Graduation Address

"Ideals of Unity, Nobility, Bravery, Put Before Class" Daily Gleaner (19 May 1933): 5. (UA Case 67, Box 1)

It is with mingled feelings of regret and pleasure that I stand here this afternoon to give to you - the members of the graduating class - that cheapest of all gifts - advice - but, I ask you, in these days of decreasing incomes and of increasing taxes, what else has anyone to give?

My feelings of regret are caused by the death of several friends whom I had hoped to meet on this occasion of my return to my Alma Mater. To two of them I would make especial reference, Dr. H.S. Bridges and Dr. H.V.B. Bridges, both noted for their great contribution to the educational life of this University and of the Province. Dr. H.S. Bridges, in his careful, thorough, stately way made living to us, who were fortunate enough to be his pupils, the literatures of Greece and Rome. To me he was especially kind and courteous, for many an extra hour he led my steps up steep Parnassian heights in honor courses which were not time-tabled. Dr. Hedley Bridges, particularly after I joined the Normal School staff in Winnipeg, helped me with sage counsel.

Then, too, one naturally has feelings tinged with sadness when he looks back over the years that have gone. It is thirty-eight years since, in the library of the old building, our class graduated. "O for the time since now and then!" Of the nine of us who on that day received our diplomas and who went out to conquer the world, as doubtless you are planning to do, eight are still living, Miss Thompson, after many years of faithful service in the Fredericton schools, being the only one who has passed on.

My thoughts revert to them and to the splendid band of professors who, few in number, but great in scholarship, and in the culture, without which learning is almost valueless, gave of themselves so largely and may I say, sacrificially, to foster our callow youth.

Last year one of my class-mates, Dr. Hoben, gave the alumni oration, in absentia, while another, Dr. Baird, addressed the graduating class. Why a third member of '95 should be asked to speak on this occasion, I know not, for it would seem that such a small class has thus been honored beyond its desserts. The only way I can account for the choice is that your President, who by the way, is junior to us, felt that we were getting into "the sere, the yellow leaf", and might soon be expected to arrive at the seventh age, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

If I were allowed the time, I could a tale unfold that

"Would harrow up your souls, freeze your young blood,
And make each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine,"

While I described those mighty scrags (How much more expressive that word than the modern "rush") which harassed our Freshman days, after one of which I recall Professor Stockley saying that we had arrived in his class in a state of "panting piteousness" to which the next issue of the Monthly gave the "retort courteous":

"Though our pants are piteous,
They don't bag at the knees."

Memory plays us strange tricks when such a tag as that is recalled and the rich wisdom, the fluent Irish wit, the broad culture of Professor Stockley are but hazily remembered. And yet his love of literature, his wide acquaintance with English, French and German letters, did much to inspire us with a great and abiding affection for all that is noble in English prose and verse. May I not pay him an especial tribute, for surely it is due in part to him that to-day I bear "my blushing honours thick upon me". This honor has been conferred onto because of any literary skill on my part, but because for thirty-eight years I have tried in some small way to help thousands of boys and girls to a better appreciation of literature than which the school and colleges can give no greater good. This honor, I consider, is a tribute, not merely to myself, unworthy as I am, but to all those teachers who labor faithfully to inculcate in the heart and minds of pupils a love of what is highest and best.

It is natural for a man as old as I to linger on the past but your president twice wrote to me that fifteen minutes were all he could allot me and I must spend no more time in reminiscences, dear as they are to the grey-haired.

I congratulate you, members of the graduating class, on the success that has crowned your efforts. For four years you have labored (part-time labor, at least) and have reached your several goals. Of course, you realize that your education has just begun, for in the wider school of life's experiences you will find many hard lessons to be learned, but let not the turmoil of the stress of life, its disappointments, its victories, its pains, or its pleasures, cause you to forget the happy days you have spent here at the feet of various Gamaliels, or the old College on the hill, where, possibly, in the coming years, you will find your most delightful days were passed.

As Canadians we face many difficult problems but we may face them fearlessly if we are true to certain National Ideals of which I wish briefly to speak: Unity, Nobility, Bravery.

The fact that two lines of paralleling railroads cross our country from coast to coast does not make for unity. Politics will not bring together conflicting elements. It is, as Arnold aptly expresses it, educated men and women who have learned "to think, and to reason, and to compare, and to discriminate, and to analyze, who have refined their taste and formed their judgment" who alone can unite the wide-flung provinces of this fair land.

You have in this dear old province by the sea practically two races only and these two have become one in all that really matters.

In the West we have many nationalities and our task there is to assimilate the descendants of those whose original homes were far beyond our Canadian boundaries. We, who are interested in education realize that these people possess certain qualities which may well be grafted into our Canadian life. Each year in our Normal School at Winnipeg we hold what for a better name we call International Day. This year there were present representatives of ten nationalities who entertained the school with folk-songs, dances, readings, typical of the country from which their fathers and mothers had come. I wish I could give you some idea of the colorful costumes, the musical voices, the artistic movements of the performers. You may think it quite a task to assimilate such a heterogeneous body of people, but is being done, and every year finds the task a lighter one. Others have begun the work; to you will belong the fulfilment. Let me say in passing that among the most studious, the most reliable, the most courteous of the many pupils in my western classes have been many whose parents were once peasants on Central Europe.

You will complete the task, if you will lay aside, as I have learned to do, the narrow prejudice which will brand as inferior all things not British or French. Cast aside the pettiness which thinks of East and West as separate entities. Let not a local patriotism - a curse of our Canadian life - blind you to the fact that "no man liveth unto himself" without great loss. The great country to the south of us has taken years to learn the lesson that no country can prosper which thinks only of itself. No part of Canada can prosper, as it should, unless we all work together for the good of the whole.

There has been exhibited the spirit of unity to which I refer in the recent movement towards the restoration of certain church funds which were lost in the West. The church in the East might have said, "We had nothing to do with the losses. Why should we be expected to 'repair the breach'?" But the response from all parts of the Dominion has been marvelous. Must there be a catastrophe in order to have us, thinking men and women, show the same fine spirit of unity and good-will in our national life?

But I have talked enough about unity and must hasten to say a few words about another ideal - Nobility - which will include the virtues of loyalty and service. We have not heard, lately, the old French expression, Noblesse Oblige, which implies that much is to be expected of the noble. What is the value of a college degree, if we forget the fine idealism of youth and sluggishly float down the stream of life, thinking only of our own petty selves. "Better not be at all, than not be noble".

I urge upon you loyalty to your university and to your province, the government of which has not been unmindful of this old institution, with its honorable record of names of men who have taken no mean place in the wider life of the world. Be loyal, too, to the Dominion and to the Empire. I am not greatly concerned with the results of ballots in two of our universities in which the majority of students present at certain meetings voted that under no circumstances would they take up arms for King and Country. Such votes mean little as there can be no doubt that these very students would respond to the call of loyalty in time of stress as their predecessors have done in the past. I am more concerned with that type of loyalty which looks for personal gain. Let me plead with you to take as your life motto, service, not gain. At no time in our history has there been greater need of loyal service to the state and to your fellowman. Let the loyalty of Browning be yours:

"Here and her did England help me: how can I help England," - say,
Whoso turns his eye, this evening, turns to God to praise and pray
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa."

Another ideal worth your consideration is Bravery. Barrie in 1922 took this theme alone as his topic in addressing the students at St. Andrew's University, but should I attempt to expand the subject as he did, in the first place I should fail, and, in the second place, my good friend, your President, would be uttering "curses, not loud, but deep", and you would be thinking of Tennyson's Brook:

"Men may come, and men may go,
But he goes on forever."

In the Great War, fought during your early childhood, Canadians proved their mettle on many a hard-fought field. You, we trust, may never be required to offer your lives in such a ghastly strife but,

"Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war,"

and to win such victories will call for the highest type of courage, - moral courage.

On the occasion of his installation as Chancellor of Edinburgh University three years ago, Barrie said: "Do not think the Great War has ended. It is for each of you the war that goes on within yourselves for self-mastery. These robes you wear to-day are your Khaki for that war. Your graduation day is the first stripe. Go out and fight. Do not come back dishonored."

You have won your diplomas at a time when financial conditions could hardly be worse, when there is almost a feeling of spiritual decline, when clouds seem to envelop our hearts and lives, and yet I bid you be of good courage. An unknown writer in the West wrote recently as follows: "This depression has robbed us of some of those things we hold dear, but it has not robbed us of our power to create, to achieve, to go forward. It has strengthened us. We may have lost some beautiful things, but we have not lost our love of the beautiful. It is a challenge, not a catastrophe - a challenge to rise above temporal things ... A financial crisis can wipe out profits, but character is beyond its reach. It can rob us of all we have, but it cannot affect what we are. The deepest satisfactions of life - those that come from sharing and serving - remain secure. Let worries disappear with the past, and with fresh courage and brave hearts, let us face and do our part to meet and overcome the problems the future may bring with it."

May each one of you, after a life of loyal, noble, brave service for your fellow-men, be able to say, as the shadows fall, what Browning said of himself and that without boasting:

"One who never turned his back
But marched breast-forward, never doubted clouds would break.
Held we fall to rise; are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake."