I am going to try to select three or four general fields in which we Americans have had a chance to learn lessons of permanent value as the result of our war experience. Then I shall try to apply these to what seems to me the most typical specimen of the best in American life, a great American University; and finally, I shall try to apply them to the situation which faces you young men and women of the graduating class as you step out to take your places in the world. And in so doing I'm going to look deliberately on the bright side. There are troubles enough in the world to worry and depress us, and we have to face them, but let us face them with a confidence that is justified in the light of the examples of man's endurance, of his courage, of his possibilities of accomplishment, which it has been our privilege to witness within the lifetime of this academic generation.What have we learned? In the first place, we have learned that as a nation we possess the power to see a big job through, and we possess it because we have the qualities of youth—enthusiasm, learning capacity, energy, elasticity, initiative—the pioneering spirit. We have the shortcomings of youth also—impatience, superficiality, improvidence, cock-sureness—but when the test came we managed to strengthen our virtues and to a large extent to overcome our failings.

The various stocks that have emigrated to our shores have come as successive waves of pioneers, of men to whom new and unfamiliar conditions serve as an incentive rather than a discouragement, and it is the persistence of this pioneering spirit, essentially a youthful spirit, which has had much to do with our success.

What single group made the finest impression in the great war? I think we will agree that it was the American doughboy. As one saw him in France he was absolutely youth incarnate, and he is a cross section of our complex population. If anyone still doubts that all of these stocks, the Teutonic included, have been willing to do their share even at the risk or cost of life, let him read any of the lists of battle casualties or the list of honors for heroic conduct and he will have the best kind of proof. Let us remember in this connection that nearly one-fourth of our drafted men couldn't speak and write English adequately when they entered the Army. In spite of a number of unsightly pieces of slag, which are either floating on the surface or have sunk to the bottom, the great national melting pot has evidently done its work well.

Our heterogeneous immigration, our enormous national resources, which have tempted us to live on capital rather than on interest, our prosperity, have made us neither fat nor flabby. We now know that as a people we don't really care about money or the money game if we are shown some other game better worth playing; that selfishness and luxury drop away as if by magic when they interfere with the keener satisfactions of giving one's self. Even for us stay-at-homes, the Liberty Loan people, Mr. Hoover, the Red Cross and other welfare workers were on hand to show us how to play the better game. I don't need to remind you of the details, nor that in spite of human grumbling and talk of sacrifice, in the bottom of our hearts we all enjoyed the process.In the second place, we have learned that to see the job through we need all of the nation, men and women, not merely the profession of arms and the mysterious powers of finance—we need all of everyone. We need them not as individuals but as a team, and we have learned that we can develop team play.

Our easiest jobs were the raising of our men and our money; our hardest, the moulding of the whole into an organic unity. Just as our young men by the millions took their place in the line when the bugle blew, older men by the tens of thousands left their private affairs to get along as best they might, and regardless of political affiliations or personal convenience, found place for themselves in the administrative army. And they were ably seconded by the women. Hundreds of men in key positions have gladly borne witness to the share which their secretaries and their other women associates played in bringing about the needed results.

The first days of the war were days of whirling confusion, colored by glowing forecasts. Then followed months of experimentation, by trial and error, of hope deferred by long delays, of well meant but none the less embarrassing internal rivalries, of sudden spurts. Later came the days of last autumn, when the whole great machine was throbbing rhythmically and steadily, with only a minor "knock" here and there—a sure indication to the watchful enemy, who had had more than a taste of what the machine could produce, that the game was up; and finally the eleventh of November and the order to reverse the engines.

It ought to be evident from our experience that for any great enterprise we need all the young men and the young women, and all the older ones who are still young in heart. We need to know who they are, where they are, what they can do, and we need to touch them at every point; for not only do we need them all, but we need all of each one of them. We should never again face a great national crisis with nearly one-third of our men of military age unfit for hard physical work. We need campaigns of physical education and social hygiene, and we need to apply the lessons in human salvage which the army has learned during the war. But we need more than each individual and all of him. We must see to it that the individual star, of whatever magnitude, is subordinated to the team play of the group. And team play means more than energy and "pep." It means a marshalling of the old fashioned and homely virtues of courtesy, deference and consideration.

In the third place, we have learned that to accomplish a great result we need the leadership of those who know and who know vividly and constructively. Our experience has been that in certain fields, finance, science, manufacturing in quantity production, medicine, we had a supply of those who knew. In other fields, in intimate knowledge of foreign conditions and foreign languages for example, we had not.

At first we didn't know where our leaders were, and in many cases we began by following false prophets. The value of one man with training, brains and persistence can be shown by a single example: There was a man who answered these qualifications connected with the Council of National Defence, not in a very exalted position. He was the first in all this country to see that the army program and the shipping program did not fit. It took him a long time to convince the two groups of overworked, harried officials that neither could play the game alone; that the closest coÖperation was necessary. He had no access to the records, but he finally managed to build up a convincing statement out of the shreds of information which he gathered here and there, and at last he succeeded in getting everyone concerned into the attitude of wanting to face the facts. Everyone would have had to face them sooner or later, but without the devotion and leadership of this one man, it would have been only as the result of a very serious dislocation of function.

One field in which the right leadership has been most brilliantly rewarded is that of medicine. Just consider what we have done in this field: The success of the anti-typhoid injections; the reduction in dysenteric diseases due to chlorination of drinking water; the encouraging fight against cerebro-spinal meningitis and pneumonia; the identification of trench fever, and the practical freedom from typhus. As to wounds, a tetanus antitoxin which has made lock-jaw almost a negligible disease; a serum against gas gangrene; the Carrel-Dakin method of chemical sterilization of wounds; the splinting of fractures on the battle field and overhead extension apparatus in the hospital. To quote Simon Flexner, "The entire psychology of the wounded men was altered, the wards made cheerful and happy, pain abolished, infection controlled, and recovery hastened by means of the new or improved surgical and mechanical measures put into common use."

The fourth lesson of which I wish to speak is that a high aim and ideal is what counts most of all, what lifts the individual up from selfishness and sloth. To bind the country together and to make the transformation which still seems miraculous, we had a noble national aim, a complete dedication to the task before us, an utter absence of any selfish or self-seeking factor in the whole enterprise. The conduct of our soldiers, their submission to a discipline to which most of them were completely unused was, I think, in a very large measure due to the recognition of this aim. We recognized it as a nation and we recognized it in one another. The standard of contact set by our soldiers during the days of conflict is unique in military history. Whole divisions went for months without a single court-martial. The reason was, more than anything else, the national assumption that they would give a good account of themselves and the fact that they felt themselves in training for the championship, and no man wanted to miss his chance on the battlefield for the sake of a selfish indulgence.

Some of the experiments in conduct tried in the American Expeditionary Forces were extraordinary in their success. The leave areas, an immense enterprise, were run on the basis of absolute freedom to the enlisted man. He lived in the best hotels in Europe and amused himself in casinos where crowned heads had been in the habit of gambling away the money of their subjects. He had no roll calls, no taps, no officers in sight, no military machinery whatever. He arose when he pleased, either before or after his breakfast; he ate and drank when he pleased, and he stayed out as late as he pleased. The physical and moral effect of this absolute change from the military rÉgime was a very interesting and instructive phenomenon, but that is not the point I wish to make. Out of the thousands and thousands of men who were sent to these leave areas, there was hardly a single case in which a man abused the trust which was put upon him or failed to turn up on time to go back to the grind of military duty. This could never have been done with soldiers of another type, with soldiers lacking an ideal.Someone has recently written that fine minds have been finely touched by the war, and base minds basely. He might have added that wise minds have been wisely touched, and foolish minds foolishly. In general, I think it may fairly be said that when the appeal was to the finest in a man's character, the result was correspondingly fine.

These, it seems to me, are the four main things we have learned, or at any rate we have had a chance to learn. First, that we are a real nation, potentially strong with the strength of youth. Second, that to fulfill our mission, every man and woman and all of every such individual is an object of national concern; that we must be mobilized and we must continue our lessons in team play. We have still plenty to learn in this field. Third, that we must have and must recognize the leadership of those who know, which, after all, is the great test of a democracy. Fourth, that to bring out the best that is in us, as individuals and as a nation, we must have an aim, high, clear-cut and clearly understood. If, now, I attempt to apply these four lessons which we have had a chance to learn, to educational conditions, and particularly to university conditions, it will be for three reasons: The first is the general wisdom of confining one's remarks to things he knows something about. The second, that there is no single institution more characteristic of the best in our American life than a great American University. And there is this third reason, that if we had not had a supply of young men with the stamp of the American college upon them, we could never have met the call for officers, for nearly a quarter of a million of them. I am told that the Germans were prepared to admit and to discount our wealth in money, in materials and in man power, but they looked forward confidently to a complete failure on our part in training officers to lead our men in battle. Of course, all the citizen officers who made good records were not college men, but the college trained citizens were the men who set the pace and made the standard.

It was Pitt who said, "The atrocious crime of being a young man I shall attempt neither to palliate nor to deny." Nor should a university seek to palliate or to deny the charge of being a place of resort for youth. A university, it seems to me, should be a place where the primary object is not the repression of youthful exuberance nor the correction of youthful failings (though both may be necessary on occasion), but rather, a place for the encouragement of the great and vital qualities of youth—enthusiasm, energy, power of acquisition, sensitiveness of impression. It is the place where the older members of the community have the best chance to stay young. The university should be essentially a company of enthusiasts, of pioneers. There is a frontier for every worker to clear—no matter how narrow or how wide his horizon may be. In a university there is no proper place, among faculty or students, for the disillusioned, the cynical, the defeatist.

Now we come to the application of the second lesson, the lesson of mobilization, of team play. In the first place, no university is alive where mobilization is limited to the Recorder's office. In a live institution, regent, professor, student, janitor, each is a part of the game and must feel that he is. He must feel that in its administration the institution has learned the great lesson of direct and human personal contact. Science, among all its triumphs, cannot include any device for conveying a message from mind to mind or from heart to heart half so good as the human voice and the human eye. Within the faculty, this element of human coÖperation should be reflected by the vitality of the organism rather than by the complexity of the organization, which may not be vital at all. Each member must feel that the general repute is safeguarded by honest and intelligent standards, honestly and intelligently administered. The university, like the country at large, must make itself responsible for all of each and every student, his bodily condition, for example, just as directly as his mental.

It will be recalled that one of my justifications for applying war experiences to university conditions was the share which the college and university men had in building up our supply of officers. If we study why the college men made good officers, and make allowance for the fact that it is the kind of man who goes to college who is likely to make a good officer anyway, and all the other allowances we can think of, we can't dodge the conclusion that there is something outside of the college curriculum which has been an important factor in bringing about the results. On the other hand, important as the other factors are, the curriculum has had its share, and it is in my judgment a leading and not always an adequately recognized share. The comfortable theory that once he has settled down to something important the college ne'er-do-well will suddenly blossom forth into a competent leader of men didn't work out in practice. It may have happened here and there, but it didn't happen as a general rule. In the fighting line, it was very generally the man with a sound academic record, not necessarily the Phi Beta Kappa lad, but the good scholar and active college citizen, the man who had taken the trouble to learn things and learn people, who made the best record. I naturally watched with particular interest the records of my own old students at Columbia, and I know that this is so.

It is a significant fact, however, for those of us who are interested in the welfare of college boys and girls, that the United States government deliberately built up what was to all intents and purposes an undergraduate college life for the young men of the army, with athletics, dances, dramatics, singing, and all the rest, even including opportunities for reading and study. Even the most hardened of regular officers, who at the first, I fear, regarded this as some of the civilian foolishness with which all soldiers have to contend, came to see that the program was a vital factor in building up such a body of fighting men as they had never seen. And this is only another way of saying that if you want to use the human machine for any purpose, you must concern yourself with the whole of it. Human nature does not come in air-tight compartments.

President Wilson coined a phrase which has thoroughly gone the rounds when he said that the side-shows of college life should not overshadow nor distract from the entertainment in the main tent. We all agree to this. But I think we are more inclined than when the words were spoken to urge that the side-shows, properly and intelligently subordinated, should be under the same management as the main tent. The army has tried the experiment on a large scale and it has worked well. In February last there were in France and on the Rhine six million and a half individual participants in athletic games, ten million attendants on entertainments, nearly a quarter of a million students.

None of the lessons which the Army has learned are more significant than those which have to do with mobilization and classification. The activities of the Provost Marshal General, of the Committee on Classification and Personnel, in coÖperation with the Committee on Education, furnish the best record of large scale human engineering in the new science of personnel of which we have any record, either in this country or, I think, elsewhere.

A university like this one is an army, and not such a small army either, judging by peacetime standards. The United States found that it was worth while, indeed that it was absolutely necessary in organizing its forces, to find out everything it could about every man in the army, what he needed physically to increase his efficiency; what he needed to keep him interested and out of mischief; what he should have in the way of training—based on what he knew already and based on careful mental tests—to make him of the greatest usefulness; whether he had the will to win, and if not, whether anything could be done to get it into him.

In a word, the United States wanted to know just what each man's possibilities were. Was he officer material or non-com material? Should he go into the line or one of the special corps—or to the labor battalion? As a result of this program, the Army succeeded in finding a place that counted for 98 per cent of the drafted men.

Now I realize that a university can't do all these things with its army in just the way the government can. It can't casually transfer a man from engineering to psychology, nor a girl from philosophy to cookery—or vice versa—no matter how desirable such a transfer might be for the individual and the community. But it can do a great deal more than it now does in finding out about all its members, informing them of their strength and weaknesses, in seeing that every student gets a chance to enjoy in so far as possible the high privileges of youth, and to get a helping hand over the bumps in the road, which also come with youth. Every student ought to have the opportunity to round out his character and his capacities. It ought not to be left to chance that any student gets the best personal contacts for him or her with faculty and fellow-students, the best opportunities for learning team play. Every student ought to leave with some definite aim in life, and if possible an aim high enough to be an ideal that is worth working for.A university is not doing its full duty if its athletics and social life are limited to those who need these the least; if its alumni are regarded merely as fillers of the grandstands or recipients of oratory, and possible sources of pecuniary support. The alumni are the best possible sources of keeping the faculty informed as to what the world really wants in the way of trained men and women, and, for the students, of information, suggestions, and jobs, both temporary and permanent.

I realize that many of these things are now done here and elsewhere, but in the light of what we have learned from the experience of the University of Uncle Sam, I am sure that our American universities and colleges have hardly scratched the surface of what they might do and what, I think, they will ultimately do in the realm of human engineering. Nearly all educational institutions merely follow what they find the leaders are doing, and in this field there is an opportunity, I am sure, for real leadership.

We know now that men and women can be measured by impersonal tests and that it is practicable to put aside the material which it is either impossible to fashion in the academic mould, or for which, even if the job is possible, the expense in wear and tear is entirely beyond the value of the result to be obtained. To be specific, why shouldn't we have an intelligence test of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, just as we had a physical and psychological examination for candidates for the flying schools?

I don't mean that we should leap from one illogical position clear across the road into another. Mental measurements are not yet an exact science, and a man of moderate ability, with a will to succeed, may be a better academic investment than his more brilliant brother who lacks that quality; but, by pruning very sparingly (one does not have to chop down a tree to prune it) the saving in time and energy will be enormous.

Fundamentally the human relationships are what count, the qualities leading to team play and coÖperation, and away from isolation and its ills. This means that if a faculty is to exercise its leadership, it must know the student body, it must maintain and develop points of human touch. Impersonal tests, impersonal records, all that modern practice and modern science can teach us we must have, but these must be used only as the framework for what is after all the fundamental thing, direct human contact between teacher and teacher, teacher and student, and student and student.

Now as to leadership, and in a university we can identify the leaders with the teachers, there is no doubt, I think, that the teachers' profession comes out of the war in a higher place than it went in, and the scholar goes back to his work with a feeling of confidence in himself in view of his record in competition and comparison with men in other callings. I venture to predict that we shall hear a good deal less frequently in the future the old gibe that the man who could do things did them and the man who couldn't, taught them. The teachers made good, not only because of their scholarship, but because of their personality. I think this experience of the last two years is going to accelerate greatly the movement which had already started of turning to the academic world for the man who can do things and do them with other people. Entirely apart from the contrasts in income, the sheer fun of executive work, with plenty of money to spend on what you want to get done, is a pretty strong temptation for a man with a heavy teaching schedule and an annual department appropriation of say $75. Both the regular army officers who have made conspicuously good, and the scholars of the coÖperative type who have made conspicuously good, are being actively bidden for by bankers and manufacturers and all sorts of people. Neither profession can compete on the purely financial side with these tempters and, in order to hold their first-rate men, they will each have to make some greater contribution in the things that money alone can't buy.

Both in the nation and in our republics of letters and science, we must learn to distinguish more clearly between the power that comes with knowledge, and the ability to talk about things. It was very interesting to watch in Washington the gradual substitution of the man with the latter quality by the man with the former in positions of responsibility, and I am going to confess that, in the early days, some of the conferences which it was my privilege or my duty to attend, reminded me for all the world of certain faculty meetings, in which gentlemen without definite knowledge of the matter in hand were discussing at considerable length what they were pleased to call principles, but which were really off-hand impressions.I think that in their service to the university and to the nation, the scholars may well profit by the demonstration that it was not only the man who knew his subject, but the man who knew how to deal with his fellow men, who was likely to make his impression. Isn't there such a thing as academic provincialism, even within the walls of a man's own university, certainly as between institution and institution, which can be remedied by the encouragement of these social and coÖperative sides of the scholar's character? It seems to me that we all should face a fundamental extension in the definition of a scholar, away from the individual, the selfish, out to the social and constructive.

In our educational institutions scholarship has three functions: To broaden the field of existing knowledge, and the war has shown us that every field has its valuable practical applications; to train the coming generation of experts, and any country needs not only a handful of distinguished leaders but a great body of well-trained men and women who, when the emergency arises, stand ready to meet it; and last but not least, to inspire a recognition of what scholarship is and a respect for it in the minds of the general students, few of whom, by the most generous stretch of the imagination, can be regarded as scholars themselves, but whose influence in their generation throughout the country is a very important factor. Our nation needs a respect for expert knowledge and it needs a respect for intelligence, and our college graduates can do more than any other group to develop this respect.

We have taken up three of our four lessons as these affect the university: the emphasis on youth, the need of mobilization and team play, and the need of leadership. There remains the fourth factor, a high, clear-cut aim.

The most serious charge against the American undergraduate in the past has been the lack of a sense of responsibility. We now know from their war records that the sense of responsibility lay latent in thousands of these boys and was only awaiting an impulse sufficiently strong to arouse it.

President Hibben of Princeton, who ought to know the American undergraduate if anybody does, said recently: "Young men are capable of far greater amounts of intensive work day in and day out than we had dreamed of; capable of greater concentration of mind upon their tasks. They respond more quickly than we have conceived to the call of duty. The sense of responsibility is there latent, and we teachers must endeavor to quicken and to appeal to it. We have seen that when the occasion comes these young men rise to meet it."

We can't very well stage a world war for the purpose, and I don't think we need wait for any such crisis to bring it out. There is in every normal, wholesome-minded student some motor nerve that can be touched in such a way as to release that type of coÖrdinated energy which we call a sense of responsibility. This all goes back to knowing our men and women and establishing human contacts and human confidences.

In spite of individual disappointments, and as a college dean, I have had my share, I am confident that the normal young American either already possesses as a motive force some worth-while aim or that he can be guided toward such an aim if approached in the right way.

Let me quote a paragraph or so from the report of the War Department Committee on Education:

"Because the war did completely organize the nation for a united drive and thus did expose a magnificent national morale, many are inclined to believe that war is necessary to call forth such consecration and self-forgetful service. Analysis of the war training, however, reveals a point of view and a method of procedure that is definitely designed to develop team-play and to enhance morale whether there be war or not. If these methods are applied to education in times of peace, they certainly will produce some effect even though the result is not as profoundly striking as it was during the war. Among the many significant features of war training, the following are mentioned as worthy of particular consideration for transfer to school practice:

"As a primary policy, a nation at war is obliged to recognize that every individual is an asset capable of useful service in some particular line of work of direct benefit to the country. In order to make the most efficient use of all its resources, it is necessary to make strenuous exertions to discover what each individual is best qualified to do and to train each to use his abilities in the most effective manner. Applied to education this fundamental attitude produces two results that are of importance in the development of morale. The teacher's point of view shifts from a critical one, with attention focused on discovering whether the individual measures up to the academic standards fixed by school authorities, to one of friendly, not to say eager interest to discover what each individual really can do well. The student's spirit also changes from one of discouragement and doubt of his ability ever to make good, to one of interest and desire for achievement. Both of these results are of large importance in releasing energy for both the teacher and the student. They also have an immediate bearing on the enhancement of morale."

In any place of campaign to this end within a college or university, the first thing to do is to build around that vague but very real emotion called college spirit, to supplement this by guiding our young people to enlist in worth-while, nation-wide or world-wide causes (we are singularly provincial about this in America), and by ensuring better teaching and supervision and better coÖrdination of work.

There is no question that we have underestimated both the American undergraduate's capacity for intellectual work and his real pleasure in it when he feels it worth while. One of my friends was telling me of his experiences as commanding officer of one of the ground schools for aviators, where a large proportion of the candidates were college undergraduates, and I asked him if he had had any troubles as to discipline. "Yes indeed," he replied, "night after night we'd catch some fellows studying with a peep-light under their blankets, after taps had sounded."

Any doubts as to the instinctive reaction of the normal, healthy young American toward educational opportunities were dispelled by the experiences of the army in France after the armistice. The let-down, after the terrific physical and emotional strain, the impatience regarding any delay as to return home, combined to make a pretty serious situation as to the morale of our troops. After some misguided and nearly disastrous experiments as to the curative properties of heavy drill and strict discipline, the A.E.F. recognized the necessity for a prompt and thorough stimulation of all the welfare activities, and a real educational program; and it was straight, old-fashioned book-work more than it was the movies, or athletics, more even than Miss Elsie Janis, which turned the corner for us. In all, more than 200,000 men volunteered for the privilege of studying. The military order was often reversed and majors sat at the feet of the corporals or privates who had been selected as teachers. The reports as to the intensity of the work of teachers and students alike should put any of us professionals to shame.

Just now we are hearing a great deal about the benefits of discipline. I think what the speakers are really talking about, though they don't recognize it themselves, is the benefit of the state of mind which accepts and welcomes discipline. We are not, even as the result of the war, a disciplined people in the sense that Germany is, or was, and we can thank God for it. We shall never want in this country a general subordination of the individual will and initiative to external control. Discipline is a means and not an end. If discipline, as such, externally imposed, were so important a factor in success as many people seem to think to-day, we could look through a list of ex-enlisted men in the army and navy—I mean the men enlisted and discharged during peace time—and find a relatively large number who made conspicuously good records after returning to civil life. As a matter of fact, we find nothing of the kind.

What we do find is that not a few enlisted men who chose the army or the navy as their permanent career have won commissions and made fine records. There were no better general officers in the war than men like Harbord of our army and Robertson of the British, both of whom rose from the ranks. But isn't it fair to say that the discipline imposed on these men was accepted gladly and accepted in the terms of their fundamental interest, and that these men are not really exceptions to what I have said?

I venture to predict that there will be a very different record to tell as to the success in civil life of those men now leaving the Army, who, because they believed in the cause and wished to participate to the full in the great enterprise, gladly submitted themselves to the discipline for the purpose of increasing their efficiency.

In a month or so you can teach an enthusiastic man, who is fired by a big idea, all the discipline he needs for carrying out his duties and profiting by his opportunities, but you can't reverse the process and incite enthusiasms as a result of the application of discipline.Don't think that I want to minimize the merits of military discipline for military purposes. Of course, coÖrdination and subordination are absolutely necessary in the handling of large bodies of men. Even the men in France who deserted to the front, as many of them did, no matter how much we may sympathize with their desire to get into the game, had to be disciplined. Someone had to stay behind and see to the supplies. The point we are discussing is the carrying over of this principle of military discipline intact into civilian life. So far as discipline brings about regularity of life, of exercise, so long as it ministers to alertness, we can use it, but as between discipline on the one hand, and initiative and team play on the other, to meet our academic or our national needs, I am for initiative and team play.

Please don't misunderstand me. By reducing the present emphasis on external discipline, after childhood has been passed, I don't mean a lowering of standards. External discipline, it seems to me, is often really imposed as a substitute for high standards; something supposed to be just as good and more easy to keep in stock. The standards of the worth-while organization, and these are the outward expression of its aims, its ideals, ought to be high enough and intelligently enough administered to make sure that the men and women who are unable to provide their own discipline, should in the general interest be painlessly but promptly removed from the group.

Here is a credo for the American people, from the pen of a regular army officer. It's a pretty good one for an American University: "To foster individual talent, imagination and initiative, to couple with this a high degree of coÖperation, and to subject these to a not too minute direction; the whole vitalized by a supreme purpose, which serves as the magic key to unlock the upper strata of the energies of men."

Finally, let me try to apply these lessons to you young men and women of the graduating class.

Keep in good physical shape. Overwork is usually a combination of bad air, bad feeding, and lack of exercise and sleep. See that you don't go stale. If you lack the zest of life, find out what the trouble is; whether it is your teeth or your liver or your soul. Picture to yourself what Theodore Roosevelt got out of life.Be honest with yourself. Do your own thinking and do it straight. This, strangely enough, is perhaps the thing which you will find hardest to do after the undergraduate atmosphere. A student body is, or at any rate was before the war, the most convention ridden group of which I have any knowledge. I am all for conventions, because they save a great deal of time and worry, but only so far as we recognize them as conventions and do not exalt them into principles or philosophical truths. Remember that the public opinion of America is an infinitely more important thing to the world than ever before, and that you are each to be a part of it.

Keep your intellectual interests and your interest in your alma mater, not in her athletics and her fraternities alone. Remember that as alumni of this University you are citizens of no mean city. Recruit men and women whom she ought to have and who ought to have her, remembering that the danger to this country from the inside, and it is no inconsiderable danger, is mainly due to the misdirected zeal of sincere people who lack knowledge and background. Take for example the employer who can't see beyond the point of telling his men to "take it or leave it," and the workman whose sense of real or fancied injustice has brought him to what with our children we know as the kicking and biting stage. It is too late to do much with the present adult generation except by main strength and awkwardness, but a recruit for higher education from either of these groups is a good national investment.

Keep your human contacts. Don't be a "glad-hander" but do at least your share. It takes two to make and keep alive a friendship, just as it does a quarrel. There is something worth while in everyone. Give yourself a chance to find what it is. Practice following and, as the chance comes to you, practice leading, but above all, practice team play. Keep yourself ready to take the next step, whatever it may be. There is a story of Marshal Joffre, of which I can at least say that it is good enough to be true. After the first battle of the Marne some enthusiast was proclaiming him as a second Napoleon and laying it on pretty thick. The old gentleman stood it as long as he could and then said: "No, Napoleon would have known what to do next, and I don't."

Keep your enthusiasms and your ideals. In other words, keep your youth. In choosing your life work, get into something in which the policy and practice are such that you can throw your whole soul into the job. Don't take yourself seriously, but take your opportunities for usefulness seriously. Find out the callings in which America is short. There are plenty of them, as the war has shown. Think over whether it isn't possible for you to be one of the men or one of the women who, from your training and momentum and vision, will be selected ten or fifteen or twenty years hence, to take on some important job, with the nation as your client, as the one person best qualified to fill it.

We no longer have to prove that it pays to know, to really know almost anything that is worth while. It pays in money, if that is what one wants; it pays in the more enduring satisfactions of life, in the pleasure that comes from exact knowledge and intellectual pioneering, in the almost unique joy of creation without the responsibilities of possession, and in the feeling of individual readiness to be of use in meeting the problems which the years allotted to your generation will surely bring forth.

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