By Robert L. Hill

President, Rotary International (1934-1935)

WE ARE succeeding . . . that all-important fact emerges from the busy week at Detroit. And in that fact there is for us a need of satisfaction and an abiding source of encouragement for the year ahead.

Rotarians need not be disturbed if newspaper headlines fail to tell of Rotary sponsoring a panacea for the world's economic and social woes. We have none to offer. "Rotary," as Immediate Past President John Nelson has so appropriately said, "will do well if it continues to tell people how to live; it will come on evil days if it attempts to tell them how to vote."

But let no one think that in such a program there is insufficient appeal to enlist the best in busy men. Rotary has come through the past few years with its membership but lightly affected and with a new understanding of its ideal of "service above self." That concept is being brought to earth and in a thousand ways made a living experience.

In whatever community you find a Rotary club, there you will find men trained in service, prepared for leadership; and few, if any, of these communities have been disappointed. Rotarians are men who are growing in the knowledge that duty is a thing that is due; that it must be paid by every man who would avoid present discredit and eventual moral insolvency. It is an obligation which can only be discharged by voluntary effort and resolute action; and Rotarians rise to the challenge of "paying their way" as they go.

That service is the basis of all good business is a prime Rotary tenet, of which the truth is becoming more evident daily. Every transaction has two sides, and it is proper that each benefit. The old doctrine that "business is business," interpreted to mean "do the other fellow before he does you" is passing—and must if man is to progress. Commerce is getting a new grasp on its fundamentals which revolve about the basic fact of a human need.

The clothier whose outlook is touched by vision doesn't merely sell clothes. He dispenses comfort and health and personal satisfaction. The banker doesn't merely rent out money; he is the custodian of a commodity that makes possible factories and farms that employ men and provides the homes in which they live.

An importer does not just vend sugar and hemp; he is the link that unites people in distant lands, enabling them to use and enjoy products their own economy does not afford. Merely selling things is boredom; selling services is the stuff of which self respect and "dignifying one's vocation" are made.

WORK-PLUS-SERVICE, the Rotary ideal, is the law of our being–the living principle that carries men and nations onward. The greater number of men must labor with their hands, but whether they toil in a shop or at a desk, work properly understood and carefully done is the one way they forge ahead. We have jokingly referred to work as a burden and a chastisement, but we know full well that it is an honor and a glory and that only as the labor of the world is shared shall we untangle those problems that vex and disturb national economies. Without work nothing is achieved. Ali that is great in man comes through it, and civilization is the by-product of it and the leisure it makes possible.

Rotary lives and will continue to live because it is based on this fundamental of fundamentals. Through Rotary's fellowship and activities runs the common thread of service to fellow men—a service that starts at home and bridges political boundaries. International Service is not just a phrase for Rotarians; with a clarifying perception of its ramifications in community and vocational life, they are striving to integrate mankind in goodwill and understanding.

Let tribute here be paid to the 150,000 Rotarians of many lands who are contributing their effort and their time to the end that the ways of living in the New Day now dawning shall have a prosperity on a much more sound basis than heretofore known. Their self-sacrificing endeavor has made Rotary what it is; their continuing effort and that of men whose interest is enlisted because of their example, augurs for a progressing Rotary in a progressing world.

University alumni administrator Robert E. Lee “Bob” Hill, of Columbia, Missouri, at midnight on 30 June 1934, attained Rotary's highest office, the international Presidency. This is his unveiling of his program of work for the 1934-1935 Rotary year, and it appeared on page 5 of the July 1934 issue of The Rotarian. Although it is not mentioned in the article above, Hill’s motto, or “special emphasis” for the year was Friendship. It was an emphasis so important, the founder of Rotary, Paul Harris, singled it out for special recognition.

Doug Rudman