Festivities Of Class Day Marked With Ivy Oration And Stunts of Reunioners

Bavarian costumes and mottoes such an "A Code in Our Heads," and the "Blue Eagle is a Yale Bird" aided in lending color to the Class. Day festivities in the Stadium yesterday afternoon. Topping the proceedings was the confetti and streamer battle in which the graduating class, their friends sand families, and the remaining classes all joined.

After the reunioning classes had marched in order into the Stadium behind the Class of 1934, there was an interlude before the Ivy Oration of John Bridgers White '34 when the Class of 1909 awarded a series of honorary degrees to members of their class. Officiating at these ceremonies was the loading athlete of the class, Rand, who had conceived clever epigrams for the recipients. He awarded one to Colonel Theodore Roosevelt '09 on the basis of being the "democratic goat getter," but the real reason was because he brought back Pola Negri from his trip of exploration last year.

Rogers Gets Award

Another of these degrees went to Professor Rogers, who several years ago horrified local circles by advocating the young business man to marry the boss's daughter, and to be a snob. Acknowledging the award, Mr. Rogers said: "I want to say first of all a few words to my mother in Walla Walla. I got fouled in the second round and he refuses to give me a return bout." Another touch of humor which the reunioning classes have loft for reminiscence next year was Joseph Seabury's comment the other night to 1904 that he had been reading the report of his class and he found out that most of his classmates had written voluminously concerning their "life and litters."

Ivy Oration

The chief event of the exercises was the Ivy Oration of White, which follows here in part. It is the humorous valedictory which is given each year by a member of the graduating class.

"Ladies, Gentlemen, Undergraduates: It is with mixed feelings that we, the Ivy Orator, observe this scene of pandemonium, this shambles. Four years of college life, four years of bitter strife, four years of halcyon existence have sapped our resistance. As our President has so aptly said in his recent Baccalaureate address, anything worth doing well is worth trying or at least putting off until tomorrow, since it gathers no moss in the good old summer time.' Gentlemen, your future lies behind me, and before you I see my past--my present past, which in no sense your future past is yet my past present for your future, and my past which was to have been will be as it was when it is and will be when you are being what I was when I will be as you are. I thank you.

"President and Mrs. Conant, and little Conants; members of the Board of Overseers, Faculty members, distinguished visitors, Deans, Advisers, Tutors, Coaches, the Boat, the Bursar, parents, friends of the family, and you, Seniors, black reed wolves with your so called sheep's clothing, being sheep in wolf's clothing as you are. For the past few months our time has been occupied by composing the Class Poem, Oration and Ode. While these trifling effluvia of course required no deep concentration or constructive thought, yet we found that there was a certain fascination in this game of clothing Mother Goose rhymes with flowing garments of Miltonian or Homeric majesty. Especially were we pleased with our results in the case of the Ode, the original of which we chanced upon in an old book called 'Seaside and Wayside, or How Jimmy Warthog Got Ilis Spots.' By the simple expedient of taking three paragraphs of this little work and leaving out every other line, changing all the e's and o's to a's and q's and substituting words like drizzle, infinite and wings, death and youth, for spring, sun, flowers, trees and bells, we succeeded in turning out as charmingly obscure a little ode as ever started its way in life with hope in its heart and dead dew on its eyelashes.

Only Groundwork for Future

"However, all such ephemeral and frivolous activities were merely the preparation, the ground work, for what was to come. Just as there must be a period of dry toll for every artist, so these months of drudgery were a flame which was to transform our dress into steel, and weld the metal into a tool, which, though worthless in itself, could act as an instrument through which might be transmitted that most glorious of clarion calls against intolerance, bigotry and injustice, that ringing, heartfelt appeal for liberty, that supreme endeavor of the human mind to pierce the outer encircling darkness,--the Ivy Oration.

"Today, beneath these immemorial column, we are met together in solemn conclave, for a purpose, whether Republican or Democrat, Capitalist or Agriculturalist, Eliotite or Dunsterian, Northern or Amateur, History and Lit., or Physics, Black man or White man, Eastern or Western, or even mid-western, we are united in a cause.

"The America of today faces a crisis. Other nations are arming, outfitting troops, building battleships and cancelling debts. Europe bristles with bayonets. Asia rules with cruisers, pineapples, and typewriters, every coolie packs a rod. Africa, whilom house of the laughter loving lion, is now a hornet's nest of poison darts, dum dum bullets, King Kong and Frank Buck. War is imminent. (Advertisement courtesy of the National Students League.) In a chaos of Hate and Strife we find ourselves, swept along by irresistible currents, pursued by a thousand enemies, unable to save ourselves by uttering a long quavering squeal the way Tarzan does when he and Jane get chased from pillar to post by his jungle pals. What, then, shall we do? Shall we put our trust in Roosevelt the Righteous, paint ourselves blue and sing 'NRA, my God to Thee, a Gentleman's Marks Are CCC, ERA, ERA, CWA!' Shall we be Nazi men with Hitler, or start Lenin toward the five-year plan? There is a problem for the long winter nights. What shall we do?

"Gentlemen, the answer comes back clear and strong. Back to the soil! Let every one cast away his yachts, racing cars and jewels, and go out into the fields and how the lowly potato, milk the noble cow, and feed the treacherous pig. Let our men best their walking sticks into ploughshares, and let our women turn in their card tables for threshing machines. Let us open our shirts at the throat and sing as the cool winds of Heaven caress our hot foreheads. Back to the soil! Live as our forefathers did! Wrest a living from the land! Such action is our only hope of salvation, our only means of procuring peace, indeed after a little of such action most of us will find ourselves not only back to the soil, but resting comfortably beneath it.

"America's future lies in the hands of the young men of today. Of what stuff are these young men composed? In order to adequately split this infinitive and answer this question, we shall trace the career of a type specimen, Carlos Cantilever Grabblestump, Harvard '34.

Hie Childhood

"Born in the little town of Olive Oil. New Jersey, in 1912, Mr. Grabblestump passed an uneventful childhood spending his summers in Sidetrack, Connecticut, or Bar Harbor, and his winters in grammar school or the Reformatory. A common or garden variety of child was he, the kind that hides his food under his knife to feel his mother. His career in the secondary scats of learning was also uneventful, its monotonous rhythm being broken only by occasional changes of school on request of the headmasters, and flying visits to the jailhouse. Entering college Carlos ran for a while like a flywheel, and got off to a Huppuch start, good marks were his at November hours and mid-years. This success immediately went to his head. With delight be silenced the silver voice of song with a grapefruit. Came the Idea of March. 'I have met the enemy and they are Hours,' sobbed our hero as he sank into a Rank of despond. A modicum of hard work enabled him to finish up the year so successfully that he was invited to attend courses in the exclusive Harvard Summer School, Sophomore year our little dusty Trojan transformed himself into a gay butterfly, and floated about to lifting strains of harmony.

"Next year, having preformed the stupendous, death-defying leap from Dropped Sophomore on Probation to Junior in good standing, young Grabblestump strolled about with a superb assurance and aplomb, only to dart into concealment as his trained car detected the far-off strains of the old hunting song, 'Who hasn't paid the Big Bad Wolff?' All of his Senior year was focused on one brief

"So sails the Ship of 1934 into the Sea of Life. We have spent many happy hours smashing bottles over they prow, proud ship, even going so far as to remove the figurehead and install a bottle-opener.