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

Page 12 text:

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE W. R. TAYLOR, M.A., PH.D., D.D. My colleagues join with me in this brief salutation to the members of the graduating class and in the expression of a sincere desire that all who now rake formal leave of our halls may, in the course of their days, see their hopes richly fulfilled and all their labors crowned with true success and happiness. The world has need of you, even now as you go out to meet it, for only those who have in their blood the Hre of Springl' can deliver our world from the fear that the shears of Fate have cut the tent-ropes of its life. We do not need to remind you that something has gone wrong with civilization. An old order is dying through an accumulation of weakness, disease, and effeteness, but the new order seems powerless to be born. In the words of holy writ, this is a day of distress, of disruption, and of disgrace, the pangs of childbirth are here, but there is no strength in the mother. We live in a sick worldg and its sickness derives from a malady in its soul. The ceaseless conflict between the nations and between the classes within the nations needs some curative process that goes deep into the vitals of society. The root of the modern malaise is not the raucous struggle between ideologies or between theories, political or economic, but a collapse of morals, a degeneration of values, an abnegation of norms of judgment. Perhaps, a large portion of the blame for the confusion of our times, for the lack of a sense of meaning and purpose in life is to be set on the shoulders of those of us who belong to the universities-to those of us who by reason of their specializations sacrifice their souls to the techniques and gadgets of the material elements of civilization, or to those of us who call ourselves Nadvancecl? and realistic, whose talk is in the jargon of frustra- tions and repressions and to whom all human acts have been predetermined by our infantile conditionings. Such types of naturalism confuse the lines of right and wrong, and weaken the higher loyalties of mankind. But no civilization can thrive, no government prosper, no society survive, if it neglect what Nicolai Hartmann once called the ethos of the upward gaze. All the great ages, said Emerson, have been ages of belief, when the human soul was in earnest and had fixed its thoughts on spiritual verities. May you who leave us and we who remain behind, all of us together, labor triumphantly at the task to which the times call us. ISI

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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

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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE PERMANENT EXECUTIVE OF 1948 ALAN Bow'ERs, P7'CSfdCIIf,' JOAN I-IUME, Vicr-Prfsia'v1zf,' PATRICIA PIUNT, Sl'c'I'0flll'j',' XVESLEY KNOXN'I.TON, Trcaszrrmg' IVIARGARET BULMER, Comzcillnr. As we stand upon the threshold of a new life, it would perhaps be well to review the endeavours and achievements of the past few years. To many of our class returning from the disruptions of service life, these years have formed an admirable period of adjustment. The value of our college activities will be- come increasingly evident as we face the less sheltered days of post-graduation life. To all of us, coming as we do from diverse walks of life, these years have provided an oppor- tunity for living and working together to our mutual benefit. While our undergraduate days have seen the natural emphasis placed upon the aca- demic, the extra-curricular has not been neg- lected. In the Literary and Athletic Society and the Women's Undergraduate Associa- tion, the men and women of our years have shown a keen interest which has served to strengthen our College. In the fields of sport, debating, music, drama and entertainment, 4T8 has proved its worth. As we prepare to take up our life's work, we should stop briefly to assess the goal to which we have dedicated our effort in these past years. It would be Wrong to consider graduation as a mere economic passport or an entree to society. Rather, we must con- sider it as the conclusion of a formative period. We hope that our undergraduate days have served to broaden our mental horizons so that we may now more intelli- gently and tolerantly approach our every- day problems. May our university life prove to have been the anvil upon which was forged a lifetime of service. Now, as we follow our separate ways, we trust that pleasant memories of comradeship in University College will always firmly bind the class of 4T8 to its Alma Mater.