A BETTER E 
 
 A BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS DE- 
 LIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY O? 
 CINCINNATI ON JUNE 6, 191?, BY 
 PRESIDENT CHARLES WILLIAM dXbNEY 
 
 printed from the University of Cincinnati Record, Vol. XI, No. 8, July, 191& 
 

 *A BETTER ERA 
 
 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS 
 
 BY PRESIDENT CHARLES W. DABNEY 
 
 June 6, 1915 
 
 "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? 
 The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night; 
 if ye will inquire, inquire ye." 
 
 Though our own land is as peaceful as this serene morning, 
 it is impossible for us to withhold our sympathies from the 
 nations on the other side of the ocean who are in such deep 
 distress. Whether we will or not, every human instinct, 
 every intellectual interest, fastens our thoughts upon the 
 conditions there. It is useless, therefore, for us to try to 
 think of other things, while our minds are so absorbed in the 
 issue of these events. We may be neutral, but we cannot 
 be indifferent. 
 
 During the early months of the war, we were too awe- 
 struck to grasp the situation. Now, however, its terrible 
 lessons are being driven home to us. Our deepest concern 
 as students is that we make our own these fresh lessons of 
 history and, especially, that we try to lay hold of new hope 
 for human life. Even before the war is over, it is our duty 
 to cut fresh channels in which the new tides of spiritual life 
 may flow, that out of this collapse of civilization we had 
 builded, out of this failure of all agencies which we had 
 chosen, we may be led into a new and better era. 
 
 These last ten terrible months have shattered the theories 
 of all the philosophers to whom we have been accustomed 
 to look for guidance, as completely as they have dissipated 
 the dreams of all the poets to whom we went for inspiration. 
 Since the world began, men have been thinking and dreaming 
 of a better era. A golden age or a millennium of righteous- 
 
 * Reprinted' from the University of Cincinnati Record, Vol. XI, No. 3, July, 1915. 
 
 
r.ess has been the goal of the philosophies of all peoples. It 
 was the dream of the Hindoos, the prophecy of the Hebrews, 
 the hope of the Greeks, the plan of the Romans, and the 
 teaching of Christ. But all the philosophies which promised 
 to bring in the golden era appear now to have failed us. 
 
 Does this mean that all these philosophies were false? 
 By no means. Immanuel Kant, the great prophet of the 
 Germans, expressed the most profound thought of his people 
 in words of eternal significance. His philosophy was founded 
 upon two eternal moral maxims ; the universality of the law 
 of right, and the supreme consideration due each human 
 personality. He taught that no necessity or particular con- 
 sideration whatever can be weighed against the universal 
 demands of the law of right. What is right for one man in 
 one place is right for all men everywhere. 
 
 His second maxim teaches that man is not a thing, but a 
 person, and that to treat each man as a person is the first 
 law of all human relationships; that each man has his indi- 
 vidual rights. The law of right is universal and each man's 
 right is supreme. Believing that these doctrines were ap- 
 plicable to nations, as well as to individuals, Kant taught 
 that the nations of the earth should live together in a federa- 
 tion of mutual respect and friendly co-operation, and thus 
 establish universal peace. Is Kant's teaching false because 
 his people have gone to war ? Never ! As he spoke to the 
 German people one hundred and fifty years ago, so he speaks 
 to all the nations of the earth today. 
 
 Like the German philosopher, the English poet taught us 
 to hope for the "Parliament of Man, — The Federation of the 
 World." Tennyson believed "the thoughts of men are 
 widened with the process of the suns." 
 
 "We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move ; 
 The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun ; 
 The dark Earth follows, wheel'd in her ellipse ; 
 And human things returning on themselves 
 Move onward, leading up the golden year." 
 
 Such doctrines, hopes, and dreams are inherent in the 
 human mind and heart, and are the foundations of all our 
 thought of human progress. We cannot uproot them and 
 continue to think. We cannot give them up and live. 
 
 In the course of history, man has had many discourage- 
 ments in his hopes for universal peace and his plans for 
 
human progress, but none, perhaps, more crushing than this 
 catastrophe. For this war shows that we do not really 
 recognize the universality of Kant's Law of Right, and that 
 we are still far, far from the "Federation of the World" of 
 Tennyson. If we must judge from the actions of the 
 nations today, there is still no law but the law of the jungle, 
 and no federation except the federation of cruelty and of hate. 
 
 And what a tremendous shock it was to all our theories ! 
 A year ago, many of us could have given a score or more of 
 reasons why a great world war could never again occur. 
 We believed that there were too many economic and political, 
 as well as moral and religious, influences opposed to war. 
 
 Norman Angell had taught us that the idea that war 
 promoted the material interests of the conqueror was a 
 "Great Illusion," and, therefore, that the bankers and the 
 economists would never permit another war. But money 
 and business did not prevent war. 
 
 The militarists claimed that great armaments would pre- 
 vent war. But we know now that the doctrine, "In time of 
 peace, prepare for war," was a horrible falsehood. The 
 supposed instruments of law and peace have proved the 
 instruments of murder and destruction. 
 
 International socialism also failed. In July, the deputies 
 of the societies in the various countries met in Brussels and 
 passed the usual resolutions against war, but, in August, 
 they were all marching under arms to the fratricidal contest. 
 
 Science, many thought, would certainly prevent war be- 
 tween educated nations. Biology had shown the folly of 
 destroying the best of the nations, the seed-corn of the future. 
 But science, too, sold herself to militarism and became its 
 willing servant in making explosives for destroying this 
 seed-corn. 
 
 Sad, indeed, was the failure of the peace societies. We 
 did not expect much from their social meetings held in mag- 
 nificent palaces, but some of us had hoped that great good 
 would result from international peace tribunals and courts 
 of arbitration. Although the peace societies were meeting in 
 Switzerland at the time the armies were mobilizing, they had 
 no more influence upon the nations rushing into war than 
 the twittering sparrows have upon the railway trains dash- 
 ing through the forests. 
 
 — 3 — 
 
The statesmen of some of the nations labored to prevent 
 war, but they, too, failed. Diplomacy, which was always 
 looked upon as the trusted watchman of peace, became in 
 those last days the willing tool of the war makers. 
 
 Saddest of all, Christianity, founded by the Prince of 
 Peace, failed to prevent war. This war is man's new fall, 
 his greatest fall since Christ came to save him. The whole 
 drama of this war states in terrible terms the unchristianity 
 of Christendom. It measures again the awful task that 
 Christ undertook when he came to redeem mankind and called 
 man to the establishment of a Divine Kingdom by love and 
 sacrifice. Do we ask again with new urgency : "After all, 
 is Christ's program for human society practical? Is he, 
 indeed, the answer to the world's need? If he is, perhaps, 
 the answer to the need of the individual human soul, can 
 states be conducted under this Christ constitution ? Is it not 
 possible to govern the world by love?" By dreadnought 
 and submarine, by Zeppelin and aeroplane, by mortar and 
 howitzer; with torpedo and bomb, with shell and shrapnel, 
 with dynamite and poisonous gas, turned against women and 
 children, as well as fighting men, with a skill never equaled 
 and a cruelty unsurpassed, the nations are answering with a 
 thunderous "No!" "No!" say these voices of Hell, "There 
 is no such thing as human love and brotherhood." 
 
 Christendom has yet to learn what the application of the 
 principles of Christ demands in relation not only to personal, 
 but also to social, industrial, and national lives. 
 
 What, then, is the lesson of this collapse of civilization. 
 Religious-minded people think that it is a new revelation of 
 God. This war is, in fact, the most apocalyptic thing in all 
 history. It has broken the entail of the past. Modern 
 European history has been said to date from the Napoleonic 
 Wars. Our new modern history will date from 1914. We 
 are now laying its foundations. The war has thus brought 
 the world a magnificent opportunity to make a new beginning. 
 
 History teaches us that these moral catastrophes all have 
 their causes. They are prepared by the acts of men and 
 nations. Wise old Doctor Holmes said : "War is no accident, 
 but an inevitable result of long incubating causes ; inevitable 
 as the cataclysms that swept away those monstrous births of 
 primeval nations." If this be true, the occurrences of the 
 
 — 4 — 
 
last few weeks, the intensification of the strife, the enlarge- 
 ment of its area and the tremendous issues, should make men 
 look to the larger facts which lie behind these events. 
 
 For several decades our universities have been absorbed 
 with the evolutionary philosophy. Up to the outbreak of 
 this war, many of us had been taught to think of the future 
 of mankind in terms of evolution, that is, that progress is 
 made by slow and gradual steps only, or, as one has said, 
 "by the aggregation of infinitesimal increments of advance." 
 This way of looking at human things was due, of course, to 
 the triumph of the evolutionary theory in natural science. 
 Since the progress of Nature is so inconceivably slow, how 
 absurd it is, they said, for us to be impatient with social 
 wrong. It was unscientific to expect human society to im- 
 prove any faster. It Nature takes so long to evolve the soul, 
 how absurd for the theologians to teach that the soul can 
 be new-born in a moment. 
 
 The historians of human thought will trace the great and 
 all pervading influence of the theory of Darwin on the whole 
 realm of social, political, and religious thinking and action. 
 This newest materialism has blunted the edge of our religious 
 thinking, and is largely responsible for the terrible error 
 from which we are suffering today. But its end is near. 
 Even before this cataclysm, we were coming to see that 
 evolution by infinitesimal increments, while perhaps true up 
 to a certain point in nature, was not a complete account of 
 human life. There is much in science, as well as in history, 
 that cannot be accounted for by its formula. De Vries teaches 
 us now that evolution is not sufficient to account for many 
 facts of plant life, and the bacteriologists tell us that it does 
 not explain many phenomena in their field. All we are learn- 
 ing about the nature of matter leads us to the same con- 
 clusion. In other words, tremendous leaps have been 
 discovered in nature which contradict the theory of Darwin. 
 We believe now that there is in human history a revolu- 
 tionary, as well as an evolutionary, element. Just as we 
 believe that there are perfectly new personalities being born 
 in the world which are more than rearrangements of the 
 characteristics of their ancestors, so we believe that there 
 have been clean, new beginnings, tremendous and sudden 
 cataclysms in human society. Is not this one of them ? 
 
Why do we believe in revolution as well as evolution? 
 Most men still believe that they are free. Then the moment 
 we give a place to human freedom, we realize that the theory 
 of evolution by infinitesimal degrees is insufficient to describe 
 human life. We borrow evolution from nature, but nature's 
 categories cannot explain human nature. When we come to 
 study men, we must use a new term, we must speak of educa- 
 tion. And education is an entirely different process from 
 evolution. If this be so, the apocalypse, the revelation of 
 truth through revolution, is a part of God's plan for the 
 education of man. 
 
 We must believe, I say, that man is by his very nature 
 endowed with freedom. If man chooses, he can go wrong. 
 Sometimes he goes wrong for years together, sometimes 
 whole nations go wrong for decades. Thus begins the down- 
 ward process. See how it evolves. Evil appears to triumph 
 everywhere ; the wicked prosper more than the righteous, and 
 the fool says in his heart that the wrong works better than 
 the right. 
 
 Under all discouragement, however, the fight for right- 
 eousness goes on. There is in this world such a thing as 
 judgment, and all this time judgment is accumulated. When 
 men have been outraged until they will stand it no longer, 
 then comes a revolution. Darkness falls. The wind of 
 death wraps the nations in its wings. Civilizations sink 
 in blood. 
 
 Now once more men see what sin means. All the evil 
 hidden during the years is dragged out into the light of 
 eternity. It is shown once again that evil does not succeed in 
 God's world. The old Hebrew philosophy is again shown 
 to be eternally right, and men realize that it is only another 
 apocalypse, a moment of judgment. 
 
 But history teaches us that such cataclysms are not the 
 end, they are the beginning. There is in them not merely a 
 possibility, there is a promise of progress as sudden and 
 immense as was the coming of the judgment. Time and 
 time again there has come, breaking out of the wreck of the 
 past, one of these great forward leaps in history. May we 
 not in this dark hour look forward to such a dawn ? 
 
 Moreover, what we hope for is not simply a zig-zagging, 
 slow-climbing, evolutionary path up the height of civilization 
 
 — 6 — 
 
from which we have fallen, but it is the beginning of a new 
 era on a new moral basis. 
 
 Thus it is, that as our eyes grow accustomed to the night, 
 we see through the darkness the eternal stars pointing the 
 true way of human progress, which is the way, not of evolu- 
 tion, but of revolution— of revolution directed by an all- 
 powerful and righteous God, who is also a God of Mercy 
 and of Love. 
 
 What we have now to look forward to is a new epoch 
 which God has initiated by his judgment, and in which he will 
 regenerate and heal, if men will only turn to him. Not 
 evolution, therefore, but the judgment and the mercy of God 
 are the ideas which come to us today with new power and 
 hope, as we look through the symbolism of this apocalypse 
 into the eternal truth. 
 
 Will men only respond to God's summons in this judg- 
 ment? Never in history has man had such an opportunity 
 to learn what pride and war mean. Twenty-five million men 
 will probably experience it in their own bodies and souls, and 
 perhaps a billion other men, women, and little children will 
 suffer its horrors with them before this war is ended. And, 
 alas, the conclusion of the war will not end this suffering. 
 Unborn children will bear its burdens and sorrows for ages 
 to come. Will men learn the lesson and pass from the con- 
 demnation of war to the condemnation of the spirit that makes 
 war? Will they see the revelation, will they then receive it 
 and learn its lesson? Under the tuition of His Spirit, we 
 believe they will. This is God's apocalypse. Again a 
 tremendous, forgotten Biblical truth is receiving transcendent 
 expression. Sin is working death. 
 
 What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? On 
 what ground may we hope for the progress of humanity? 
 Only on the ground that God rules. Only on the ground 
 that God so loved the world that he gave His Son to save it. 
 
 No man ever drank deeper of the sorrows of war, no 
 soldier ever rose to grander heights of human service than 
 General Lee. I give you this statement of his faith in 
 Providence and his hope for the future of mankind. Speak- 
 ing to his people in the time of their defeat and despair, 
 General Lee uttered these memorable words containing the 
 essence of our Christian philosophy : 
 
 — 7 — 
 
"My experience of men has neither disposed me to think 
 worse of them, nor indisposed me to serve them ; nor, in 
 spite of failures, which I lament; of errors, which I now see 
 and acknowledge, or, of the present aspect of affairs, do I 
 despair of the future. The truth is this : The march of 
 Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient, the work 
 of progress is so immense, and our means of aiding it so 
 feeble, the life of humanity is so long, and that of the indi- 
 vidual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advanc- 
 ing wave, and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches 
 us to hope." 
 
 Does history give us hope today ? Has Christianity failed 
 to influence the lives of men and nations? Have these 
 twenty centuries counted for nought ? Let us see. 
 
 When we ask in what respect the modern world is an 
 improvement upon the ancient, a common answer is that the 
 development of the physical forces and their applications in 
 production, transportation, and the other conveniences of life 
 are the great achievements. If this is all , we are not sur- 
 prised that we have made no progress toward the abolition 
 of war, for the development of physical force only creates 
 more wealth and contributes little to man's spiritual life. 
 Have we then made no spiritual progress in modern times ? 
 The evidence of our material civilization, exhibited in manu- 
 factures, commerce, and trade, and in the comforts of modern 
 life, are on the surface. It is not so easy to prove our moral 
 progress. The spiritual growth of man is necessarily slower. 
 It is only through labor and sorrow that the soul is saved. 
 The battle of the spirit against the flesh is terrible, in nations 
 as well as in individuals. Often when a new fortress of 
 righteousness seems about to be taken by the white-robed 
 warriors of the soul, the black hordes of the elemental 
 passions burst forth, and drive them back to the plains where 
 the battle has to be begun all over. 
 
 But in spite of all these losses and discouragements, it is 
 still true, is it not, that the great glpry of the modern world 
 is the development of a sense of humanity, and the realization 
 of the brotherhood of man? Slowly, and through terrible 
 struggles, man is learning that all men "should brothers be," 
 and that "Above all nations is humanity." 
 
This war itself is giving many opportunities for the further 
 development of this spirit, proving anew its vitality and power 
 to heal. It is true, is it not, that while on the one side there 
 never was such a cruel war, on the other there never were 
 so many manifestations of the sympathy of man for man? 
 The work of the Red Cross and of the Relief Commissions 
 shows that even during this terrible time the spirit of humanity 
 is growing. Never in history has there been such an over- 
 whelming outpouring of generous aid and tender sympathy, 
 regardless of the race, rank, and nationality of the suffering. 
 This is the true neutrality ; this is the one encouraging thing 
 in these sad months. Strange as it may seem at such a time, 
 the whole world, as well as America, is developing an ever 
 stronger sympathy. 
 
 We are deeply concerned as to the influence of this 
 catastrophe upon these young men. While it is undoubtedly 
 true that war, through service to the sick and wounded, con- 
 tributes to our spiritual development, its influence upon the 
 young is, in all other respects, vicious. The war spirit 
 exploits physical prowess and martial success, glorifying the 
 heroism of the soldier, the professional destroyer of human 
 life. We are bound to admire self-sacrificing courage 
 wherever found, and nothing perhaps appeals to the young 
 like the heroism of battle. 
 
 But the mere warrior is not the highest type of hero. 
 Wordsworth, it is said, wrote his "Happy Warrior" as a 
 protest against the attention bestowed upon the military char- 
 acters developed in the French war, and especially against 
 the praise heaped upon Lord Nelson, whose public life was 
 even then stained by a great crime. 
 
 "Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he 
 
 That every man in arms should wish to be?" * * * 
 
 "It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought 
 
 Among the tasks of real life, ****** 
 
 Makes his moral being his prime care ; * * 
 
 More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, 
 
 As tempted more; more able to endure, 
 
 As more exposed to suffering and distress; 
 
 Thence, also, more alive to tenderness." 
 
 But the love of fight is an instinct inherited from the 
 countless generations of men. Through physical contest 
 largely, man has attained to his present position, and it is to 
 
this love of contest that the statesmen and the generals appeal 
 when they call men to war. We are dealing here with some- 
 thing original, natural, universal, and, I believe, also inde- 
 structible, — a force that lies deeper in human nature than 
 ambition or love of self. 
 
 Now since this love of warfare is one of the strongest 
 natural instincts, it is hopeless to undertake its total sup- 
 pression. The impulse is closely related to the instinct of 
 self-preservation, and to those of hunger and of sex, which, 
 we know, can never be extirpated so long as the race lives. 
 The problem, then, is not how to eradicate this love of con- 
 test, but how to direct it into proper channels. 
 
 Just as we have utilized the great natural forces for 
 useful purposes, so we must direct these great natural instincts 
 in such a way that they shall become humanizing and creative, 
 instead of cruel and destructive. Lightning was regarded by 
 primitive man as purely destructive. Jove cast his bolts in 
 anger and for the punishment of men; but electricity, first 
 caught from the clouds by Franklin, has been thoroughly 
 mastered by Volta, Faraday, and Edison, until now it is ac- 
 cepted as the most serviceable instrument of human welfare, 
 operating our machinery, lighting our habitations, and flash- 
 ing our thoughts around the world. 
 
 Precisely in this manner we have conquered some of these 
 primordial instincts. Hunger, a brutal passion in the savage, 
 has been at least partially refined, until now all civilized men 
 eat and drink without fighting, and some of us even in accord- 
 ance with the laws of dietetics. So, too, the passion of sex, 
 which among early men wrought frightful brutality, and 
 which has been in all ages the curse of civilization, has now 
 become among moral people the greatest constructive force of 
 human society — bringing together the family, which is the 
 unit of society, the unit of government, the unit of church, 
 and the beginning of Heaven on Earth. 
 
 In similar manner, we must civilize this terrible passion 
 for war and convert this natural fighting instinct from bar- 
 barous and destructive uses to humane and beneficent ends. 
 The fierce impulses that stir nations to war must be applied 
 to mercy, instead of to misery, to rescue, instead of to ruin, 
 to life, instead of to death. 
 
 — 10 — 
 
It cannot be true that there is no better employment for 
 the patriotism of one people than the destruction of some 
 other people. Why not sacrifice ourselves for human im- 
 provement rather than for human destruction? "Much 
 remains to conquer still," as Milton said to Cromwell, "Peace 
 has her victories no less renowned than War." Surely there 
 is enough misery in this world for us to fight without adding 
 the misery of war. Why not, then, conscript our young 
 men for an army to make war on the evils of our present 
 sbciety, to lessen the toil and pain, the hardness and the agony 
 which nature imposes on her children? Heroism not less 
 splendid, contests not less perilous than those on the blood- 
 stained fields of Europe, await men everywhere in the fields 
 of science and of service. 
 
 These humanitarian tasks may be unromantic — they are 
 usually unexciting — but they often try men's hearts as 
 severely as any battle. The courage of the soldier is strongly 
 sustained by companionship. Whether marching into battle 
 or lying in a trench, he has the support of his fellows and 
 looks forward to promotion and to glory. Many plain men 
 are daily dying in solitude for humanity. The professional 
 soldier leads a heathful and routine life which may last for 
 years, and has in his whole career only one day, or perhaps 
 one hour, of danger, while some of our ordinary workers 
 are daily risking their lives without any suspicion that they 
 are acting the part of heroes. The miner enters each day 
 into the tunnel where he may be crushed, smothered, or blown 
 i up; the riveter works at his perilous task high in the air on 
 the skeleton of a many-storied building; the physician faces 
 disease without fear striving to overcome some great 
 epidemic; the explorer tramps hundreds of miles through 
 trackless swamps and forests filled with wild men and beasts ; 
 the missionary seeks some far-a-way land and commits the life 
 of his family to a savage people whom he seeks to save — 
 none of these think they are heroes. They are only doing 
 their duty. Such men, as well as those who fight our physical 
 battles, are true soldiers. 
 
 "Dream not helm and harness 
 
 The sign of valor true; 
 Peace hath higher tests of manhood 
 
 Than battle ever knew." 
 
 — 11 — 
 
The man who stood at the head of my class at the Uni- 
 versity, a fine classical scholar, immediately on graduation, 
 asked the American Board of Foreign Missions to send him 
 to some needy place that no one else would take. It was 
 important at the time, for the sake of humanity, that a station 
 be established in that far-a-way corner of Alaska inside the 
 Arctic circle, known as Cape Prince of Wales. Harry 
 Thornton accepted the task and went there with his young 
 wife to establish a mission for a small tribe of uncivilized 
 people. After laboring six years without seeing a man of 
 his own race, he was assassinated by some of the people he 
 was trying to help. But before he died, Thornton had started 
 a school and a church which have since become the center 
 of civilization for all that region. 
 
 Never was there a nobler band of soldiers, than the small 
 one organized by Major Reed of Virginia to study yellow 
 fever in Cuba. Reed and his companions, Carroll and 
 Lazear, accomplished their appointed task and then gave up 
 their lives. No deed of battle ever surpassed the self-sacrifice 
 of Lazear, who deliberately let mosquitoes settle on his hand 
 and infect him with yellow fever. He was willing to sacri- 
 fice himself, in order that the world might be delivered from 
 a scourge which had caused the death of more Americans 
 than all our wars. 
 
 It is not necessary, either, to go to foreign lands in order 
 to give one's life in this way. Howard Taylor Ricketts, of 
 Rush Medical College, Chicago, and Thomas Brown Mc- 
 Clintic, of the University of Virginia, both sacrificed their 
 lives in similar manner in order to discover the cause and 
 cure of Rocky Mountain fever. 
 
 The present war has also brought forth heroes of science 
 and humanity. The war against typhus in Serbia has been 
 conducted by a noble band of physicians, many of them 
 Americans. James F. Donnelly, of Brooklyn, and Ernest 
 P. Magruder, of Washington, both officers of the American 
 Red Cross, have already given their lives for this cause. We, 
 of Cincinnati, may well be proud of the heroism of our fellow 
 townsman, Doctor Paul Morton Lane, who, after recovering 
 from the typhus contracted in Serbia, has returned to help 
 that afflicted people. 
 
 — 12 — 
 
But it is not necessary to be a soldier or army surgeon to 
 give your life for humanity. Malaria and insects, disease 
 and dirt, are just as dangerous as ball and shrapnel, ignorance 
 and superstition. Brutality and savagery are often as firmly 
 intrenched and as difficult to dislodge from their fortresses as 
 maxims and howitzers behind barbed wire. It is a brave 
 thing to be a soldier, but it is a still braver thing to be a savior. 
 
 Shall not the time come, therefore, when the application 
 of this fighting instinct to the purposes of war will be con- 
 sidered a base prostitution of a noble force in human nature, 
 a condition from which true men, with horror, will turn to 
 devote themselves to the real wars of humanity? When 
 that time does come, as it surely will, the famous names of 
 history will not be those of great generals who have destroyed 
 hostile armies, but those of the great leaders of thought who 
 have directed the forces of science and of education for the 
 healing and the salvation of the nations. 
 
 What, then, is the duty of our colleges and universities? 
 We found that there was nothing wrong in fighting, provided 
 you were fighting the right enemy, for the right cause, with 
 proper weapons, and in a decent way. The problem before 
 us is to apply this fighting spirit to the great tasks of science, 
 medicine, education, religion, and mercy. Hundreds of 
 noble causes call for thousands of trained men and women. 
 Our universities and colleges should then constitute the 
 general staff of this world army of philanthropy carrying on 
 campaigns for the development of all human resources and for 
 the destruction of the diseases of body and soul. 
 
 Colleges and universities are not merely places for study. 
 They should be the brains and the hearts to direct the world 
 in action. As Milton said : 
 
 "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised 
 and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but 
 slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be 
 run for." 
 
 Let the colleges, then, declare a war for civilization; let 
 them call to the colors of humanity the heroic youth of the 
 world and join battle with the forces of ignorance and 
 barbarism. 
 
 What shall be the part of our country in bringing in this 
 "Better Era?" Some enthusiasts declare that we should be 
 
 — 13 — 
 
the arbiter of the nations in this terrible crisis. This sug- 
 gests a boastful spirit. By all means let us be peace-makers, 
 if we may, but not Pharisees, thanking God that we are not 
 as other men are. Let us first confess our own sins of 
 aggression and cruelty. Let us be grateful for our situation 
 between the seas, for our institutions, for our freedom, for 
 our ideals, and, especially, for the privilege of ministering to 
 those suffering in the war. 
 
 If this be our spirit, the opportunity for service to human- 
 ity will be even greater after than during the war. We hope 
 it is the mission of America to show the nations how to live 
 together like brethren in a great federation. If we only keep 
 our hands clean of innocent blood, we may help to make 
 peace among the nations. If we only keep our conscience 
 clear, America may become the conscience of the world, and 
 propagate the ideals of right over might, of law over force, 
 of service over conquest. 
 
 But America can best serve mankind at this awful time 
 by keeping right herself. The higher our standards of na- 
 tional conduct, the greater will be our power in the "Better 
 Era." In this way only can we prepare our nation to dis- 
 charge the task imposed upon her as the champion of hu- 
 manity. Not for our own salvation, not for our own glory, 
 but for humanity's sake, let us, therefore, now reconsecrate 
 ourselves to truth and righteousness. 
 
 Gentlemen of the graduating class, as I stand before you 
 this morning when you are about to leave these halls and 
 enter upon the war of life, I am deeply impressed with the 
 thought that it is to you and to those like you, in this and 
 other lands, that the civilized world is looking to carry on 
 this work for truth, for righteousness, and for peace. The 
 students of today must save the world of tomorrow. May 
 vou all be knights of "A Better Era." 
 
 14 —