Declaration of War Almost Was Commencement for Class of 1917

Its 50th reunion today will be the "war class" of 1917's most complete gathering. For it never had a complete Commencement, nor a real twenty-fifth reunion. In 1917 and again in 1942 many members of the class were preoccupied with war, and could not take time to genially reminisce about carefree college years.

President A. Lawrence Lowell was changing undergraduate life radically while the class went through Harvard. It is symptomatic that the class of '17 was the first to admit more public high school than private school boys. They came from all over the country, as Lowell tried deliberately to break the monopoly of Eastern and Northeastern prep schools on Harvard.

And he was changing the university itself, ending the era of the "gentleman's college" and initiating new ideals of public and social service into students. The Class of '17 was perhaps the first to feel the effects of this change; they certainly felt it more dramatically than any other.

Physical Changes

The most immediate changes were physical. The new freshman dormitories were under construction and 1917 was the last class to enter directly into Harvard's individualistic living arrangements, designed half a century before for young gentlemen. All-college dining facilities in Memorial Hall and the Freshman Union were opened in order to foster a greater sense of community. In 1915, Harvard departmental libraries were united when Widener Memorial Library was opened to the entire University.

Like current battles over extension of parietals, the issue of lengthening Christmas recess recurred every year between 1913 and 1915. Students were allowed December 23 to January 3. They did not argue for extension because they wanted more leisure time; they wanted to be able to get home and back. As more students came from the mid-west and south, they needed extra travelling time. Lowell extended the Christmas recess in 1915.

War Possibility

As the class entered its junior and senior years, however, the possibility of war replaced Christmas recess as the major focus of attention. The Collegiate Anti-Militarism League debated hotly with the National Security League of Harvard in 1915 over whether the country should increase its military forces. In the fall of that year, the CRIMSON took a definite editorial stand favoring military preparedness, but the paper still printed protest letters from pacifists and neutralists.

The increasing possibility of war sent students into a new activity, volunteer military training. Captain Cordelier, of the French Mission, started a volunteer University regiment in 1916. During that year, 1400, or onefourth of the University, volunteered for it. An Aero Corps of 52 students was started the same year, and CRIMSON editorials favored the idea of universal military service. By January of 1917, a poll showed 72 per cent of Harvard students in favor of conscription. There were rumors that the Harvard campus might be used in the summer as a training camp, and that Harvard might even close down, and offer all its facilities to the government in case of war. Student attention and opinion, though sharply divided, was becoming preoccupied with the idea of war.

1917 saw the intensification of the issue on campus. Four Harvard men died aboard the Lusitania. The History Club voted to support severing relations with Germany. One major issue was whether or not special exams should be given to students leaving school to go into training. The Hasty Pudding Club cancelled its annual show for the first time since 1864 because of the international situation. The CRIMSON declared: "When the time for quick action comes Harvard will be ready and the undergraduates duty will be an immediate and unflinching response to the call." Meanwhile, one professor in the German Department published a letter in the CRIMSON, claiming that the German people were at war because the "great aggressive coalition" of England and France had committed "outrageous acts" against her.

'Duty is Patience'

In March, the Harvard Athletic Association considered breaking off all athletic activities, in the event of a declaration of war. Several days later, both Yale and Cornell were considering similar steps. The Faculty voted by a substantial majority to give early exams to students who were enlisting. President Lowell wrote to the CRIMSON that "a soldier's first duty is patience," and asked students to wait until they were definitely urged by Washington before dashing into service.

Pacifists Disappear

By the beginning of April, 1917, the pacifist element on campus was practically non-existent. "Hereafter, the CRIMSON will print no more communications of a pacifist nature," the editors declared. "If there are any members of the University so blind or cowardly in spirit as to clamor for neutrality when all hope of neutrality is dead, they should commune with themselves in private and find reflection in the definition of traitors as those '...adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort!'"

On Friday, April 6, the U.S. declaration of war on Germany came as the fitting climax to the past months of debate. President Lowell offered the government the use of any University resources. Athletics were temporarily suspended. The class of 1917, about to graduate, began to enlist at an unprecedented rate.

Commencement?

By the time of Commencement, so many seniors had gone into training that many doubted if there would be a Commencement at all. "This year's Class Day sounds as sad as a dance record at ten in the morning," declared one editorial. "The class of 1917, more than any class which preceded it for half a century, will be scattered to the four winds in the fulfillment of that work which it stands ready to do." Ironically, that class which had felt the effects of President Lowell's attempts to weld undergraduates into a communal body was all over the world at the time when they were to have been completely together.

But the aim of Lowell's program had been to educate students into ideals of public service. Thus their sparce, grave Commencement was oddly logical. For the students who had favored duty to country and universal conscription were far from "gentlemen scholars." William H. Meeker, who had been the President of the CRIMSON during that year, died the following September, 1917, at Pau, France. Like many who were absent at graduation, the Class Poet William Wilcox '17, mailed in his poem from the Newport News aviation camp. There was no Ivy Oration; the Orator, Henry Wentworth, was away in training camp.

Ninety per cent of the Class of 1917 were eventually directly involved in the war, 87 per cent in the armed services. Twenty-nine per cent of these suffered war casualties.

Lead the Fight

President Lowell exhorted the graduates in his Baccalaureate address that year to go out and lead the fight. "Never let your own standards be shaken by the experiences around you," he urged. "Let no man despise thy youth, but be in character older than your men."

The Phi Beta Kappa Society that year was addressed by the President of Amherst, Alexander Meiklejohn. "I am going to put the liberal arts college on trial," he began, and he proceeded to call up each body of a college. The young students, he said, were innocent; they are guilty of anything you accuse them of, but they are not responsible. The teachers are the ones who are responsible--for what he did not say. "It seems clear, terribly clear to me, that teachers are not commanding and dominating the spirits of their boys because they have no purpose which is a proper claim to domination." Meiklejohn's was the voice of the older generation, which blamed itself for the catastrophic state the world appeared to be in. Youth was innocent; to both Lowell and Meiklejohn it was youth's responsibility to function in the wake of the disaster.

Alumni Expected

Among the alumni expected to return for the reunion are:

* Douglas Campbell, the air ace of the First World War. The September following graduation he began to fly in France, and for a year and a half, in the 94th Aero Squadron's 1st Patrol Pursuit Group, he won an outstanding reputation, as well as the Croix de Guerre and admission to the Legion d'Honneur. After 12 years' retirement in Peru as a sugar planter and producer, Campbell worked in military and civilian aviation. Harvard, he writes in the 50-year Class Report, "is a place where men are expected to do things with their lives."

* Brooks Atkinson, now retired from the New York Times.

* James P. Warburg, the well known writer on economic and political affairs, and former Assistant Secretary of Defense.

* Henry B. Cabot, President of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

* Archibald B. Roosevelt, son of Theodore Roosevelt.

* R. Buckminster Fuller, the whiz engineer and architect who plans to change the world. His geodesic dome is the U.S. pavillion at Expo 67. Fuller was one of those seniors who had enlisted before Commencement in the Navy, where he served until 1919. One classmate described Fuller's mind as an "intellectual carnival." Fuller's own account of his life is less pedantic; "Born crosseyed. Abnormally farsighted. Corrected at four. Until then saw only large patterrns. Emphasis persisted after correction. Started young documenting against world developments, formalized as Chronofile 1917. Chronofile disclosed Newton's era world at rest supersded by Einstein's world constant change..." His four-thousand-word life history, written for the fiftieth reunion report, concluded, "Good luck for me I was born crosseyed."