Address by the Chancellor at Convocation

These University Convocations are like Harvest Gatherings. We all know how agricultural peoples sow their seeds in good season, tend carefully the young plants as they grow and then, when the crop ripens, gather it and carry it, often with dancing and singing and always with high rejoicing, to storehouses, to be packed and sent into the world as food for the sustenance of the human race. As [I] say, the occasion is one of great rejoicing. It is celebrated in different ways in different countries with music and dancing, with services of thanks-giving, with traditional festivals, sometimes with deplorable orgies. That is because it is a great moment when the earth, periodically, becomes fruitful, when it puts forth its abundance and provides such bountiful supplies of food that peoples' fears of starvation are once more banished and their hopes of rich, creative life renewed.

I repeat that these University Convocations are like Harvest Gatherings. The crops which we gather in this hall are not, of course, yields of ripe padi and corn and sweet potatoes and other foodstuffs, but crops of ripe doctors and dentists and sweet school teachers and other well trained and educated human beings. They are harvests not of the body, but of the mind.

At the beginning of your University careers seeds of knowledge are dropped into your heads. Then Dr. Faris and his fellow cultivators, and Professor Silcock with his team of husbandmen, and Professor Robinson with his expert colleagues tend the young plants of understanding and wisdom which sprout in the fertile soil of your brains until these come to the maturity which they have attained today.

So this Convocation Day too is an occasion for high rejoicing. We ought really to greet you with music and dancing, and with traditional festivity if not an outrageous orgy. But, so far as I am aware, none of us on this platform is any good at singing, and our robes are too hot for dancing at three o’clock on a tropical afternoon. So we hope that you will forgive us for omitting those customary parts of a harvest ceremony. But just as at a Harvest Festival noble specimens of padi and corn and vegetables get tied with bright ribbons and bear cards proclaiming that they have won prizes, so this afternoon we have decked you in gay hoods and handed you certificates declaring that you have won coveted University Degrees.

The news of your graduation is good news for all Malaya. In this country there is a shortage of doctors and surgeons and dentists. For that matter there is a shortage also of school teachers and local-born government servants and many other types of professional people. There is no danger of our health, education and other services being starved, for they are all well staffed in the quality of their officers. But they are under-nourished; they have an inadequate quantity of officers. At present Malaya his far too few well-trained men and women in the professions and public services to keep these great social activities as thoroughly nourished and robust as they should be.

So it is a great occasion when the University of Malaya periodically, like the earth, becomes fruitful, when it puts forth its abundance and produces a new crop of young, eager, able graduates ripe for work in Medicine and Dentistry, in Teaching and Administration, and in the other professions. You will help greatly to reduce the shortages, to fill the gaps, to speed the day when the peoples of Malaya shall enjoy to the full that competent professional care, guidance and leadership in all fields of human activity which they deserve.

Be conscious therefore that your help is greatly needed; that your graduation is not only a personal but also a national event. We all congratulate you warmly on your success, and wish you long, happy and useful lives in the service of your fellow-men.

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