Page 73 - 1932 Hartridge

Commencement, 1931
ACH year, as our own personal graduation draws nearer, Commencement becomes a more serious and stirring event in our lives. W e are able to reali2;e to a fuller extent the difficulties that the seniors have to overcome to reach this goal.
Last year's graduation seemed particularly lovely. Mr. Stevenson opened the exercises with a prayer, and then Mr. James G. MacDonald, Chairman of the Foreign Policy Association and perhaps better versed in w^orld affairs than any other man in America, talked to us about the chaotic state of the world today and our opportunity as the younger generation to better it. Miss Hartridge addressed the senior class with these words;
Members of the Graduating Class:
You are commencing your life in a difficult period—one in which the blunders of the generation before you have culminated in situations that are bewildering to us all. Your elders are responsible for law^s that, although designed
to make for the young a better world, and to give to the old financial inde- pendence, have led to lawbreaking as a vast industry and to a tragic lack of occupation for an increasing number of men of middle age—and that is an
age to which all must come. Even our courts are corrupt. Moreover, the knowledge that we had of economics has been inadequate or disregarded. There is no political group wise enough or unselfish enough to face the crisis squarely and to find or to apply a remedy.
And there is a general acquiescence in the disorder and the dishonesty that is strangely disquieting. It seems almost unbelievable that a people, active and resourceful, proud and independent as ours has been, should have itself
created through its democracy and should endure conditions that it w^ould find intolerable if imposed by others.
What adds to the confusion is an apparent desire on the part of many who have had advantages and have used them to disclaim any ability or any interest that would distinguish them trom the ignorant mass of their fellows.
It is almost as if the adults had reverted to adolescence and disliked or feared to be different in any w^ay from the ordinary run of men.
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