rder to take stock of the country's purposes and achievements,
to examine its past and consider its future.

This attitude of self-examination is hardly characteristic of the people
as a whole. Particularly it is not characteristic of the historic
American. He has been an opportunist rather than a dealer in general
ideas. Destiny set him in a current which bore him swiftly along through
such a wealth of opportunity that reflection and well-considered
planning seemed wasted time. He knew not where he was going, but he was
on his way, cheerful, optimistic, busy and buoyant.

To-day we are reaching a changed condition, less apparent perhaps, in
the newer regions than in the old, but sufficiently obvious to extend
the commencement frame of mind from the college to the country as a
whole. The swift and inevitable current of the upper reaches of the
nation's history has borne it to the broader expanse and slower
stretches which mark the nearness of the level sea. The vessel, no
longer carried along by the rushing waters, finds it necessary to
determine its own directions on this new ocean of its future, to give
conscious consideration to its motive power and to its steering gear.

It matters not so much that those who address these college men and
women upon life, give conflicting answers to the questions of whence and
whither: the pause for remembrance, for reflection and for aspiration is
wholesome in itself.

Although the American people are becoming more self-conscious, more
responsive to the appeal to act by deliberate choices, we should be
over-sanguine if we believed that even in this new day these
commencement surveys were taken to heart by the general public, or that
they were directly and immediately influential upon national thought and
action.

But even while we check our enthusiasm by this realization of the common
thought, we must take heart. The University's peculiar privilege and
distinction lie in the fact that it is not the passive instrument of the
State to voice its current ideas. Its problem is not that of expressing
tendencies. Its mission is to create tendencies and to direct them. Its
problem is that of leadership and of ideals. It is called, of course, to
justify the support which the public gives it, by working in close and
sympathetic touch with those it serves. More than that, it would lose
important element of strength if it failed to recognize the fact that
improvement and creative movement