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

Page 34 text:

PRESIDENT ' S MESSAGE Commencement Day, 1939, was the seventy-sixth in the history of the University of California. Quite truthfully, therefore, the alumni whose undergraduate record as the officially designated Class of 1939 is set down in the present Blue and Gold may also claim another and significant designation, the Boys of ' 76. The minute men of ' 76 served well the world of their time, and, in particular, the newly conceived American Democracy, then just struggling to stand upon its feet. One hundred and sixty-three years later, the world and Democracy are again in desperate need, and the call is sounding for minute men of a modern model. Democracy, particularly American Democracy, today is barely emerging from its adolescence. Its jealous, embittered enemies, in their new, vari-colored shirts, are opposing the same ancient, hostile ideologies to the unquenchable aspirations of men and women for a democratic freedom. The power of powder may force issues, but it never has and never will set men ' s feet in that staright, yet not easy, road that leads to Democracy ' s fulfillment. Few there be that find it, say the Scriptures. Here is the responsibility of the college- bred minute man, to meet Democracy ' s present need for that intelligence of the few to find and to fight for truth; not on the battlefield of ruthless might, but on the modern, twen- tieth-century battlefield, the minds of human beings. To the Class of 1939, California ' s Boys of 76, 1 give this reminder of their share of this pressing responsibility. ROBERT G. SPROUL. 1 26