University of Toronto - Torontonensis Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

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o e gfddud iea In expressing Farewell to the graduates of 4T8, we also salute Torontonensis on its fiftieth birthday. In looking backward to 1898, you may find sources of inspiration and fortitude. With your buoyancy and optimism, you will not share the proneness, in these troublous days, to believe that grief and tragedy are our peculiar lot. It is well for all of us to recall that our forefathers faced difficulty and danger that would have daunted a lesser breed. In 1898, Kitchener won a decisive battle at Omdurman, Commodore Dewey annihilated the Spanish fleet at Manila, and a chain of events was leading to the Boer War. There was thethreat of a clash in Crete between the Turks and other European powers. Bread riots in Italy and race riots in the United States were accompanied by bloodshed. The death in that year of Gladstone and of Bismarck brings to mind the earlier stresses and strains of eastern and western Europe. The Dreyfus case was shocking the conscience of mankind. rm

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THE RT. HON. VINCENT MASSEY P.c., C.H., M.A., LL.D., D.c.L., Hon. F.R.s.C. l5l

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The way for better communications and better understanding among nations was being prepared by a Canadian - an eminent graduate of the University of Toronto, the Honourable William Mulock-through his proposal of penny postage. As we travel down the decades from 1898, we see the struggles between mortal longing and immortal Law and we recognize the leading roles of the sons and daughters of Toronto whose names were written with high promise in the successive issues of Torontonensis. Many of you have already contributed to the triumph of righteousness over evil by courageous service to Canada in days of war. Your Alma Mater sends you forth with faith in your ideals and with confidence in the power of your minds and the strength of your characters. Your Alma Mater, with her traditions of the free mind and the free spirit for free people-traditions which have survived through the centuries the swords of tyrants and the follies of false prophets - expects that, in thought and in deed, you will reveal the redemptive capacity of mankind. And when the heat of your race is past, may you sing, in the words of a distinguished graduate of 1895, Arthur Stringer: Through the years Our ranks have thinned, but still the Cause endures, Our brows are furrowed, but we walk with Faith, Our heads are frosted, yet we face the light And with more guarded steps seek out the Good And with more tempered hands attest the True, Since they who seem to conquer often lose And they who lost too often strangely win, For we, the Veterans, the battle-scarred Survivors of an army greyed with dust Amid the changes of a clamorous world, Have known the old uncertainties, the clash Of mortal longing and immortal Law And out of tumult won ou dy peace, And out of failure garnere fortitude. I71