The formal announcement of the winners of academic distinctions during the past year took place in Sanders Theatre last night. Dean Briggs presided. Among the guests who sat on the platform were President Eliot, Professors Norton, Emerton, Grandgent, Parker and Morgan, and the four class presidents.

The exercises were opened by the College choir which sang the "Harvard Hymn." Dean Briggs then spoke briefly on the purposes of the meeting, saying that it was to reward the students of Harvard who had served their College by doing their work well. The choir next sang a choral by Bach after which Dean Briggs introduced Hon. Francis Cabot Lowell '76, who spoke on "College Truth." He said in part:

The word "truth" has a meaning in every day use among men of all sorts, sincerity, frank speech, straightforward conduct, the absence of deceit. Truth is the motto of him "whose armor is his honest thought, and simple truth his highest skill." This kind of truth, however, is not the special virtue of the student or of the scholar, and has no more connection with the University than with life elsewhere. Yet thought rather than action is our object here, and so "truth" may be our peculiar motto. The man in public life, for instance, is obliged to overlook minor agreements of opinion in order to put his general theory in practice. For effective public action, compromise with fellow workers is necessary, but the conditions in public life, making compromise necessary, do not favor the pursuit of pure truth. Therefore, why should scholars fall into parties? In action, he that is not with us is against us. In thought, even he that is honestly against us is on our part. Again there can be no compromise concerning truth. Yet there is a limit to freedom, even in a college. There is something to be said for the landlady who was accused of religious intolerance because she would not let her boarder sacrifice a bull to Jupiter in her front parlor. A college must not become merely a refuge for cranks. If a professor of Astronomy were now converted to a belief in the Ptolemaic system, he could hardly be permitted to teach it to a class of Freshmen.

Neither is the scholar under the compulsion of having to decide in short notice. He may and must take his own time for announcing his conclusions.

Finally, academic truth must be temperate not merely in action, but in language.

Truth is the Scholar's virtue; and if he lets his feelings or his devotions to an end--however otherwise desirable--make him neglectful of truth on any occasion, he forfeits, for the occasion at least, his scholarship. Secondly, intemperance is not more necessary to vigorous and successful action than the ill temper, the arrogance, the egotism, the ignorance, by one of which it is generally caused.