Will the scholar, now that his practical worth has been tested and proved, be content to slip back into relative obscurity; or will he, on the other hand, be tempted too far into the limelight and thereby lose those very qualities which gave him his value? Will he be satisfied with positions of leadership rather than leadership itself, which may be a very different thing? It is largely for you young men and young women of the rising generation of scholars to say. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: An address delivered before the New York Delta of Phi Beta Kappa at Columbia University upon the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Chapter, June 3, 1919.] WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?[3] I am going to try to select three or four general fields in which we Americans have had a chance to learn lessons of permanent value as the result of our war experience. Then I shall try to apply these to what seems to me the most typical specimen of the best in American life, a great American University; and finally, I shall try to apply them to the situation which faces you young men and women of the graduating class as you step out to take your places in the world. And in so doing I'm going to look deliberately on the bright side. There are troubles enough in the world to worry and depress us, and we have to face them, but let us face them with a confidence that is justified in the light of the examples of man's endurance, of his courage, of his possibilities of accomplishment, which it has been our privilege to witness within the lifetime of this academic generation. What have we learned? In the first place, we have learned that as a nation we possess the power to see a big job through, and we possess it because we have the qualities of youth--enthusiasm, learning capacity, energy, elasticity, initiative--the pioneering spirit. We have the shortcomings of youth also--impatience, superficiality, improvidence, cock-sureness--but when the test came we managed to strengthen our virtues and to a large extent to overcome our failings. The various stocks that have emigrated to our shores have come as successive waves of pioneers, of men to whom new and unfamiliar conditions serve as an incentive rather than a discouragement, and it is the persistence of this pioneering spirit, essentially a youthful spirit, which has had much to do with our success.