Kudos

Some honorary degrees bestowed at the earlier college and university commencements:

New York University

Painter Edwin Rowland Blashfield Dr. Fine Arts

Publisher Adolph Simon Ochs (N. Y. Times) Litt.D.

Speaker Nicholas Longworth LL. D.

Georgetown University

Herbert Hoover LL.D.

Columbia University

Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith LL.D. (his first academic degree)

Miles Farrow, organist and choirmaster of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine D. Mus.

President Max Mason of the University of Chicago D.Sc.

Henry Osborn Taylor, historian Litt. D.

Edward Channing, historian Litt.D.

Bishop John Gardner Murray, Episcopal Primus Dr. Sacred Theology

Bishop Ernest Milmore Stires of Long Island Dr. Sacred Theology

Editor, John St. Loe Strachey of the London Spectator (conferred last November) Litt.D.

Washington University (St. Louis)

U. S. Secretary of War Dwight Filley Davis LL.D.

William and Mary College

Rear Admiral Cary Travers Grayson LL.D.

George Washington University (Washington, D. C.)

Sir Esme Howard, British Ambassador LL.D.

U. S. Under-Secretary of State Joseph Clark Grew LL.D.

Mrs. Anthony Wayne Cook (D.A.R.) LL. D.

McGill University (Montreal)

Sir Esme Howard, British Ambassador LL.D.

Dickinson College

The Rev. S. Parkes Cadman of Brooklyn LL.D.

Dr. Herbert N. Shenton of Manhattan Dr. Humanities

Holy Cross College

Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller of Massachusetts LL.D.

University of Southern California

Frederick Warde, actor L.H.D.

Wake Forest College

Walter Lippmann, editorial writer of the N. Y. World LL.D.

Loyola University (Chicago)

Sister Mary Veronica Ryan, nursing nun LL.D.

University of Porto Rico

Jose Vasconcelos, onetime Mexican Minister of Education LL.D.

Dr. Alexander Petrunkevitch, Yale biologist D.Sc.

Rutgers University (New Brunswick, N. J.)

Owen D. Young, industrialist LL.D.

Michael Idvorsky Pupin, electrical engineer D.Sc

Publisher, Wallace Mcllvaine Scudder of the Newark Evening News Litt.D.

New Unit

Friends and officials of Northwestern University assembled at the north edge of Chicago to lay and dedicate four cornerstones of a new unit of that thriving institution, whose headquarters are farther up Lake Michigan, at Evanston, Ill. Mr. and Mrs. George Alexander McKinlock had given the campus in memory of their warrior son.. Mrs. Montgomery Ward had given a medical-dental centre, a 14-story Gothic building, in memory of her merchant (mailorder) husband. The widow of Levy Mayer, famed attorney, had given a hall of law. Judge Elbert H. (U. S. Steel) Gary of Manhattan had given a law library. W. A. Wieboldt had given a hall of commerce.

Mayor Dever of Chicago was there to express his city's appreciation. President Walter Dill Scott acknowledged gifts in behalf of the faculties and students.

Dr. Charles H. Mayo, Northwestern '88, famed Rochester, Minn., surgeon, proposed that Mrs. Montgomery Ward had, by her gift, opened the door on a new era of medical teaching, an era when Medicine will lead society out of an impossible situation. "The struggle for bread has given place to the struggle for luxuries. The struggle to keep on living, the fear of age with its limitations of pleasure, are encouraged by our skill. We actually encourage impurity of stock in spite of nature's effort to maintain it. . . . How to accomplish our good without evil is a harder problem than how to accomplish our good."

Three Nations

It had long been a matter of regret to Philanthropist Lee Kohns of Manhattan that the Sorbonne or University of Paris has no chair of U. S. history, civilization and letters. So last week, after having effected the preliminaries by letter, he sailed for France with the money right in his pocket to endow such a chair for perpetuity. The object: international understanding. Donor Kohns is a grandson of the late Lazarus Straus, German founder of the U. S. financial Straus dynasty.

Heads

Hotchkiss, pleasant country seat of private secondary education (Lakeville, Conn.), last week announced the election of a headmaster to succeed Walter H. Buell, who postponed his retirement in 1924 to act in place of the late "King," Rev. Huber G. Buehler (TIME, June 30, 1924). The new man is a young man, a Hotchkiss "old boy" not 20 years out. He is George Van Santvoord, this past year head of the English department of Buffalo University and before that an assistant English professor at Yale. He is of old New York patroon stock, tall, an oarsman, somewhat anglicized as to manners and accent after being a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a teacher in Winchester College, England. Headmaster-elect Van Santvoord wrote a tribute to his predecessor, whom he remembered as "first of all a man, genial and humane and thoroughly sympathetic" from their Sunday afternoon walks together as master and pupil. Headmaster Buell, deeply loved scholar, did not reply in kind, but it was obvious that he had remembered his pupil, spoken well of him to Hotchkiss trustees.

Last fortnight St. George's School (Middletown, R. I.) announced the election of Russell H. Nevins, Yale '01, as successor to Headmaster Stephen Perkins Cabot. Headmaster-elect Nevins has been a St. George's master since 1902, senior master since 1916, acting-headmaster for two terms in 1924.

Retrospect

The U. S. college president dismissed his secretary and sat back in his chair with an air of finality. Between him and his vacation there now remained only commencement, with its trustee meetings, baccalaureate address, awarding of degrees and the usual sociabilities at alumni headquarters, the baseball field and around Mrs. President's tea table. But before this festive period began, Mr. President lingered a moment, gazing out at the drowsy June campus, to speculate upon the general nature and special features of the college year just drawing to a close.

Undergraduate Power. Yes, as President Emeritus Charles F. Thwing of Western Reserve University had written in the New York Times, an outstanding phenomenon everywhere during 1925-26 was the increasing power--or at least, increased self-assertiveness-- of the undergraduates. (Dr. Thwing had compared this phenomenon to the "student universities" of the Middle Ages, when a professor had to ask his pupils for permission to take a week-end off. Ah, there was thirst for knowledge in those days!)

At Oregon and Bowdoin, at Yale, at Harvard (TIME, April 19), undergraduate committees had seen fit to scrutinize the curricula minutely and to formulate suggestions that ranged all the way from establishing special readings in modern fiction to dividing one university (Harvard) into smaller socioeducational units.

Undergraduates had successfully protested against compulsory chapel attendance at Vassar, Yale, Dartmouth (TIME, June 14). They had rated their professors according to ability at some colleges; had demanded--and obtained--unlimited "cuts" for high-stand students at others. They had continued to criticize the lecture system freely, and to publish outspoken articles on all phases of higher education-- administrative, academic, sociological.

Elevation of Standards. Nor had administrators been idle. It had been a year notable for efforts to elevate academic standards. Chief of these efforts, of course, was that of President Frank J. Goodnow of Johns Hopkins, who had brought his university back to its original purpose of dispensing "higher" education in the true sense of the adjective--by cutting freshman and sophomore studies out of the liberal arts school (TIME, March 8). Scholars everywhere had joined in helping Phi Beta Kappa to make its sesquicentennial a revival of scholarship (TIME, May 31).

Research. The action at Johns Hopkins was also expressive of a renewed emphasis that came during the year upon the university as an institution for research as well as teaching. Many college presidents had joined with many financiers and U. S. Secretary of Commerce Hoover to establish a National Research Endowment Fund of 20 millions (TIME, March 15, SCIENCE). Historians were seeking a million to underwrite their work. Dean Pound of the Harvard Law School had spoken out on the subject of research in law, and been materially aided by the General Education Board (TIME, May 24).

Entrance Limitations. The crush at U. S. college gates had continued until even huge Harvard felt obliged to announce a policy of restricting her freshman classes (TIME, April 12).

Psychological Tests. The assistance of modern psychology in selecting matriculants had been accepted more widely than ever, and Brown University had taken the next logical step in this direction, instituting psychological examinations supplementary to the physical examinations which every university is careful to give its members annually (TIME, May 17).

Internationalism. There had been growth in the internationalism of higher education. Not only were European educators allegedly* more conscious of the merit of U. S. universities, but foundations and student exchange agencies had brought more foreign students to U. S. colleges./- The Russian Student Fund, Inc. (Manhattan) reported the impending graduation of 44 onetime refugees. The Commonwealth Foundation for British graduate students and the Davison scholarships for British undergraduates were more than ever popular. Conversely, exchange of students with German universities was rearranged for the first time since the War. The first scholarships for U. S. students at Japanese universities were founded (TIME, Feb. 15). Smith College sent 32 of its young ladies to do their junior-year studies in France.

Athletics. The movement to subordinate athletics in college life had continued. Professors had met in Manhattan and scored the exaggeration of football. The Harvard Crimson had (last week) published an editorial, typical of editorials in other undergraduate dailies, patting the undergraduates on the back for not getting hysterical at a crew rally.

Endowments. The era of physical expansion at the colleges had by no means, ended nor the endowment-raising era to maintain buildings and support the pedagogy that is to operate within them. The biggest campaign announced during the year was that of New York University, for 73 millions in the next decade. (During 1923-24 the total gifts to all colleges, not counting state appropriations, was only 91 millions.)

At the University of Wisconsin, the pensive man in the presidential chair was Dr. Glenn Frank, onetime magazine editor and lecturer. He had been there only a year but that had been long enough for him to decide that the major problem of modern mammoth state universities is how to help the student find a needle of tempered, pointed knowledge in the haystack of a curriculum listing thousands of courses.

Presidents Max Mason of Chicago and Clarence C. Little of Michigan were also rounding out their first years in their chairs, but the public heard less of their discoveries, heard only that their respective institutions had found them to be able men.

President George L. Mackintosh of Wabash College, extended his retrospect, to cover the whole 20 years of his administration, for he had resigned (voluntarily), and would soon be succeeded by Dr. Louis B. Hopkins, personnel director of Northwestern University. Dr. E. G. Cutshall of West Virginia Wesleyan (Buckhannon, W. Va.) was to be succeeded by Dr. Homer B. Wark of Boston University.

In the presidential chair at Harvard University probably sat no one.

It was the close of one of the best years in Harvard's history, a year especially agreeable, because it had followed on the heels of a period of turmoil and tribulation, a period that had seen the departure to Yale of Professor George Pierce Baker of the famed 47 Workshop (dramatics); a squabble over new buildings in the old Yard; another squabble over the release of a valuable piece of university property on the Square; continued uncertainty about the tutorial system; repeated athletic disasters, so troublous to the alumnus soul.

Then athletics had looked up, under the adroit direction of William John ("Bill") Bingham, onetime Crimson track celebrity. The Harvard Fund had got under way with vigorous Howard Elliott, Presi- dent of the Overseers, at the helm (TIME, May 3). The first fruits of the rejuvenated tutorial system had begun to appear, and an unusually constructive group of seniors had quickened interest in undergraduate problems with a report that received unanimous approval from student body and overseers alike (TIME, April 19). A policy of entrance restriction had been announced and successfully interpreted to the public. Dr. Gilbert Murray was coming from England as first incumbent of a newly-endowed chair of poetry (TIME, March 15).

All these had redounded to both the credit and the popularity of the president of Harvard. But still it is unlikely that at the close of the year he sat gazing pensively from his chair.

President A. Lawrence Lowell is an exceedingly busy man and it is his nature to throw his whole self into the business of every moment. To him might have been addressed the question the Quaker lady asked busy Poet Robert Southey (as quoted by Dr. Thwing in his recent book** on college presidents): "And friend, when dost thee think?"

The answer in Dr. Lowell's case would be: "Going to and fro, Madam."

You see him crossing the Harvard campus at his long stride that is nearly a lope, head and shoulders stooped, hands clasped behind him. By the concentrated expression you know that his mind is also in rapid motion, even if the scene is a Manhattan side street (between the Harvard Club and Grand Central) and he is encumbered with a huge suitcase in the midst of a blizzard./-/-

Patriarchal Dr. Thwing, in discussing college presidents, has made a reference implying that Dr. Lowell's review of a college year would consist chiefly in totting up additions to the endowment fund. But this is an imperfect and misleading impression. When he took his chair in 1909--a tall, dignified, self-contained, correct figure of 53--he at once concerned himself with the curriculum and the system of instruction. He pruned the elective courses; he instituted the method of requiring a considerable amount of work in a single field from each student, assisted by specially assigned members of the faculty in the capacity of tutors and examined comprehensively before graduation. "The best type of liberal education," he said, "aims at producing men who know a little of everything, and something well."

His own special fields had been mathematics and the science of government. Upon the latter subject his book, Government of England, became widely celebrated and his lectures were considered among the most stimulating at Harvard. He was a teacher-president, therefore, as well as an able organizer and college financier. (When he went on the Harvard faculty in 1897, his private fortune was said to run into seven figures).

As to personality, he is as much a New Englander as Plymouth Rock. Lowell, Mass., was named after his paternal grandfather; Lawrence, Mass., after his mother's father. He married Anna Parker Lowell, who like him was descended from Judge John Lowell and tradition is so strong upon them both that (for example) they would see nothing quaint in refusing to have a king and queen for dinner on Thursday, because Thursday has always been maid's-day-out in New England. There have been banker Lowells, lawyer Lowells, minister Lowells, an astronomer Lowell (Professor Percival, a brother), but College-President Lowell was never very close to his late sister, Poet Amy Lowell. She was far more eccentric and out of the family manner than their ancestor, Poet James Russell Lowell.

Yet New England traits do not, as is sometimes mistakenly supposed, exclude warmth, free-reined energy and enthusiasm. In college A. Lawrence Lowell, ('77) roomed alone, had a small circle of friends, achieved Phi Beta Kappa scholarship, but he also one day won the Varsity mile running race, caught his breath and ran again to win the three-mile race. His physical vigor and robust enthusiasm are visible today at college track meets, where it is a common, sight to see him loping over to the finish, tape to hear the time, congratulate the winner.

It has been his practice to keep in touch with his undergraduates. He encourages the liberal thinking of the student leaders; calls them to his office for official and personal talks. If there seems to be stiff formality in his public presence, it unbends when he gives his mind to a subject under discussion; that no remnant of his attention is then being held in reserve you can tell from the rapidity and force of his rather thin and high staccato voice, which years have not mellowed. Suppose the talk turns from shoes and sealing-wax to ships: he is off on the instant to drag out a map and kneel with it on the floor, tracing with his finger, explaining, exclaiming. . . .

After troubled times, when the head of a university invariably bears the brunt, Harvard was entering a positive, progressive phase worthy of universal admiration. She could afford to yield to Columbia the latter's self-advertised laurels and contemplate her own president, than whom, among all the distinguished gentlemen in their distinguished chairs, none is more illustrious.

*President Nicholas Murray "Miraculous") Butler of Columbia University, in a Commencement oration delivered last fortnight: "It has been my ambition to have it said in Europe as well as in this country that on Morningside Heights there has been brought together a group of scholars, trained investigators, scientists, teachers and personalities without comparison in the civilized world. Gentlemen that has been the done!"

/-Omniscient Dr. Thwing "happens to know" that Cecil Rhodes, when he founded the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford 23 years ago, viewed with disfavor scholarships at U.S. universities for British students. It is said that a prime motive actuating his founding of the Rhodes scholarships was a desire to express his gratitude and admiration for the U.S. engineer who was so instrumental in helping him make fortunes in South African gold-- Mr John Hays Hammond. The latter, now retired, has developed a lively interest in education; last week he addressed "all June graduates" by radio. His subject: "Success." **THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT--Charles F. Thwing--Macmillan ($2.50). /-/-Why he did not get a taxi has been the subject of much subsequent debate.