303

Good Citizenship Dependent Upon Great Citizens

WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER

The Reverend William Jewett Tucker (1839–1926) served as the ninth president of Dartmouth College from 1893 to 1909. Tucker’s obituary notice in the New York City American, September 30, 1926, said he “was known in New England as ‘the great president,’ who brought Dartmouth from the position of a small New Hampshire college to that of a great national educational institution.” In many ways it was Tucker’s belief in the greatness of the American citizen that led to the success of Dartmouth and Tucker’s profound influence on the young men of America. This is an address he gave at the Federation of Churches, Carnegie Hall, New York, November 17, 1905.

As I interpret our present civic conditions the chief fact in evidence is the opportunity for influential and commanding citizenship. I therefore strike at once the note of greatness, not that of mere obligation nor even of necessity, as most in harmony with my subject. The first question about any urgent matter of a public sort is not, how urgent is it, but how great is it? What rank are we ready to assign to it among the subjects which demand our attention? That is the question which I put in regard to citizenship. What rank do we propose to give it among the compelling objects which address themselves to the ambition, the patient endeavor, or the consecrations of men? If we are not prepared to put it in the first rank, to give it a place beside the great constants in the service of state and church, or beside the new and fascinating openings of science and industry, it is quite useless for us to expect any results from our discussion of the need of good citizenship. If we are to have good citizenship, as things are today, we must have great citizens. When we have them in sufficient number, and rightly distributed, we shall have practically settled the question of citizenship. I address myself to one, to my mind the one, solution of our present civic troubles, namely, the presence of men qualified for leadership, whose great qualification is not a sense of duty, but the joy of the task. Nothing short of this will take the men we want away from the fascinations and the rewards of private gain.

304

What then are the qualities in men which can make them able and willing to achieve greatness by way of citizenship? I name first, without the slightest hesitancy, imagination, the power to see beyond, or even through, wickedness into righteousness. No great cause ever moved far until it had taken possession of the imagination of men. Whatever start the conscience may have given it, it waited for the kindled mind to give it movement. Foreign missions in this country sprang out of as fine a burst of idealism as the republic itself. When young Mills said to his comrades at Williams, “we ought to carry the gospel to dark and heathen lands, and we can do it if we will,” the word of duty waited upon the word of inspiration. We have had enough to say about the duty of citizenship. Progress does not lie in any more discussion of duty, or even in the deeper sense of it. It is time for us to change our camping ground—to move out from “we ought” to reform our cities, into “we can do it if we will.” What we need in further thought about citizenship is to put more of what Stevenson calls “the purple” into our thinking; or if we are ready for action, to give to that what the London Spectator calls the “Nelson touch,” the fashion which the old admiral had of doing a great thing in a great way because he saw it in its greatness.