US Army School of Nursing - Taps Yearbook (Washington, DC)

ei; fM£BsiiGB horn (^iss ^ilblbg ^ }s TO THE CLASS Of 1929, ARMY SCHOOL OF NURSING: AJy dear Students: Years glide b\ so swiftly tiiat it is indeed difficult to realize that 1929 marks the graduation from the Army School of Nursing of the last class with whom I had the honor and the pleasure of working and serving. It is a matter of pride and satisfaction to know that you are now prepared to merge with that larger army on duty in the world-wide field of " human engineering. " The orders awaiting you will be to add through untiring efforts your contributions to the already notable achievements of Nour fellow associates. In the evolution of human welfare the immensity of the task is commensurate to the vastness of the field, and to each worker is given enduring joy in the satisfaction of service. Occasionally there are those among us who work with clearer vision, leaders whose ideals we fuse with ours when we endeavor to make their thoughts our guiding prin- ciples. From the lectures of such a leader, a master philoropher of science and religion, 1 have selected my message to you. In " Evolution in Science and Religion, " by Robert Andrew Milliken we read : " Through the careful stud\ of the way the rocks lie on our hillsides, we have found evidence for the growth of this earth through a billion years at the least. Through the study of radio activity and other physical proces:.es we have found definite evidence that the world is evolving and changing all the time, even in its chemical elements. By a minute study of the comparative aiiatomies of all kinds of animals and by the reading of the history of life through fossils we have found evidence of progres- sion, evidence of a continuous movement from the lower up to the higher form:-, and through the study of history and the ob.servation of what is going on under our eves at the present time a new conception, a ciinception nf progress, has entered the thought of the wor ld , a progress in which we play an important part, a progress the key to which is to considerable extent, at least, in our own hands. The picture which the develop- ment of science and the scientific method has brought into the world of a continual in- crease in control over environment is the dominant note in the fourth stage in the evolu- tion of religion. No conception of God which has ever come into human thinking has been half so productive of effort on the part of man to change bad conditions as has this new modern conception of progress, this conception which man himself plavs a part in the scheme of evolution, this conception. . . . inevitably introduced into human think- ing by the stupendous .strides which have been made in the last century, that there are perhaps limitless possibilities ahead through the use of the scientific method for the en- richment of life and the development of the race. " Very sincerely, Elizabeth Mei.b^-. ef_ [}^ [25]