LABRADOR MISSION WORK AIDED BY COLLEGE MEN

In the past twenty years there have been hundreds of college men and college women helping in Labrador. You ask me, "What have they done?" As a surgeon I am absolutely convinced of the value of trying to record what we call "end results"--to show actually what has been accomplished, and so to reveal "sloppy" work and work that does not justify itself. If trying to analyze results is of any use to others, they have a right to ask us also to try and do it. For I have found that the college men have really given a lot. Most of them have paid all their own expenses, and, more than that, have worked like tigers.

In return Labrador has given them what I consider an invaluable gift--the gift a laboratory gives a chemist, or a good clinic gives a doctor. It has afforded a test field for the use of the talents of body, mind, and soul, for which their long and expensive education has been undertaken a fine opportunity of a field that, by its isolation and crude conditions, shows them the immense value to the world of being able to do things that contribute to life. Many have told me that in conventional civilization they had not seen the personal challenge of life, and had really thought that its joys were limited to acquiring "things".

On the other hand, the crude fact that young men of wealth, or at least sufficient means to seek purely selfish pleasure, should find satisfaction in coming "to do chores" for the sake of others, is really the best thing that college men have done for Labrador. It does more for Labrador than Labrador may admit or even understand. It is the best thing any man can do for the world anywhere--it is the one modern interpretation of what Christ Himself did.

Help to Change Lives for Better

As a surgeon I have often been called on to try and prolong for a year or two a life which I know perfectly well is not worth prolonging--a life that is only a curse to its day and generation. The work that college men are doing in Labrador, by changing these lives by example, helps to make all the difference in the world. I have seen the proof of this, while they have been unloading coal vessels--a tough job, or digging foundations in a boulder bank glued together by heavy clay, or blasting out a water supply through granite rocks almost under water all the time, or firing in the tiny engine room of a hospital steamer with dusty coal, or cutting down trees and hauling them for firing, or getting peat from a fly-beset bog, or digging roads. They have been working for Labrador in the way Christ worked for the world by doing tough jobs they did not necessarily have to tackle. The changing of the characters of a dozen men, mostly fishermen, in a scattered community like Galilee has without doubt done more to change the world for the beter, to educate in the highest sense and to make new manhood, than if Christ had built universities, endowed hospitals, donated libraries--all of which would have perished long ago like the cloth-workers hall at Ypres. So, is not the greatest thing college men or any other men can do for Labrador to live out a similar Knighthood there, even if it is only for a few months? I rather fancy Nathan Hale did a good deal for the United States of America, and so for that United Nations of the world, for which all men pray. If this is a sermon, not a record of end results, please remember at least it is a layman's deductions from observation of facts.

On the other hand college men have done some of the following things. They have built, run, and supported for almost ten years a summer dispensary, with school and clubhouse, and have given fine service in a fast motorboat over fifty miles of coast at Spotted Islands on the north coast of Labrador. They have helped that section of our people in a thousand ways, materially, mentally, spiritually. This work began by one Williams man going down at his own expense for a summer. He is in China-now.

They have enabled us to run a modern clinic at our main station by giving scientific work which we had to have and could not pay for; consequently, they have helped to save life and suffering of somebody's dearest on earth, even if they were not of their own family or nation. They have enabled us to build buildings which we could not otherwise have had. Ruskin got Oxford men to build a road in their vacation. A Yale-Harvard-Princeton team hewed out a foundation for a large orphanage and so contributed thousands of dollars to the fund for protecting and giving a chance to "some of these little ones." Amherst men took a scientific expedition to Hudson Bay Straits for us. Yale took one to Baffins Land. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton each gave power yawls in which thousands of services of the kind that we would have liked done for us under the same circumstances have been rendered to deserving men.

College Men Manage Dog Teams

College men have managed our dog teams for the doctors in winter, and herded reindeer and driven them and broken them in. College men from Canada and as far west as California have helped run launches and keep them in going order and fetched in patients and carried around supplies. They have surveyed country for us, and helped to map and chart and make possible some of our fjords for tourists to visit us. They have worked out our geology and other natural sciences and helped to publish information and record facts. For the last two years they ran a steamer, dubbed the "Wop", carrying freight, cement, sand, gravel, and rock for buildings, and coal and supplies for branch nursing stations and hospitals. They have run clothing stores and lumber camps. A Princeton coach ran a lumber mill and store. They have blazed trails, built winter tilts, run schools and special classes, unloaded coal and other schooners, cut and brought out loads of firewood from the bays, run experimental farming stations, cleared land, and built wharves--indeed, they have done so many things that it would be better to have a list of what they have not done. One Amherst student took one of our boys back to school and college, and several others have done the same thing for short periods and sent us back invaluable helpers. Some have brought down boats--a Harvard crew took a 45 foot power yawl from Boston to Labrador in seven days, keeping the open all the while. Some have both held Sunday services and helped in Sunday classes.

Lastly, beyond the real inspiration they have given, and the actual work they have accomplished, they have, after having returned, helped many of the special branches in which they have been interested "to carry on" by raising money to supply needed outfits, or to enable us to afford wages to carry on special branches of needed expansion.

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The University of Pennsylvania team is to sail on March 22 to compete in the Oxford-Cambridge relay races on April 1.