Geneva to Greenwich

Motoring across Europe in 1929, when Europe seemed far from war, two young American women, Mount Holyoke's Mildred Burgess and Syracuse University's Marguerite M. Lux, decided it would be nice to open a college for U. S. girls in Switzerland. There girls could combine study with music, art, mountain climbing, skiing and meeting charming young Europeans. The Misses Burgess and Lux got Eleanor Roosevelt, Newton D. Baker and other bigwigs to sponsor their college, opened it in Geneva in the fall of 1930 with 25 students at $1,500 a head.

Snug in a chateau facing Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc, students of Geneva College for Women had a gay time talking French as well as English, dropping in on the League of Nations, making the most of their social opportunities--until the CzechoSlovakian crisis. After Munich, the Misses Burgess and Lux could find only six U. S. girls whose parents would let them go to Geneva. They padded their enrollment with four CzechoSlovakian girls on scholarships, opened the fall term, soon began to hear from the U. S. girls' parents. Each time Adolf Hitler made a speech, the parents cabled the college. Each time, the Misses Burgess and Lux cabled back that there would be no war.

Last month one parent cabled that, war or no war, he would feel better if the college finished the year at his estate. Belora Villa, in Greenwich, Conn. Thereupon the Misses Burgess and Lux packed the Czech girls off to their homes and Geneva College for Women sailed bag and baggage for Boston. Last week the temporarily transplanted college began to explore educational and social opportunities in the more harmonious atmosphere of Greenwich.

TIME. May 22, 1939

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