Rockefeller Brotherhood

On Manhattan's Riverside Drive, just north of the famed Riverside Church and close to Columbia University, stands a massive brick building named International House. John D. Rockefeller Jr. built it, and over its big front door he had inscribed: THAT BROTHERHOOD MAY PREVAIL. Today students of 50 nations live in International House. Last week, although some of their native countries were at war with each other, inhabitants of International House reported that in their house brotherhood still prevailed.

International House originated on the Columbia campus one day before World War I when a Y. M. C. A. secretary, Harry Edmonds, greeted a Chinese student with a cheerful "Good morning" as they passed. The Chinese stopped, blurted that it was the first friendly word he had heard in his six weeks in the U. S. Mr. Edmonds invited him to Sunday supper, soon invited other foreign and U. S. students. Their group became Columbia's Intercollegiate Cosmopolitan Club, got Mr. Rockefeller to establish International House in 1924.* Mr. Edmonds was its first director.

International House is coeducational, houses men in one wing and girls in another. Eligible as members are foreign students and U. S. graduate students in New York City colleges and universities. Of its 1,500 resident and nonresident members, about a third are foreigners. U. S. students like to live there because it is friendly and cheap (average room rent: $7 a week), looks after their health, holds frequent dances and is as good as a world tour. There they may meet Icelanders, Indians, Liberians, South Africans, Turks, Swedes, Japanese, Chinese, Swiss, South Sea Islanders.

Last week Chinese and Japanese, Britons and Germans still spoke to each other in International House. But no Nazis were left there and the House was largely pro-British. In a radio (CBS) "Bull Session" staged by six of its members, Internationalist Lucy Ann Moon Simes (of Wisconsin) explained: "Up until this point what was essentially culture, what was essentially civilizing has never been lost. Rome when she conquered Greece took over much that was best of the Greek civilization.. . . The Nazis' attitude today is the only one which has definitely set out to quell other cultures."

* Since then, Mr. Rockefeller has built similar International Houses at University of Chicago, University of California, University City in Paris.

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