you may have regretted that your graduating day did not arrive before now. Yet the world is facing greater problems than ever before. It is indeed strange that nineteen hundred years after Christ we are not yet agreed upon the best form of government for civilized nations. We have as yet no means of stopping the waste of vast sums of money upon armaments, though we all realize that if half this money had been spent upon education and the propagation of Christianity, the necessity for armaments might have disappeared, and at least the world would be generations ahead of its present state of culture and civilization. We do not yet know how to provide an adequate means of living even for those of our population who are willing to work. We have not yet learned how to combine capital and labor in hearty cooperation to carry on our industries. With all of these problems the whole world is now confronted in a more menacing form than in any previous years of its history. In Canada we have in addition our own special problems. How shall we raise a revenue four times the pre-war budget without crippling industry and impoverishing our people? What are we going to do with our great national system of railways, the deficits on which are now swallowing up three-fourths of our pre-war revenue?

Coming down still nearer to home, we do not yet know what is the best method of government for a town or city, whether by a Board of Aldermen, a Commission or a Business Manager.

You will now have an opportunity to take part in the solution of all these problems.

A modern writer has said that education exists not for the individual, but for the community and the race. It exists to subdue the individual for the good of the world and his own ultimate happiness. In an age of individualism it is well to remember that we are but links in a chain extending from the past to the future; that we have a definite place in the history of the race and a definite duty to prosperity. Is that not the supreme lesson of the war that a great cause for the good of the race demands, justifies and ennobles the sacrifice of the individual.

It is therefore the duty of you who have been privileged to receive a college education to devote some of your time and energy to the solution of great national problems and the upbuilding of the country and community in which you live. Each of you will have to vote in Dominion, Provincial and Civic elections. It is your duty to use it, and use it intelligently. We believe the Democratic system of government to be the best yet devised, but it will inevitably fail unless the, educated members of the community take an active part in the selection of the men and women who are to represent them in the governing bodies, whether they be Civic, Provincial or Dominion. Better far, an enlightened autocracy than a government of the people by people who are incompetent or corrupt, for the benefit not of the people but of special classes or individuals. The fate of Germany has shown us also that education and culture with wrong ideals may be the worst form of vice. In a young country such as Canada we cannot have a large body of men, such as they have in Great Britain, freed from the necessity of earning their living, who can devote their lives to the public service. It is all the more necessary then, and the needs of the country demand, that those who have education should take a lively interest and an active part in all the machinery of government, which begins with the primaries in each parish, village, town or city in which delegates to conventions are chosen. Criticism of public men is cheap and for the most part unfair. No one has the right to criticise who has been too lazy or indifferent to see that better men are chosen.

For four years you have been receiving a higher education. Your study of languages and literature has taught you in the first instance to appreciate the exact meaning of words and their appropriate use, and secondly, the beauties of literary form. This should enable you to read with appreciation and discrimination the great thoughts of the great minds who have left us the heritage of good books. It is the first end of education to enable us to read with an exact knowledge of the meaning of words.

By your study of mathematics, physics and philosophy your logical faculties have been developed so that you may reason correctly from cause to effect and make correct deductions from given premises.

Those of you who are taking your degree in engineering and forestry have also acquired information of practical value on matters connected with those professions.

But primarily what your four years course here should give you is the capacity and ability to acquire further knowledge and deal intelligently with the new problems which you will meet in the course of your chosen career. It sometimes seems a matter of regret that our forefathers could not bequeath to us the knowledge and wisdom they managed to acquire in their allotted three score years or more. Could each generation begin their education equipped with the accumulated knowledge and experience of their predecessors, to what heights of intellectual and material achievements we might have attained. However, we know that each succeeding class as they come into college must learn anew the problems that puzzled their forefathers before them. The propositions of Euclid, the binomial theorem and quadratic equations they must learn for themselves. They must each spell out the great Caesar's Commentaries, and each Greek class in their turn must learn to read of the wanderings of the Greek army as related by Xenophen.

In the realm of physical science we do in a sense begin where our ancestors left off. The marvels of electricity as unfolded to you in your junior year, surpass all the knowledge of great geniuses of past ages on this subject, and Freshmen may know as much about gravitation as Sir Isaac Newton. And the search for truth still goes on. Nature continues to yield new secrets yearly to the persistent investigator. Our education continues each day and the undergraduate course marks but one phase of it. There are many things too which form a vital part of education and are not mentioned in the college curriculum.

We need in Canada today men and women who have a spirit of virile Canadianism. Let us be loyal to out King and Country, the community in which we live, the university in which we have been educated. Let us not be provincial, and by provincialism I mean that narrow vision which cannot see and desire to imitate the good in other countries and in other communities; that spirit which breeds petty jealousy and selfishness. Let us always be ready to admit and appreciate superiority where it exists, and ever seek to take advantage of and bring to our own country and community those things in which we find others to excel.

In casting up the results of the war it is easy to count the losses —the loss of life, the bereavement and sorrow of families, the loss of property, the huge waste of money. But in making a just account we should also add up some gains: A fresh demonstration that chivalry is not dead; that the ancient spirit of bravery is as wide-spread and as noble as ever it was with our hardy ancestors; a new spirit of comradeship between men of all classes; a new appreciation of the value of discipline and the subordination of the individual for the good of the army, or the community or the nation to which he belongs. The war was also a destroyer of provincialism. Our own Canadian boys saw and appreciated the fighting qualities of the French and our other Allies. They saw the farms, the towns and cities of other countries with an older civilization than ours, and noted wherein they excelled our own.

Finally be loyal to your Alma Mater. She needs your support and help. You owe her no less. At her hands you have received at little cost an education which unfolds to you the great world of knowledge contained in books and fits you to take up your business or profession. She is now calling on her sons and daughters to provide another building and more equipment so as to keep pace with modern educational demands. I know you will give your help in this work and so keep our Alma Mater ever youthful and flourishing.

On behalf of the Senate and Alumni I offer our most hearty congratulations and best wishes to each of you, for a career of honor and success.