The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-05-29


 Tuscaloosa, May 2S-(special)-Th ual- ve sity of Alabama campus Is thronged today with hundreds of the alumni who came back to the scenes of their college doys for the annual commencement exer- ciees. The old graduates were on the enc early this morning, and long before Il o'clock the assembly room in Morgan hall was crowded with people who had come to hear the annual oration before the society of the alumni by Richmond Pearson Hobson. After short musical programme Mir. Hobson was introduced by Tyler Goodwin.
 MT. Hobson Speaks
 In his address this morning MT. Hob son said in part;
 Members of the Society of the Alumni md Ladies and Gentlemen: In many ways this is a particularly suspicious year for our state. It is to be congratu- lated on the speakers at the university commencement, and I am sure the sue cess of this year is only forerunner of rlore success to come.
 What is it that causes the alumni to come back year by year? Why is the state so interested? It Is because here you are shaping men. It is a fascinating tling to sec piece of machinery shaped in the lathe It is beautiful to see plant shaped and formed. But what does the greatest object mean when it stands alongside of men?
 What does this hall compare with the man for whom it was named? If Robert F. Lee were in the flesh ] would walk across a continent to see his face.
 T will take for subject this morning The sontherner of the Twentieth cen- tlry. " ehave in our minds picture of the southerner of the eighteenth and h.neteenth centuries. We see him clearly as q man who in war dared; We find him a leader in nations war way back in the colonial days. We see him in the councils of men. not impetuous, yet with an incxhaustible reservoir of sentiment and devotion. We find him broad of in. teeet. but above all he stands before us as the man of high and lofty character, q man of inevitable leadership.
 Since the civil war our part of America may have been said to be more or less in eclipse. l wish to point out that the blood of he leaders of other centuries has come through the eclipse undegenerate, and that the southerner now in the twen- tieth century stands with heredty strong ly compelling him to leadership.
 That leadership began far back when the Caucasian leaped to the head of other races Ever since then the Caucasian has been nature's favorite, and nature never goes to other races to build up her empire as long as any Caucasian remains undegenerate.. So the star of empire followed her favorite across Europe and when the great undying spirit of the Caucasian crossed the Atlantic the star followed and now rests upon America.
 We have the same process of upbuld- Ing in America as we have in England In the southern racial characteristics we find the best of the Latin and the Norman. IL is here in the south alone that we nave maintained the purity of the Anglo Saxon blood. Here we have the foundation in neredity for the highest attalnments of the human race. But heredity is not all, for there must be activity. It is demand cd ir life to develop the possibilities of in- nerftance.
 Mir. Hobson spoke for some time on the manufacturing and agricultural possibiIi- ties of the south. He told of the cotton. iron. cement here as in no other place in the world.
 "Nafure supplies the south with more than half of the natural water powers east of the Cascade mountains. The coal fields of the world do not approach the fields ever yet undeveoped in the south.
 If you give the average southerner only
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