RESPONSE OF REVEREND ANSON PHELPS STOKES, D.D., OF YALE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Rector, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I hardly recognize myself in the highly colored picture which the Toastmaster
has so generously painted of my character and work. His estimate
was evidently not shared by the officers of a publication in Chicago with
some such title as "Distinguished Young Americans" who recently wrote
me enclosing a sketch of my life from Who's Who and added, "you are not
quite up to our standard, but if you will forward $10 we will include sketch
of your life!" However, a local undertaker in my home town thinks better
of me, for he recently asked me to join the Coöperative Burial Association.
I told him that I did not feel so inclined, but would like to know the conditions.
He replied that if I would pay $10 down and $5 a year they would
guarantee to give me and every member of my family a $100 funeral. He
added: "I know, Mr. Stokes, that this is not a financial necessity for you,
but the fact of the matter is that if we can bury you and a few other people
of local prominence we will gain much prestige!"
Your Chairman, in writing to me and the other speakers, courteously
suggested a ten minute limit. I had not supposed before that the South
cared anything about time. But you are even stricter in your requirements
than we in the College Chapel at Yale, where President Hadley is reported
to have answered a preacher's inquiries by saying, "We have no time limit
at Yale, but few souls are saved after twenty minutes!" What, only ten
minutes to pay my respects to Thomas Jefferson, to President Alderman, to
Charlottesville, the State of Virginia, the South and this great University,
and in addition to say something about University ideals! It seems like a
sheer impossibility, but I will do my best.
First, as to Thomas Jefferson. No man can speak here without paying
his tribute to the sage of Monticello. Although a Northerner and a New
England man, I was brought up by my father to have great respect for the
political teachings of Thomas Jefferson, and I do not regret this. I am
proud that my University was among the first in this country to honor him
by giving him in 1786 the degree of LL.D. I remember that when Jefferson
visited New Haven two years previously and was introduced by Roger
Sherman to Ezra Stiles, the latter, then President of Yale University, put
in his diary: "The Governor is a most ingenious Naturalist and Philosopher
—a truly scientific and learned man—in every way excellent"—an admirable
tribute to which most of us are glad to give assent. I know of no place in
America which is so dominated by the personality of one man as this place
has been by that of Thomas Jefferson. One has to go to Europe for its counterpart.
At Eisenach you breathe the spirit of Martin Luther. At Assisi
you feel the very presence of St. Francis. So is it here with the "father of
the University." The beautiful pageant yesterday evening showed "the
shadow of the founder." May it never grow less, but may it stand for all
time as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to hold this institution,
this Commonwealth and this Nation up to the high educational
and political ideals for which he stood.
And now as to President Alderman. I often wondered why the University
of Virginia went for eighty years without a President. I realize now
that it was largely because it took this length of time before the spirit of
Jefferson was reincarnated in someone who could carry out his educational
ideals here. As a political philosopher, as an eloquent speaker, as a man of
broad culture and of high conceptions of a University, President Alderman
may in many ways be considered the living representative of the founder, the
one on whom the mantle of Elijah has fallen. We have had at my University
during the past twenty years many of the most distinguished
speakers from America and abroad. Theodore Roosevelt gave his first
public address as President of the United States at Yale's Bicentennial.
Woodrow Wilson delivered at Yale his great address on Scholarship, before
the Phi Beta Kappa. Many other orators have made a profound impression
upon Yale audiences, but no one has made a speech which created a more
profound impression than that delivered by President Alderman at a Yale
commencement a decade ago when we gave him our highest honor, the
Doctor of Laws degree. As a colleague of your President's for many years
on the General Education Board I have gained a deep respect and affection
for him. I know of no one in this country who interprets all that is best in
the South to the North, and all that is best in the North to the South, with
more unfailing insight and a better spirit than he, and it would be hard to
render a larger public service than this to the nation.
And now as to the University. There are many reasons why the University
of Virginia should make a profound appeal to all thoughtful Americans.
I have time to mention but four.
It stands for beauty. There is no academic group in America of more
simple charm and dignity than that which Jefferson designed about the
Lawn here. Virginia is the only American university that has passed through
the Victorian period without being saddled with some architectural monstrosity.
I hear some of you complain of your Geology Museum, but it
would pass among the best buildings at some of our educational institutions!
I can only hope that you will continue your policy of developing a consistent
architectural plan in one style. If a donor should come along and offer you
a million dollars for some much-needed building with the understanding
that he could choose his architect without reference to the University's
plan, I hope that the Board of Visitors may have the courage to decline the
offer. You have escaped all "early North German Lloyd" and "late
Hamburg-American" here, and you must maintain your precious
heritage!
It stands for breadth. Here was developed under Jefferson's guidance
the first real university ideal in America, for Jefferson's system included
medicine, and law, and the fine arts, and statesmanship, and engineering,
and mental and natural philosophy, and almost all the other departments
which universities have developed in the past half century. He had a broad
plan, and he showed his breadth by instituting here at an early day what was
virtually the elective system in the different schools of study. This breadth
has been well maintained, and it is seen to-day not only in the curriculum,
but in the fact that students come here not only from the Commonwealth
of Virginia, but from all the States of the South, from many States of the
North, and from foreign countries.
It stands for idealism. The incident of the carved marble column
about which so much was made last evening has its profound significance.
Jefferson and his successors have had high ideals. The starting here of the
honor system, which has meant so much to American universities, was a
good example of this. So is your Chapel, a building, I regret to say, not
always found in state universities; so is the record of your great scholars
Gildersleeve, Sylvester, Moore and many others.
It stands for public service. Founded by one President of the United
States, guided by two others, it has nurtured a fourth, and has trained at
least as large a proportion of men for the highest public service of the nation
as any American university.
And now as to the future. A university like the University of Virginia
has many functions. In its College it will train men as leaders in citizenship;
in its professional departments it will continue to give men the highest preparation
as lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers; in its Graduate School it
will extend the boundaries of the world's knowledge, and, perhaps most
important of all, as a University it will hand down through all its schools
and departments the culture and traditions of the past. This last is a matter
of vital importance in our changing democracy. All is in flux. We have not
in this country many of the institutions such as an established church, or a
royal family, or great buildings like Westminster Abbey bearing memorials
of many centuries, which hand down and focus attention on national traditions.
For some of these lacks we are thankful. For others we express
regret; but the fact remains that there are few American institutions which
sum up so much history and are so well fitted to transmit the heritage of the
past to future generations as our historic universities. For these reasons I
say with you most heartily to-night "Diu floreat Alma Mater Virginiensis."
