TO THE COMPANY OF EDUCATED MEN

Today six hundred and eighty men come to the end of that beaten path which they began twenty-odd years ago; with graduation from Harvard all formal precedent for a plan of life ends for them, they must choose for themselves the manner in which to dispose of the remainder of their careers. In the last few days they have listened with carelessly concealed indifference to advice and interpretations concerning their futures, and all have reflected to themselves that they are in a position where they can and must make a new evaluation of education and life. They have probably realized that if there is any value in a Harvard education, (which is an open if never a burning question), then that value arises from the break with tradition which Harvard has offered since the days of President Eliot, the gentle transition from an easily acceptable existence in which every step is outlined to one which every move means a decision and an indicator of the future.

The Graduates of 1933, in evaluating the world about them, may find that they have chanced upon a peculiarly favorable time for making those decisions which will lead to their success of failure. Though the day when any reasonably informed man could carve a fortune and a career from the exploitable resources of the nation is past, so may be the day of indirection and uncertainty which was characteristic of an easy-going laissez-faire era. A man at Washington is working well, even if not always wisely, to set the wheels spinning for another hectic period. The prospect of a job seems not so vague and distant. But if the gains which the panaceas of inflation and public work have provided are to mean anything for the well-ordered lives and livelihoods which the young man of today plans, then organization must preserve those gains. It is only by close organization of all society, by correlation of all known factors, and by careful estimation and reckoning of all chance elements, that life can be made for more than a favored few an opportunity for living and the enjoyment of living which it should be. In the creation and construction of such organization lies the future and the burden of today's graduates.

When they come to balance the books on the college careers to which Finis has been written in official decorative script, the Class of 1933 may well conclude that the expenditure of four years according to the dictates of custom has not been a totally profitable venture. It is a pitiful criticism of the academic routine that one successful graduate of the Class of 1908 attributes his success to luck, and returns to Cambridge with no other memories than those which prompt him to a giddy round of those pleasures from which anw uneducated man could derive full gustatory delight; pleasures which, if indulged in by an ordinary, uneducated man, would be considered the symptoms of an unexemplary spree. If the experience of 1933's graduates rivals that of the man of 1908, then our young graduate has a further task, that of making education a training to live, to work, and to enjoy, rather than a medieval and purposeless series of intellectual hurdles along the traditional primrose path of youth.