COLLEGE COMMUNICATIONS

NOTICE OF FACULTY MELTING

The College Faculty will meet at 4:30 on
Tuesday, February 23, in Fraser Theater,
There will be some discussion of the sta—
tus of the literal arts college in Amer-
ica during the war period, A large at-
tendance is desired, as it is highly imp
portant that we thoughtfully face both the
problems and the opportunities of these
Gavse

*

CLASS CARDS
Class cards are past due in this office,
If you have not already done so, will you
nlease return them at once so we can make
the class: rolls,

* * * %
A DIFFICULT SEMESTER

We can face our difficulties this semes—
ter feeling sorry for ourselves, excusing
ourselves and our students for second—
rate endeavor and in general with a spir-
it of listlessness, or discouragement,
which will inevitably result in our doing
a mediocre quality of work,

If we permit such a spirit to dominate
us, we are not worthy descendants of our
fathers, who in every generation faced
their own difficulties and mastered them,
And certainly our own morale will not be
high if we do not do our work with enthu-
siasm and with all the energy and devo-~
tion of which we are capable,

The things thet war has done to colleges
are done, We can view them, if we wish,
as a series of unmitigated misfortunes,
and sit down to bewail them. In this
direction lie gloom, inertness, and un—
manliness, God pity the colleges of
America if this be our general feeling,

On the other hand, these days my be a-
mong the most interesting and the most
beneficial to our colleges if we accept
their challenge and look upon them as
giving us the opportunity to make a vale
uable contribution to the winning of the
war, and to develop a better and more
worthwhile system of education,

February 20, 1943

MID-SEMESTE RS

Mid-semester grades are due Friday, March
12, In order to do the necessary office
work with these reports on that weekend,
every class report should-be in if possi-=-
ble before the twelfth, and certainly not
later than that date. Your cooperation is
earnestly requested, and we ask that you
plan your quizzes so that you will have
plenty of time to grade them and make
your report very promptly.

* £ tH * *

I think it can be stated. as almost an
historical truism that the greatest civ—
ilizations of history have been the best
educated civilizations, And when I speak
of education in this sense, I do not have
in mind what so many today claim as edu—
cation, namely, special training to do
particular jobs, Clearly in a technolog—
foal efe like ours, a great deal of train-
ing is necessary. Some of us must learn
how to be mechanics, some how to be arch-
itects, or chemists, Some will have a
special apntitude for medicine, And a
great many will have--or think they have--
a mysterious talent which induces them

to undertake the practice of law,

But none of these specialties constitutes
true education, They are training for
skills by which men live. I am thinking,
rather, of what we call the liberal arts,
I am speaking of education for its own
sake: to know for the sheer joy of under—
standing; to speculate, to analyze, to
compare, and to imagine,

Look back across the panorama of history,
Is it not true that the pinnacles of civ-
jlization have been achieved by the cities
and states most proficient in the liberal
arts and occupations? In their contribu-
tions to the enrichment of human life, the
Greeks, I believe, tower above us all, Yet
this is not because the Greeks were good
navigators, which they were; nor because
they were great architects, which indeed
they were, It was rather because almost
all their leaders--and many of their citi-
zens whose names we do not know—-enjoyed
knowledge and reverenced the arts, The
Greek cities conquered the eastern Medi-
terranean with the sword, But they con-:
quered posterity with their minds.

--From a talk by Wendell L, Willkie
delivered at Duke University