Oxford Comes to Harvard

Invited to his alma mater's 290th commencement, Franklin Roosevelt, '04, last week told Harvard at the last moment that he could not make it. In his stead, he sent his military aide, Major General Edwin M. Watson. As "Pa" Watson sweltered on the commencement platform in a tight, white dress uniform, Harvardmen wondered why he was there. They found out. In a hot Cambridge, sultry with rumors, academic history was made.

Outside Massachusetts Hall a half-dozen girls paraded with signs: CONVOY HALIFAX BACK TO ENGLAND; HARVARD GIVES A DEGREE TO WAR. It was whispered that at the right moment Harvard radicals planned to release white doves from beneath their gowns and walk out of the commencement. Inside the yard it was plain that they would do nothing of the sort. Harvard's capped-&-gowned seniors lined up respectfully to let a host of guests march past. Looking pale and cool in his black gown was Harvard's most distinguished guest: Lord Halifax.

Under a huge tent, the sheriff of Middlesex County rapped three times with his scabbard, roared: "The meeting will come to order." While three undergraduate orators delivered their "parts," Lord Halifax took notes. Cried Senior Lemuel Serrell Hillman, of Grand Rapids, Mich.:

"[Archibald] MacLeish asserted that young people had read too many war-debunking novels by such men as Hemingway and Dos Passos. . . . Mr. MacLeish fell into the error of attaching too much importance to the role of literature. . . . Hemingway and Dos Passos did not create a mood, but merely summed one up. . . .

"The teachings of our elders had a great effect on us. ... They were the so-called 'Lost Generation'; they were disinclined to work actively for democracy. Now they turn around suddenly to condemn us for the same indifference and frustration.

". . . When we make up our minds we have as much faith and courage as our fathers. . . . We are willing to fight. . . . But we are determined that our sacrifices shall not be made in vain."

Then Harvard's President James Bryant Conant rose to confer degrees. Harvard-men applauded warmly when he made Lord Halifax a Doctor of Laws. Two or three seniors in the front row feebly cried: "Shame, shame."

Degree received, Lord Halifax slipped behind a red velvet curtain on the platform. He soon reappeared in a gold-braided gown, with a page (ten-year-old Andrew Chaundy, son of an Oxford fellow) holding his train. Trailing him, in red, white & blue Oxford gowns, were a British delegation and a group of Harvardmen who had studied or taught at Oxford, among them Mr. Justice Felix Frankfurter. Lord Halifax, as Chancellor of Oxford University, took President Conant's chair and to the surprise of his audience opened an unprecedented Oxford convocation on foreign soil. The oldest U.S. university turned over its campus to the oldest British university. Purpose: to give President Roosevelt an Oxford degree, a doctorate of civil law, its highest honor.

As orator, ex-Oxonian Frank Aydelotte presented the President (through General Watson as proxy) for his degree. Lord Halifax read his diploma: ". . . Whereas Franklin Delano Roosevelt . . . has at all times been in the fight for peace, justice and freedom. . . ." General Watson read Franklin Roosevelt's reply:

"We rejoice that this special convocation, in breaking all historic precedent, does so in the great cause of preserving the free learning and the civil liberties which have grown stone upon stone in our lands. . . . We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees."

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