an auspicious moment in which to dedicate it to the supremacy of those
ideals for which the whole world is fighting at the present time; that
the rights of the individual as they were established here in the past
may be maintained by us now and carried to a yet greater development in
the future.




XV

AMHERST ALUMNI DINNER, SPRINGFIELD

MARCH 15, 1918


The individual may not require the higher institutions of learning, but
society does. Without them civilization as we know it would fall from
mankind in a night. They minister not alone to their own students, they
minister to all humanity.

It is this same ancient spirit which, coming to the defence of the
Nation, has in this new day of peril made nearly every college campus a
training field for military service, and again sent graduate and
undergraduate into the fighting forces of our country. They are
demonstrating again that they are the strongholds of ordered liberty and
individual freedom. This has ever been the distinguishing characteristic
of the American institution of learning. They have believed in
democracy because they believed in the nobility of man; they have served
society because they have looked upon the possession of learning not as