East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1910-04-23

New World who speaks before this au
gust body In this ancient institution of
learning. Before his eyes pass the
shadows of mighty kings and warlike
mobiles, of great masters OF law and
theology; through the shining dust of
the dead centuries he sees crowded
figures that tell of the power and
learning and splendor of times gone
by; and he sees also the innumerable
host of humble students to whom
clerkship meant emancipation to
whom 1t was well-nigh the only outlet
from the dark thraldom OF the Mid
die Ages
This was the most famous univer-
sity of medieval Europe at a time
when no one dreamed that there was
a New World to discover. It's services
to the cause of human knowledge al
ready stretched far back into the re-
mote past at the time when my fore
fathers. three centuries ago, were
among the sparse bands Of traders,
plowmen, woodchoppers and fisherfolk
who, in hard struggle with the IRON
unfriendliness of the Indian-haunted
land, We're laying the foundations Of
what has now become the giant re-
public of the west To conquer a
continent to tame the shaggy rough
ness of wild nature, means grim war
fare; and the generations engaged in
1t cannot keep, still less add to, the
stores of garnered wisdom which once
were theirs, and which are still In the
hands OF their brethren who dwell in
the old land. To conquer the wilder
ness means to wrest victory from the
same hostile forces with which man
kind struggled in the immemorial in
fancy of our race. The prmeval con-
ditions must be met by primeval quail
ties which are incompatible with the
retention of much that has been pain
fully acquired by humanity as
through the ages it has striven up
ward toward civilization. In condi
tions SO primitive there can be but a
primitive culture At first only the
rudest schools can be established, for
no others would meet the needs of
the hard-driven, sinewy folk who
thrust forward the frontier in the
teeth of savage man and savage ma
ture; and many years elapse before
any of these schools can develop into
seats of higher learning and broader
culture.
Passing of the Pioneers.
The pioneer days pass; the stump
dotted clearings expand into vast
stretches of fertile farm land; the
stockade cluster of log cabins change
into towns; the hunters of game. the
fellers of trees, the rude frontier trad
ers and tillers of the soil. the men
who wander all their lives long
through the wilderness as the heralds
and harbngers of an oncoming civil
izatlon, themselves vanish before the
civilization for which they have pre-
pared the way. The children of their
successors and supplanters. and then
their childrens children, change and
develop with extraordinary rapidly.
The conditions accentuate vices and
virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all
the good qualities and all the defects
OF an intense indivdualism, self-reli-
ant, self-centered, far more conscious
Of its rights than of its duties, and
blind to its own shortcomings. To
days succeeds the hard materiallsm
OF an industrialism even more intense
and absorbing than that of the older
nations; although these themselves
have likewise already entered on the
age of a complex and predominantly
industrial civilization.
As the country grows, its people,
who have won success in so many
lines, turn back to try to recover the
possessions of the mind and the spir-
1T, which perforce their fathers threw
aside in order better to wage the first
rough battles for the continent their
children inherit. The leaders of
thought and of action grope their way
forward to a new life, realizing. some
times dimly, sometimes clear-sighted-
ly, that the life of material gain,
whether for a nation or an individ-
ual, Is of value only as a foundation,
only as there Is added to 1t the uplift
that comes from devotion to loftier
ideals. The new life thus sought can
in part be developed afresh from
what is round about in the New
World; but 1t can be developed in full
only by freely drawing upon the
treasures stored in the ancient abodes
of wisdom and learning, such as this
where l speak today. 1t is a mistake
for any nation merely to copy an
other; but 1t is an even greater mis-
take, it is proof of weakness in any
nation, not to be anxious to learn
from another, and willing and able to
adapt that learning to the new nation
al conditions and make 1t fruitful and
productive therein. 1t is for us of the
New World to sit at the feet of the
Gamaliel of the Old; then, il we have
the right stuff in us, we can show
that Paul in his turn can become
teaches as well as a scholar.
Industrial Citizenship.
Today / shall speak to you on the
subject of individual citizenship, the
one subject of vital importance to
you, my hearers, and to me and my
countrymen, because you and we are
citizens of great democratic republics.
A democratic republic such as each
OF ours-an effort to realize in its full
sense government by, of and for the
people-represents the most gigantic
of all possible social experiments, the