Alumni Oration

"Alumni Oration by Rev. Dr. W. H. Smith" University Monthly 30, 8 (June 1911): 329-332. (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

Rev. J.H. MacDonald read Dr. Smith's oration, who was absent due to illness, on behalf of the Alumni Society.

He said in part: "I esteem it an honor to speak on behalf of the Alumni of this university. From these halls has gone forth a regiment of respectable dimensions to swell the great army of trained men and women who are as the salt of the earth. Of those who have been graduated there are now 600 living, not including the company just added. Of these 237 reside in New Brunswick, 193 in the other provinces of the Dominion, 147 in the United States and 22 in Great Britain and foreign countries. These occupy honored positions and have rendered eminent services in the church, in the state, in universities, in the learned professions and in the home, to women the highest throne of culture and the widest sphere of opportunity. Scattered far from their Alma Mater, in the fore-front of the far-flung battle line of industry and opportunity they are an important contribution to the best thought and leadership in this Province and Dominion. If this were not so, then this University has failed. Yet I believe that the best contribution has not yet been made and that it is possible so to readjust the view-point of the graduate that vastly greater services will be rendered our country. In order, to secure this larger leadership there are certain lines of approach which are worth while studying.

Clearer Patriotic Note

And, first, there must be a clearer patriotic note. Let me voice my conviction in the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln. "I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see him live in it so that the place will be proud of him. Be honest, but hate no one. Overturn a man's wrongdoing but do not overturn him unless it must be done in overturning the wrong. Stand with anyone that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." This ideal has done good service and must be pressed with greater intensity if our country is to be redeemed from mammonism.

Tremendous Power

There is tremendous power in the patriotic note. It sends a new dynamic into the moral life as it kindles the nobler virtues of the soul round home and the fatherland. From the spirit roused to the defence of love's treasures against the enemy has flowed a transforming power which has rendered ordinary men from oblivion and made them heroes, martyrs, saints. Indifference has given place to moral energy, selfishness to devotion to others, greed of gold to love of freedom. The history of great institutions is the history of the patriotic note in the hearts of our leaders. How Canada was stirred when our men went to South Africa in the interests of the Empire. Today we desire to see the patriotic note forever disassociated from war and absolutely welded to the arts of peace, to education, to social service, to national institutions. We need something of the vision and passion of the Scot who sang:

"Where the breezes sweep,
Across the mountain’s breast,
Where the free in soul are nurst,
Is the land we love best."

and then make Canada worthy of that passion. To unite love of country with a passion for the production for the highest type of freedom is an ideal capable of challenging our best powers and leading to some worthy monument of national merit.

A Great Land

It should be forever a matter for devout thanksgiving that our land is such that we can unstintingly give it our love and find an un limited field for our noblest powers. Where do you find more natural beauty than that which lies beyond the campus of this University? I do not expect the graduate of this University to say that the St. John equals the Mississippi or the Nashwaaksis the Rhine, but I do expect him to love the St. John and the Nashwaaksis more than the Mississippi and the Rhine, because these are our home treasures, they formed our earliest thought of beauty, they were associated with our earliest unfolding of character and have been part of God's world which formed the background of His unfolding to our souls. In this land we should recognize our heritage and love it so that we can hand it down to others not soiled by the impurity of selfishness or our narrowness but beautified, even glorified by the hallowed associations of our lives.

Trail Of The Serpent

And when will that day appear? This is an age when there is a tremendous struggle to maintain the verities of life. Our land is defiled by the trail of the serpent. Men in public and private are ready to sell their country's honor for gold. Politics, business, education, social life all bear the sad marks of foul, degraded manhood and womanhood. These have not seen the glory of the clean life and know not its higher joys. We expect the university graduate to be a leader of the forces of a new and better Canada. We expect freedom of thought, independence of traditional lines when these oppose progress. We expect him to purify his own political party if it can be purified and if it cannot we expect him to identify himself with those who stand for truth first, righteousness first, home and country first, believing that in so doing he stands by the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Personal Responsibility

Then, secondly, there must be a clearer note of personal responsibility. This is necessary to efficient leadership. A university training does not mean a name, a degree or social polish. These things may accompany the training but the training itself has led into a new realm of truth and in the light of that truth life has a new meaning. What is your relation to your intellectual power? Is your intellect for your own. It is a talent and places upon you responsibility towards others. It stands as the medium whereby you must convey to others truth, knowledge, guidance, comfort. The call is to leadership, social service. What enjoyment, or merely a means toward increasing your earning power? No, is your relation to wealth? Is it to minister to selfishness? No. It is to increase your efficiency in social service. Hence the university graduate in the very nature of truth has increased and ever increasing responsibility. Is your lot in the city? There are many knotty problems. If in your training you have learned anything of value, give it. It is your business to organize, agitate, educate, live and love until truth banishes error and love banishes hate. Is your lot in the country? There you will find misery, loneliness, lack of social life, the opportunity of leadership. Brood over it and work at it until there appears a new life of hope and a new world of interest. What a magnificent thing it would be if the graduates scattered all over the province applied the wider wisdom and resources of their training to the solution of the social difficulties and sorrows of the people. Yet, this is their distinctive work and unescapable responsibility.

Most Desired Life

In the last place there must be a clearer appreciation of the life that is most to be desired. The content of our ideal demands careful analysis. Is this ideal of social services too high? Does it disturb our dreams of riches, honors, political preferment? These are secondary considerations. The one supreme fact is that social service is in keeping with the highest end of human life. Scan the pages of history and it appears that the men and women who stand on the solitary heights of undying fame because they live in the grateful memory of all generations are those who consecrated their talents to human betterment and therefore to national efficiency. In proportion as great ability has been associated with unselfish devotion to service does humanity honor the memory of the immortals. Nelson not only displayed the signal, "England expects every man to do his duty," but he drove his own ship between two of the enemy's and gave up his life in the struggle. He died happy because as he said he had tried to do his duty. The Light Brigade knew some one had blundered but the men had learned that their efficiency depended upon their obedience and they would not add to the humiliation of their country by failure so they rode to death. When the Birkenhead was foundering on the west coast of Africa the soldiers stood as on parade and giving a farewell cheer went down with ranks unbroken. The Duke of Wellington, the Commander in Chief, the Commander in Chief of the British Army, referring to this incident, said he did not praise the men for their courage, for all Britons are brave, but he did praise them for their discipline, for it was the test of efficiency.

The Standard

So also is this standard the ideal of daily life. We expect our clergymen, our physicians, our nurses, our miners and our policemen to show heroic service both in the public eye and in the quiet discharge of duty where no one stands to report what is being done and we are not disappointed. Let me say we expect our university graduates to show the same high ideals in daily life, the same self-forgetfulness in duty and the same willingness to assume their full share of work for the world's redemption from error and wretchedness.

One trembles when he pauses to think of these annual events. They are important, not because a new regiment of young men and women step out into a wider world of responsibility, but because during these years a certain type of character has been formed. Have these years now closing forever been the means of awakening in our graduates an ambition to persevere along the highways of knowledge because truth spells efficiency, or have these years swept across the pathway of life touching here and there a cord of emotion, here and there a forlorn hope that a better life could be lived, here and there adding some social fellowship which has become a substitute for solid work and enduring merit? If in these coming years we are counted worthy of a place beside those whose names we honor we must sternly face our full responsibility for social service and national betterment in the spirit of the man of whom Browning said:

"He never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake."