DECLAMATION

Among the archaisms that grow green each year in the kindly air of Harvard none is more strange than that curious one--the Commencement part. The custom of having a few of the leaders in the graduating class address the Commencement gathering on almost any subject, from What is Wrong with the World to May Four Years in College, is an ancient one, and used to bring out enthusiastic competition for the honor. But for the past few years there has been a reluctance of Seniors to say any more in the Commencement ceremonies than is necessary, and the invitations to the rostrum have brought a meagre response.

There is very little in the remarks of two or three young men which appeals to a large audience uncomfortable in the warmth of a June morning. The speakers are unknown to most of their hearers, too familiar to the rest of them. What they say is bound to savor of the graduation school of elocution heard on a thousand platforms in this same month of June, which no weight of tradition can make more valuable.

Much of the mumbo-jumbo ritual that used to delight the world of the universities has disappeared; part of it has died a natural death, part has been deliberately discarded. There are some aspects of it which will in all probability remain as long as the colleges do, for the human attachment to ceremony is strong. Commencement crowds look for a certain amount if it, but in a university where oratory has generally sunk so low in undergraduate favor, it would seem that if unwilling Seniors must still speak at their graduation, the audience might be given the choice of a counter-attraction.