DiMento, Passer, Kerans Give Latin, English Talks in Morning Exercises

Garbed in traditional black robes and caps, 2,700 degree recipients heard views on the coming elections, literature, and America's foreign policy this morning from Francis J. DiMento '48, James Kerans '48, and Harold C. Passer '43 2G, the three student speakers.

DiMento, who delievered the Latin Oration, welcomed the audience, including the "pulchritudini Radclivanae" in the "Novo Aspectu," and cautioned his hearers and classmates to "separate good from evil and truth from falsehood," in the November elections.

Quoting Cicero, DiMento, who is receiving a magna in Greek, said that the man elected must have "wisdom," "integrity," and "valor."

Titling his Commencement Part "An Attitude Towards Literature," Kerans deplored the "long-lamented gulf between the serious writer and the reading public.... A literature which deals with the full and complex range of human experience... can become a standard and accessible literature only if it fills a need at once conscious and widespread."

Criticism functioning on the "criterion... of our experience," with good literature as its primary end, contains "that attitude toward literature which I feel necessary both to those who read and those who write," Kerans said.

Passer, a 1943 summa cum laude who received an A.M. in Economics today, spoke on what he termed "the new dollar diplomacy which uses our financial resources to promote world peace.... America, the strongest nation, must accept the major responsibility for establishing a lasting peace," he declared.

"We should give aid to those countries whose increase in economic strength will promote world peace," he continued. "We should refuse aid to those countries whose increase in economic strength will threaten world peace."

Basic reforms must be carried out by the ruling parties where necessary, Passer said, adding that "economic aid alone is not wise.... Our military strength, therefore, is the logical complement to the new dollar diplomacy."