EFFECTIVENESS OF THE COMMITTEE ON OCEANOGRAPHY 219 



independent of all other "necessities." Dear me, how perfectly unnecessary 

 many of those "necessities" really are: 



"And if by chance of circumstance 



We have to go bare-foot, sir, 

 We'll no! repine — a friend of mine 



Has got no feet to boot, sir. 

 This happiness a habit is 



And life is what we make it, 

 See! There's the trail to Sunnydale! 



Up, friend! and let us take it." 



Are you poor? What luck! No time lost in looking after your belongings 

 There is always so much trouble with property. And you cannot really be poor 

 on this earth. Let me tell you what your great poet Wergeland once said: 



"Have I no heaven because it is full of drifting clouds, 



fairylands of the sun? 

 Complain not under the stars of the lack of bright 



spots in your life! 

 Ha! are they not twinkling as if they would speak 



to you? 

 How Venus sparkles to-night! Have the heavens 



also spring? 

 What riches for a mortal!" 



My dear young friends, let me give you one warning based on long and sad 

 experience: Do not let your flight be clogged by all those trifles which are now 

 considered necessities of life. Mind you, by making your baggage train longer 

 you clip your wings. 



Ah youth, youth, what a glorious world! Unknown realms ahead of you 

 hidden behind the mists of the morning. As you move on, new islands appear — 

 mountain summits shoot up through the clearing mists one behind another, 

 waiting for you to climb, dense forests unfold for you to explore, free boundless 

 plains for you to traverse. 



You are "foot loose and heart free" to sail beyond the sunset, and to roam the 

 universe. 



What a joyous thing to see the day dawning and know that you are bound on a 

 voyage to new realms. "Your soul bounds upward on beams of light to the 

 vault of heaven." You laugh at the risks and smile at the dangers, youth's 

 buoyant faith and self-trust is in command. The storm cannot reach you. 

 And lo! far ahead, above the mist and the scud, rises your Land of Beyond! 

 We all have a Land of Beyond to seek in life — what more can we ask? Our part 

 is to find the trail that leads to it. A long trail, a hard trail, may be — but the 

 call comes to us, and we have to go. 



Rooted deep in the nature of everyone of us is the spirit of adventure, the call 

 of the wild — vibrating under all our actions, making life deeper and higher and 

 nobler. 



"Have you known the Great White Silence? 

 Have you broken trail on snowshoes? Mushed your 



huskies up the river. 

 Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the 



prize? 

 Have you suffered, starved, and triumphed, 



grovelled down, yet grasped at glory, 

 Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole? 

 'Done' things just fordoing, letting babblers 



tell the story .... 

 Have you seen .... 

 The simple things, the true things, the silent men 



who do things — 

 Then listen to the Wild — it's calling you. 

 Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what 



luck betide us, 

 Let us journey to a lonely land I know. 

 There's a whisper on the night wind, there's a star 



agleam to guide us, 

 And the Wild is calling, calling ... let us go." 



o 



