Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1935, Blaðsíða 40

we talk over old times. As we look back into the past, happy
memories, flooding into our minds, will bring a smile to our
lips. When we turn again to the work that is awaiting our
attention, it will be with new enthusiasm.
* * *
It is with no little interest that we have watched the
students of the lower grades advancing step by step towards
the same goal that we seniors reached today; facing daily, the
same problems that we faced; doing the same work that we
did; and accomplishing as much as, or more than, we ac-
complished. Perhaps they have kept a critical eye on us, too.
No doubt they have judged us according to the standards that
they have set for themselves and either praised or condemned
us. To them we have only this to say: “If our achievements
have won your admiration, if our conduct, our actions, seem
worthy of emulation,—then, when you take our places in Grade
Twelve, show us that you can do as well; but if you think that
we have not done our best, that we have not made the most
of our opportunities, then show us that you can do better.
That is a challenge. Do you accept it?
* * ★
Now, for the few moments that remain, I should like to
revert to my own personality and, instead of talking FOR
Grade Twelve, talk TO them. And what I want to say to them
has been said to young people thousands of times in the last
half-decade and in any other period of industrial upheaval when
the most brilliant minds in the world have pitted themselves
against universal economic depression in a bitterly-contested
struggle for supremacy. A little over a century ago, your fore-
fathers began the settlement of the Canadian West. You all
know with what hardships they were constantly forced to con-
tend. With the same indomitable courage and resourcefulness
with which they fought and finally subdued the revengeful
fury of the Redskins, they unflinchingly faced famine, pesti-
lence, and plague. Their fearlessness was superb; their faith,
supreme. In the words of Browning, they
“. . . marched breast forward;
Never doubted clouds would break;
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
triumph;
Held, we fall to rise, are baffled
to fight better,
Sleep to wake.”
You are their children. Before you, today, you see a nation
turbulent with unrest, filled with warring factions—a nation
in desperate need—the nation that they created. Are you dis-
mayed? Do you stand aghast at the thought of the odds against
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