Dr. Morgan

Most men who hold doctor's degrees from British universities (excepting doctors of medicine) receive them not for toil and research but as a mark of honor. Discriminatingly do British universities hand out kudos. Of three reasons most cogent to U. S. universities (to encourage or pay for endowment donations; to publicize themselves; to render genuine homage to great men), most often are the British guided by the third, marking with distinction the authentic great. None so marked can consider himself more highly honored than he who receives from Oxford University a degree of Doctor of Civil Law. Last week to Banker John Pierpont Morgan, holder of doctor's degrees from Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, New York University, Trinity College, went this highest of Oxford degrees.

Editorialized the London Times: "[Banker Morgan put England] under a special debt of gratitude. . . . Other Americans have taken treasures away; Mr. Morgan has given." (He gave funds for the British Museum to obtain the Bedford Book of Hours and the Luttrell Psalter.)

"Mr. Morgan has, indeed, long been a firm friend of Britain, and never was the staunchness of his friendship better shown than when British reputation was put to a test in the early months of the World War and was being besmirched by those in his own country whose origin and interests made them naturally zealous to damage it. Credit meant much in those days, but the help to Britain of the House of Morgan was unwavering and invaluable.

"He is a business man and a gardener, an international financier and an English squire. He enjoys the country life of his home ["Wall Hall''] at Watford with an affection as deep as any of his English ancestors felt for theirs. What his Hertfordshire retreat meant to him is an illustration of the abiding value of the English countryside as an unequalled recreative force."

Other U. S. holders of Oxford's Doctor of Civil Law degree:

1873--James Russell Lowell

1886--Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes

1889--John Shaw Billings

1890--William Watson Goodwin Henry Morton Stanley

1894--Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan

1896--Francis Andrew March

1897--Edwin Lawrence Godkin

1899--Simon Newcomb

1900--Charles Eliot Norton

1902--Joseph Hodges Choate Andrew Dickson White

1904--John Singer Sargent

1907--Whitelaw Reid

1909--Hon. Oliver Wendell Holmes

1910--Theodore Roosevelt

1913--Elihu Root

1914--Walter Hines Page

1917--Henry van Dyke

1919--John Joseph Pershing Herbert Hoover

1922--William Howard Taft

1929--Charles Gates Dawes

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