Valedictory

The men for whom yesterday's Valedictory was directly intended, the men whose course will be completed between now and June, are Harvard's transition class. They are the group who entered college when war was still isolated in another hemisphere and who stayed to see a college and a way of life uprooted as the war spread into their lives. But more than the transition class they are the transition generation. All were born during the ten year period that followed 1918. All were told that war has no excuse, even as a last measure; they were told of conferences held by nations bent on peace. But they saw Versailles torn by permission, the world torn by depression, and war return by general consent of the people; all this after the age of reason and before they could vote.

There was a time when it was easy for one generation to pass ideals on to the next. There was something about the dark, dust-gathering swirls in the Victorian woodwork; something about the starched primness of their collars and the faded coloring in their petticoated dresses that made it easy to pass that on. Young men were ambitious and old men were Christian and children were an awkward combination of the two. But through it all life was slow enough for people to read the Bible to their grandchildren before they died.

For the generation that grew up to be the fathers of this graduating class, mystic faith reached a crazy high during the war years, when they were still young. Boys of twenty were found dead in France with prayer books in their pockets. But those who came back left the prayer books behind them and had nothing to read to the children they hardly knew. It was not easy to teach religion and idealism from memory, so what their sons learned was something less than the absolute beliefs that Victorian generations had never thought to question.

The grandfathers of the Class of 1943 were not in love with idealism: they were married to it. They were married to and idealism that was based on beliefs in private enterprise and the development of the nation. Their fathers wanted to fight for what people later told them was J. P. Morgan's bank account. Their appetite for idealism was flirtation and puppy love. They were never sure in what they could believe. And yet the class that now departs has developed a faith of its own. It is, perhaps, no longer a religious faith in abstract universals, but it remains a faith in the wisdom of men and in their ability to achieve their own salvation. We no longer fight for preconceived ideals, but we go forth with a conviction that out of this chaos we and our fellow can construct a better world.