Fourth Draft, Commencement Speech of President Harry S. Truman at Princeton University

Extracted text

OCR Page 1 of 8
6-17-47 Fourth Draft. "NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND President Dodds, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: SERVICET It is with a great deal of pleasure, and much pride, that I am now able to count myself as a member of the Princeton Family. Princeton University has conferred an honor upon me for which I am deeply grateful. I consider it a special privilege to have received the degree of Doctor of Laws at the Final Convocation of the Bicentennial Year in the presence of this distinguished company. On an earlier occasion of equal significance in the history of this University, the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, spoke in 1896 at the Princeton Sesquicentennial Ceremonies. President Cleveland seized that opportunity to charge the colleges and universities of the nation with the task of supplying a "constant stream of thoughtful, educated men" to the body politic - men who were eager to perform public service for the benefit of the nation. He chided our institutions of higher learning for their lack of interest in public affairs, and held them responsible for the disdain with which many of the best-educated men of the day viewed politics and public affairs. Happily for us, that attitude on the part of our universities vanished long ago. I am certain that no observer of the American scene in recent years has detected any reluctance on the part of our educators to enter the political arena when their services have been needed. And our schools have made much progress in supplying the "constant stream of thoughtful, educated men" for public service called for by President Cleveland a half+century ago. previous That task is more important today than at any time in our national history.