University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE The Spirit of California AM bidden to write on the Spirit of California as represented in the University of California upon the lilies of a talk I had the honor of being asked to deliver at the Freshman Rally in the (ireek Theatre. Others are to write on more concrete subjects connected with the growth and organization of the University. Theirs is the easier task, for they can use statistics and fill their papers with facts and valuable information, whereas I have to call upon my memory for the ideas inspired by looking upon the massed crowds of students collected in the Greek Theatre upon one of the significant occasions of the University year. It is one thing to speak to an audience of thousands on a great occasion ; it is quite another to gather up such ideas and set them down in the limits of a brief article, even if it is intended for so special a class of readers as the readers of the Iilue and Gold. The Spirit of California! It is the spirit of many civilizations and many races here forged into one people looking westward over the Pacific Ocean and knowing that it can not leap that ocean and spread any further. All these civilizations are represented in the University of California. Look over a list of the students in the University and you will be struck by the variety of names and the diversity of races represented. Here, in the class-room or in the Greek Theatre, can be found representatives of the various European civilizations, Englishmen, filtered through New England or Virginia and preserving the marked effect of American life upon the original stock, Scotchmen either of direct importation or filtered through American experi- ence but always preserving their marked characteristics, Irishmen with the 20

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THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE remain true to her present great ideal which springs from her position as a State institution. Recent events have demonstrated strikingly the loyalty of the University of California ' s alumni. This is not a loyalty merely of locality or association. The feeling goes deeper than that. It is a loyalty to the University because of the things for which she stands in the life of the State. It is a loyalty which finds expression in this wish May the University so act and may her sons and daughters so do their work that when the student of the future, long after the granite walls on our campus shall have crumbled to dust, turns over the pages of the history of the State of California and comes to the page which tells the story of our alma mater, he shall find there, written in letters of gold, this legend : The L ' nii ' Crsit of California. A nnirersity of sympathy, humanity, service. The daughter of the State. The mother of good citizens. MAX THELEX. KEARNEY ESTATE AX ENTRANCE 19

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THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE THE ALBATROSS never-dying enthusiasm for Ireland and its distinc- t i v e qualities. Germans n both Xorth and South. Protestant and Catholic. ndinavians with their fair hair and blue eye:-. Frenchmen with their pride in being the interpreters of new idea-. Italians with the memories of their long primacy in things intellec- tual.- Spaniards who feel at home in a land so full of Spanish names and Spanish traditions. and with them mingled yet older and more ancient peoples, whose traditions antedate those of European civilization, such as Armenians and Syrians and Hindus and Chinese and Japanese. To all of these races California has been a kindly foster mother and all of them find a welcome in her State University. The California Spirit is cosmopolitan : it welcomes all religions and all races. It has grown out of a boundless hospitality, and it receives its broad and tolerant character from the mingling within its borders of all who would come to make their home under its shelter. First and foremost, then, the Spirit of California is broad, tolerant and hospitable. But the Spirit of California is not only broad, it is also pre-eminently romantic. Other States of America, other countries of the world, are pre- eminently industrial or commercial, military or naval, religious or political, but California is above all the land of romance. This romance is in part his- toric. The first explorations of her coast, the first settlements of Spanish soldiers in her presidios and of Spanish friars in her missions, have given to her the glamor of an age not represented in the early history of other Ameri- can States. The rush of immigration in the days of gold brought to the land of sleepy memories of Spanish civilization an heroic race of pioneers. And since that time the flood of immigration into the United States has only sent the strongest and the most daring to its westernmost limits. The students of the University of California represent all these different stocks, and there is hardly a family without the tradition of some heroic ancestor, who made his way hither far from his native land amidst peril and hardship. The romance 21