United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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vox 11 An Address to a Graduating Class By Professor A. L. Phelps If a speaker informed you at the beginning of a twenty-minute ad¬ dress that he was going to talk about Our Prematurely Afflicted Cen¬ tury, The Story of the World, The Challenge of the Tragic, The Achievement of Culture, and The Basis of Faith, what in the world would you expect of him? The coloured balloons of rhetoric, I im¬ agine. Let us see. But first let me make the appropriate gesture towards the occasion. Dear Would-be Graduates at this Farewell: You are about to go out into this hot and silly world. After four years of more or less honest, more or less thoughtless, more or less arduous labours you are about to leave us to join that band of University Graduates who, sometimes doing other things, play poker or golf or bridge or gradually fill up the ranks of the unemployed and the University Women’s Clubs throughout the land. You are about to draw a line between one part of your lives and another part. You are about to leave a way of life to which you will look back with an increasing appreciation of its bright innocence, its unsullied and untaught irresponsibility. After to-night you will change. Inevitably something happens to you as Time draws the line for you between youth and the beginnings of maturity. But it is time to read from “Alice in Wonderland.” As I read, think of me as the Caterpillar and of yourselves, taken individually and collectively, as Alice. If you like, let Alice’s this morning” be your freshman period of four years ago. “The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence. At last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a sleepy voice. Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least, I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’ What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’ ‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see. ' I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar. ‘I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied very politely, ‘for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.’ ‘It isn’t,’ said the Caterpillar. ‘Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,’ said Alice; ‘but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?’ Not a bit,’ said the Caterpillar. ‘Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,’ said Alice; ‘all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.’

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10 vox Dr. Elliott , LL.D We live calmly among the peer¬ less in character, but we have eyes. Staunch integrity, fidelity to DR. JAMES ELLIOTT honorable interests and withal a freshness of spirit in these friends of ours do not escape notice. The plaudits of a parading public do not often acclaim such qualities, but the appreciations of unosten¬ tatious friends steadily increase with the years. Do you recognize this man with his ready and abundant but quiet wit, with his sane sense of propor¬ tion, and with a hope that keeps youth in solution in his blood? Briefly (he would insist on that) the facts are these: early education in private, in church educational schools, and the na¬ tional schools, all in Ireland; tour years of Methodist probation in 1876 in Canada, with an addi¬ tional two years of study; gradu¬ ation from Victoria College in 1886 with the medal in phil¬ osophy; preaching in Ottawa, Kingston and Montreal with post-graduate studies under Dr. Watson at Queen’s, and a Ph.D. in 1904; a short time teaching in Wesleyan Theological College, Montreal; the call West in 1907 to Wesley College, Winnipeg, by Dr. Sparling; a D.D. from Vic¬ toria College in 1916, and now, in 1931, an LL.D. from the Uni¬ versity of Manitoba. The highest distinction in the gift of a Uni¬ versity to which he has rendered a quarter of a century of service. In all these years he never sought an appointment or an honor. Self-aggrandisement is not of his characteristics. He often quotes to one not so steady as he: The stars come nightly to the sky; The tidal wave unto the sea; Nor near nor far nor deep nor high Can keep my own away from me. And he has been building up a “self.” If he had learned a static philosophy, he might have been morose, even dyspeptic, but his philosophy is dynamic. It moves on and eventually up. Every¬ thing is in the process of becom¬ ing, and if a becoming, why not a becoming better? That at least is his hope. For this he has been a voice. If a man be but an echo, it is lamentably true that men will crowd to listen and then to re¬ echo, but if he be a voice, men will listen, and as one of his stu¬ dents aptly put it, “I’ve been thinking ever since.” So it isn’t too easy “to think it through, class,” and “to suspend judgment until you’re in possession of all the facts.” Finally, for this article, Irish (Continued on page 89)

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12 VOX ‘You!’ said the Caterpillar contemptuously. ‘Who are you? Which brought them back again to the beginning of the con¬ versation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said very gravely, ‘I think you ought to tell me who you are first.’ ‘Why?’ said the Caterpillar. Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any very good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away. ‘Come back!’ the Caterpillar called after her. ‘I’ve something important to say.’ This sounded promising, certainly. Alice turned and came back again. ‘Keep your temper,’ said the Caterpillar. ‘Is that all?’ said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could. ‘No,’ said the Caterpillar. Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hear¬ ing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking; but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, ‘So you think you’re changed, do you?’ ” As I look at you I ask the Caterpillar’s question, “So you think you’re changed, do you?” and I entertain the hope that the mere fact of continuing life on this earth should enable you always to answer the Caterpillar ' s question with an exultant and not a sad affirmative. In entertaining this hope I may be going dead against fundamental psy¬ chological laws. It rarely seems possible, for instance, to make “one kind of a dog into another kind of a dog.” Yet I venture the surmise as I face you tonight: that if you ponder the topics I listed in the beginning, as you ponder, you will change, and (here I give away the fact that I am not a complete skeptic; Anatole France tells us that final skepticism im¬ plies absolute silence) you will change for the better. In other words, in talking to you in the attempt to open up these topics for you to-night, I hope to do you good. As some of you know, the phrase “our prematurely afflicted cen¬ tury” comes from Thomas Hardy. It has its setting in one of the few really noble pronouncements in contemporary literature; Hardy’s “Apology” prefaced to “Late Lyrics and Earlier.” Look for a moment at this young century we once so gayly and blatantly called Canada ' s. After all, you are of the few. You, about to graduate, are of the super-privileged classes. Yours is the rather special responsibility of seeing what is to be seen, of doing what is to be done. You know what we assume to be the special responsibility of the good swimmer in the crowd watching a drowning man struggling in mid stream. It is simply the special degree of responsibility bred out of superior knowledge and capacity. After four years at College, unless you have been fools, first, in coming, and then in staying, you possess superior knowledge and capacity. Well, look at your young century. Look at your world of 1931. I don’t mean your pretty world of 1931 just now