Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

Page 8 text:

PREFACE According to the old scholastic ideal, devotion to learning was the highest possible form of life. It was a rich, per- sonal subjective experience. Today, having lost none of its personal values, scholarship has become enriched by its interest in practical problems in such fields as economics, sociology and international relations. Our institutions of higher learning include not only colleges and universities, but normal schools, teachers ' institutes, and professional schools. Higher education continues, it is true, to concern itself with unfold- ing a way of life. We receive a cultural background of liberal arts, we learn how to live well-adjusted lives as individuals, we derive the deep satisfaction of knowing the best in literature, art and music. But we study, too, socialism, fascism, communism and capitalism with an eye to the bettering of social systems. We examine psychology to help adjust the young, the abnormal, the underprivileged. We study journalism, architecture, engineering, law and medicine. We study zoology and botany, chemistry and physics, in order to understand our world, and the materials with which we work. Our knowledge of physical and social science trains us to meet specific problems. It is our goal to define those problems and to face them. Today they are the world ' s problems; we view them objectively and think that we can either ignore their challenge or accept it. Tomorrow, auto- matically, they become ours. We have a choice of two large fields in which to work. There is the prob- lem of setting our own house in order, which means taking an interest in our national government, and in furthering the democratic ideal of America by acting as progressive citizens. Or we can turn our eyes abroad, endeavour- ing to reach a solution to the international tangle — a solution which is neither

Page 7 text:

he 1 3 rJLeaendi f PUBLISHED BY THE SENIOR CLASS OF WELLESLEY COLLEGE WELLESLEY, MASS.

Page 9 text:

a blind insistence on maintaining an unjust status quo, nor a solution which discards the basic ideals and standards governing human relationships. We do not have to solve the problems. We can pass them on to other generations. But the best that is in us, the ideals which we own, demand that we face our problems squarely and take forward steps. We must seek the solu- tion. College men and women as a whole realize that war is never a solution, but we are often surprised to find that few people outside our circles share that conviction. It is up to us to counteract mob psychology; our reason can and must control our emotion. When we entered college in the fall of 1935, all four classes consisted of war babies, born between the years of 1914 and 1918. Today in Russia, Germany, France and England — throughout the world, they are mobilizing those war babies, our contemporaries, our potential friends — or our potential enemies. We do not wish to kill them; we do not even wish to hate them. For, wherever educated humanity exists, there live the seeds of common ambitions and ideals. To share those ideals and to spread them, in sincere cooperation, is better than t o fight for them. Men die for eternal ideals; they live for passing and material ones. It is much better that we should choose to live for those eternal ideals which we have in common with all educated youth. We are a world minority, trained to be leaders in thought and action. It is our profound hope that in the face of selfishness, cowardice and sloth, we can be eenerous, brave and tireless. In June, 1,686 institutions of higher learning in the United States will graduate approximately 312,500 young men and women. But there are more of us than that, in the class of 1939. We must not forget our contemporaries at the Universities of Prague, Heidelberg, Paris, Moscow, Naples, Oxford, Copenhagen. As Germans or as Russians, their ideologies may differ from ours, but as young, thoughtful human beings, their ideals an ours. It is with steadfast hope that we dedicate this yearbook to the Class of 1939 throughout the world.