Bowling Green State University - Key Yearbook (Bowling Green, OH)

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The Upper Room-Continued duties-duty to oneself, duty to one's country, duty to one's God. The three are interdependent and inseparable. Now, it is, or should be, the purpose of our school system to help youth in the realization of these highest duties, to aid them in their growth in the greatest of all arts-the art of living. To this art minister all the works of man. Music, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, invention, building- all these are only phases of the supreme art. Since the race began to emerge from darkness, the human spirit has striven to realize and to record the truth and beauty of the world, and to bring nature under subjection. To a few men in any age has been given the power to see, to record, and to conquer. These we name the masters of the race. And these are the real historians of mankind. We know that the true record of humanity lies in its works of art and industry and thought: in the Bible, in Homer, in Greek and Roman art and laws, in Dante, in Magna Charta, in Shakespeare, in the Declaration of Independence, in the telephone system of a great city, in a hotel of a thousand rooms, in a Pennsyl- vania railway, in a mighty printing-press, in the voice which reaches from conti- nent to continent with no carrier except the air. These are the gifts of the race. To know them, and to discover himself in his heritage, is the student's duty to himself. The teacher is the guide. To realize his duty to his nation, the student must feel that he is an individual of the nation. He must see the principles for which America stands and for which she tights today. Our struggle from the beginning has been to pass from slavery to freedom: the Revolution, the work of Lincoln, the law and justice of our courts. the control of wrongful business practices, pure food laws, the betterment of laboring conditions, prison reform, our public school system-all these are endeavors to better the condi- tion of men and women-to make them happier. The third realization comes to the student as he reflects that no nation or individual has ever been truly great, except through obedience to Divine law. You, as teachers, can have no higher purpose than to help your boys and girls to realize that the master artists of the world are those who most fully live. Try not so much for the methods and trade-marks of education-we have been at that too long-but strive rather to help the individual to see the realities of life and his vital relation to them. The greatest discovery in modern education is that the child is an individual, with peculiar needs. The service of the teacher is to aid this individual to find himself. Students of our college, you are to be congratulated upon having selected a school whose President has given evidence by his daily life before you of self- communion in the upper room. His upstanding patriotism and his unashamed reliance upon that Power which is greater than man, have been an inspiration to us all. As you go out into the world of thought and action, may you not forget your College. She is your Alma Mater. From the childhood of the race, men have believed that they drank new strength by returning to that from which they sprang. Antaeus felt his power renewed each time he touched the earth: the child turns to its mother for the healing of its hurts and sorrows: men and women turn to God, from Whom cometh their help. So may you often return in kindly thought to your Nourish- ing Mother! I2

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The Upper Room-Continued cathedral prepared for the worship of her creatures. This is the calmness manifested by men and women who have come into possession of adjustment and repose. When college students have this grasp of their world, they can find happiness in their daily work, for they see its purpose as a part of life. Such an individual has discovered himself as an individuality and as a com- ponent part of his college and of his world. He has formed the immeasurably valuable habit of thought. He has created for himself an upper room. where the fires of faith are never allowed to die. He has been a successful student, for he has entered into the heaven which lies all about us, not only in our infancy, but throughout our lives. ' I We are students from birth until death. The individual continuously searches for knowledge of himself, his world, and God. This knowledge and faith in God is the repose for which the human spirit yearns. It is freedom from doubt and the fever of self-consciousness. It is the unconsciousness of childhood. which Froebel has called rest in God. The player who represents his school plays before the crowd, but he has previously communed with his forces in the privacy of his room. Our young men in basketball played the game cleanly and with courageg their thoughts in solitude had given them mental discipline. The student who has examined himself in the silent hour will face the duties of his life with a clearer vision and a happy faith in the source of his help. Never in our history were clarity of vision and a steadfast faith needed as today. Our beloved nation is passing through her most trying hour. Ameri- cans have never felt such need of reflection and self-examination. We find ourselves in aworld at strife. Every man and woman of self-respect is pon- dering the great realities of life. Students of every school beneath the flag have today the grandest assignment of their lives-a lesson given by their nation and by their God. Real life lies within you: your activities are only the manifestation of your actual self. The service you bear in this hour springs from that inner patriot- ism 'to which you come by conscientious thought. What makes a life signifi- cant? What but love, faith, hope, duty, devotion, sacrifice? The seeking of the race has been for ideals-principles. We are the heirs of Jew, Christian, Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, all of whom have given to the stream of civiliza- tion things which speak unto the spirit. And in our hour of trial we fight that these invisible and intangible things may not be taken from us. These are the things which cannot be expressed, for our souls are greater than our vocabu- laries. You walk forth on a summer morning when the dew is on the grass: you walk in the moonlight with one whose life is dearer to you than your own: you stand with head uncovered when the flag is passing by-all these lie beyond the pale of any language. And today in Europe, each of these joys has been trampled beneath the iron heel of might! Men in this war have written beautiful and thrilling poetry, but their death is a more lasting chapter. The greatest literature in the world has been written by the deaths of men: the greatest chapter, and the most sublime, was written by the meek and lowly Nazarene on the wind-swept cross on Calvary. You.. also, may pen your chapter. Every true citizen of America today is losing his life in devoted service. When the brighter day shall dawn. we Shall find that life again in a new and better America. No one has now a higher duty or. a greater opportunity for noble service than the American teacher. Her daily work among the boys and girls will lead them to a realization of the high. Il '

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A fllleooage. f in gears to rome this volume mill cause uou Io pause in flre oauio oeeupaiiorw to ouil for u liffle mlrile on ilte neu of memories, bark to fl1e oem' olo ISELQQB at Bowling Glreen, me ohall be huppg in the Ruowleoge that our efforts have not been in vain- Flin: Editors