University of Virginia Library

4. THE FOURTH DAY

On the final day of the Centennial were held the regular commencement
exercises of 1921, with a formal address by the President
of the University; the meetings of the Alumni in departmental groups
for technical discussion; the annual Class-Day celebration; the Alumni
Barbecue, with the officials of the University, the delegates and other
guests and their families, in attendance; and the closing Torchlight
Parade and Fireworks on the Lawn.

Immediately following the Commencement invocation and just
before the conferring of degrees, the decoration of the Distinguished
Service Cross of Serbia was presented to President Alderman by Mrs.
Rosalie Slaughter Morton, M.D., of the International Serbian Educational
Committee, representing the Government of Serbia, in the
following address:

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I have come this morning to
present to the President of the University of Virginia the Distinguished
Service Cross of Serbia. In the tenth century there was a king's son whose
name was Sava, and who said that he thought no man had the right to
precedent which came through the accident of birth, and he therefore declared
his intention not to succeed his father on the throne but to devote
himself instead to a scholastic life. As the only schools of learning at that
period were monasteries, he entered one and by the time his father, who lived
to a good old age, was approaching the end of his life Sava had become
through his industry and admirable character the chief of the order and his
influence, directly and through the lives of those he helped to train, was far
reaching for mental, moral and spiritual good. When the courtiers from the
Palace came officially to tell him that it was his duty to study international
relations and government policies with a view of fitting himself to rule the
kingdom, he replied that it was more important for him to keep his word than
to be king, and he refused to listen to their arguments and entreaties; so the

succession passed to his brother. In many countries this man would have
been regarded as a fanatic. In Serbia, where the spiritual has always outweighed
the material, he was canonized and the maxim of St. Sava "by the
excellence of your work you shall accomplish all things" became a precept
for the guidance of youth.

In 1883 when it became general for governments to recognize services
through decorations, the cross of St. Sava was established as the Distinguished
Service Order of Serbia, and on this occasion when the sons and
daughters of this University are graduating to go forth into the world fulfilling
the democratic precepts of St. Sava, the occasion is most fitting for
presenting to the distinguished President of the University of Virginia this
cross which is bestowed by the Serbian government in recognition of the
intellectual comradeship shown by the universities and colleges in this State,
in extending invitations to students who were qualified to enter the University
of Belgrade, an opportunity to pursue their studies here; and also in
appreciation of the hospital supplies presented to Serbia by Virginians.
There are among the organizations represented at this Centennial twenty
who have coöperated with the International Serbian Educational Committee;
i. e., the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, University
of the State of New York, State College of North Carolina, Bowdoin College,
University of Maryland, Randolph-Macon College, Mount Holyoke College,
Tufts College, Vassar College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cornell University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, West Virginia University,
Bureau of Education, University of California, Syracuse University,
Sweet Briar College, Columbia University, and American Council on Education;
and the cities where many men and women earnestly worked and from
which were sent hospital equipment and supplies to lessen suffering and save
life in Serbia are Charlottesville, Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, Lynchburg,
Danville, and Staunton. Therefore, Mr. President, with great appreciation
of the world spirit of Virginia, the Government of Serbia authorized
the presentation of this medal which I am privileged to ask you to accept,
symbolizing as it does a love of learning in Serbia which has come down
through a thousand years, as a tribute on this Centennial occasion of the
University from which so many with high purpose, wide vision, great faith
and successful accomplishment have gone forth.

THE RESPONSE OF PRESIDENT ALDERMAN

I am deeply grateful to His Majesty, the King of Serbia, for this valued
decoration, and to you a veteran in the service of the Serbian people, for
your gracious presentation. I shall cherish it always as a souvenir of a
gallant people who knew how to win their liberties by the exercise of unexampled
valor and devotion.

Friday, June 3d

 

11.00 A.M.

Final Exercises, Conferring of Degrees, and Address by the President. The Amphitheatre

The Order of the Procession, Friday Morning

BAND

I

THE CLASS OF 1921 IN DIVISIONS BY DEPARTMENTS

II

THE ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY IN REVERSE ORDER OF
CLASS SENIORITY

III

THE PROFESSORS OF THE UNIVERSITY IN REVERSE ORDER
OF OFFICIAL SENIORITY
FORMER PROFESSORS OF THE UNIVERSITY

IV

THE ALUMNI TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
ENDOWMENT FUND
THE TRUSTEES OF THE MILLER FUND
THE VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
FORMER VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
FORMER RECTORS OF THE UNIVERSITY

V

GUESTS OF THE UNIVERSITY

VI

DELEGATES FROM INSTITUTIONS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES

DELEGATES FROM INSTITUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

VII

THE REVEREND GEORGE LAURENS PETRIE
THE RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY
THE GOVERNOR'S MILITARY STAFF
THE GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY

The Order of Exercises: The Amphitheatre

       

Invocation:	The Reverend George Laurens Petrie, A.M., D.D.
Conferring of Professional Degrees
Conferring of Academic Degrees
The Address:	The President of the University of Virginia

Recession

                                                                         

3.00 P.M.	Meetings of Alumni in Departmental Groups
	Meeting of Clerical Alumni. University Chapel
	Topic: Religious Culture in State Universities by Denominational Agencies
	Presiding Officer, The Reverend William Mentzel Forrest, B.A.
	The Reverend Beverley Dandridge Tucker, Jr., '02, B.D., M.A., of the Episcopal Church
	The Reverend Samuel Chiles Mitchell, '92, Ph.D., LL.D., of the Baptist Church
	The Reverend Thomas Cary Johnson, '84, A.B., D.D., LL.D., of the Presbyterian Church
	The Reverend Byrdine Akers Abbott, '90, of the Church of the Disciples of Christ
	The Reverend John Samuel Flory, '07, Ph.D., of the Dunkard Church
	Rabbi Edward Nathaniel Calisch, '08, Ph.D., of the Jewish Church
	Meeting of the Alumni of the Law Department. Minor Hall
	Presiding Officer, Dean William Minor Lile, '82, LL.B., LL.D.
	The Policies of the Law School, Past, Present, and Future. Dean Lile
	The Plan and History of the Virginia Law Review. Randolph Caskie Coleman, '21, M.A., Editor
	Organization of Law Alumni Association
	Its Advantages and Opportunities. Alexander Pope Humphrey, '68, LL.B.
	Submission of Proposed Constitution
	Enrollment of Charter Members
	Election of Officers
	Presentation of Souvenirs
	Meeting of the Medical Alumni Association. Madison Hall
	President, Hugh Hampton Young, '94, A.M., M.D.
	Election of Officers
	Movements in Medical Education. William Holland Wilmer, '85, M.D., LL.D.
	Opening Discussion, David Russell Lyman, '99, M.A., M.D.
	Meeting of the Engineering Alumni. Mechanical Laboratory
	Topic: Organization of an Engineering Alumni Council
	Presiding Officer, Dean William Mynn Thornton, '73, A.B., LL.D.
	Opening Discussion, Allen Jeter Saville, '08, M.E.
	Discussion from the Point of View of a Civil Engineer, Walter Jones Laird, '09, C.E.
	Discussion from the Point of View of a Mechanical Engineer. William Carrington Lancaster, '03, M.E., E.E.
	Discussion from the Point of View of an Electrical Engineer. Matthew Orpheus Troy, '96, B.S.
	Discussion from the Point of View of a Chemical Engineer. John Marshall, '13, Chem.E.
	Meeting of the Collegiate Alumni by Sections. Peabody Hall
	General Group Meeting
	Presiding Officer, Dean James Morris Page, Ph.D., LL.D.
	An Historical Sketch of the Academic Department of the University. William Harrison Faulkner, '02, Ph.D., Professor of Germanic Languages, University of Virginia

I. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE GROUP

Presiding Officer, William Harrison Faulkner, '02,
Ph.D.

The Present Crisis in the Modern Languages. Robert
Herndon Fife, '95, Ph.D., Gebhard Professor of Germanic
Languages and Literature, Columbia University

The Demand for Teachers of French and Spanish. Henry
Carrington Lancaster, '03, Ph.D., Professor of
French Literature, The Johns Hopkins University

Educational Problems in University Instruction of English,
Morris Palmer Tilley, '99, Ph.D., Professor of
English, University of Michigan

II. MATHEMATICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCE GROUP

Presiding Officer, Robert Montgomery Bird, Ph.D.

Problems in Scientific Education, Charles Lee Reese,
'84, Ph.D., Sc.D., Chemical Director of E. I. du Pont
de Nemours and Company

A Plea for the Perfect, William Jackson Humphreys, '89,
Ph.D., Professor of Meteorological Physics, United
States Weather Bureau

III. EDUCATIONAL GROUP

Presiding Officer, Dean John Levi Manahan, Ph.D.

The Contribution of the University of Virginia to Education
through Private Academies, John Carter Walker, '97,
M.A., Headmaster of Woodberry Forest School

The Contribution of the University of Virginia to the Public
School System of the State, John Walter Wayland, '07,
Ph.D., Professor of History, Harrisonburg State Normal
School

What the Public School System of Virginia has a Right to
Expect from the University, Harris Hart, A.B., Superintendent
of Public Instruction of Virginia

 

4.30 P.M.

Exercises by the Class of 1921. The Amphitheatre. Presiding Officer, Edward Percy Russell, President

           

Overture:
The Poem, 1921:	Charles Edgar Gilliam
Address in Presentation of Class Gift:	Thomas Johnson Michie, Jr.
Address of Acceptance:	The President of the University
Song:	The Class of 1921
Farewell:	The President of the Class

           

5.00 P.M.	Band Concert. The Lawn
6.00 P.M.	Alumni Barbecue: Officials of the University, Delegates, other Guests, and their families are invited. Barbecue Grounds
9.00 P.M.	Torchlight Parade, with Review. The Lawn
	Procession from Barbecue Grounds to the Lawn by the Classes in Order of Seniority
	Fireworks, and Parade to the Rotunda
	Review by Officials and Delegates. The Lawn

ADDRESSES ON THE FOURTH DAY

INVOCATION BY THE REVEREND GEORGE LAURENS PETRIE, D.D., OF CHARLOTTESVILLE,
VA.

O God of Truth and Grace; the Truth through which freedom comes,
the Grace to which alone and ever we must look for help.

The years that are past are rendered illustrious by Thy mercies. The
paths we have trodden have opened to our advancing steps, and have given
new visions of Thy greatness and Thy glory, new experiences of Thy wisdom
and Thy love. As we look back through the vista of the past we are grateful
for Thy mercies. As we look forward to the coming years we are cheered by
hope.

We thank Thee for the prevision which planned this great Institution;
for the wisdom which laid its foundations; for the skill which reared its
walls; for the resoluteness which marked its construction; for the noble
purpose which threw wide open its doors for its splendid educational
career.

We thank Thee that by Thy kind providence this Institution not only
has made real the great ideal of its honored founder, but in its development
and growth and achievement has surpassed even his beautiful dream.

As we look back through all Thy protecting care during these one hundred
years we are made profoundly grateful for the wonderful career and
extraordinary record of this University.

By Thy blessing it has been a Fountain of knowledge, where many
have refreshed themselves; a School of Training where many have been
fitted for life work; an Academy in the shades of which many have gathered
about its great teachers and have been enriched by their wisdom.

In Thy leading, to it youths have come in the glow of life's morning.
From it they have gone forth men, qualified and incited to do great deeds
and achieve great results. By Thy favor this Benign Mother has sent her
sons out from these sacred scenes with benefits and blessings from her hand
and heart.

They in turn by their successful and brilliant careers have rendered yet
more illustrious their Alma Mater.

Looking toward the future we invoke for this honored and beloved
University divine guidance. May all that has proved good in the past be
preserved. May all that is good in the keeping of the future be bestowed in
great fulness on this Institution.

May it ever stand for highest ideals, for accurate and extensive scholarship,
for truth and honor, for noblest character.

Bless the Board of Visitors with wisdom to guide its affairs. Bless the
Faculty that in every way they may meet their great responsibilities.

Bless the students of the past, present and future. May they as year
by year they go forth from this educational retreat, go forth in all the
glory of superb character to be an honor to the State, the Nation and the
World.

Bless all the great educational institutions that by their distinguished
representatives have conveyed their salutations and congratulations to
this University on this Centennial of its life and work.

In the great partnership of intellectual life and work may this high art
of teaching and learning attain its noblest reach and broadest culture.
May supreme human culture ever delight to sit humbly at the feet of Him
who is Truth and who by the Truth makes Free.

A CENTENNIAL ADDRESS

By President Edwin Anderson Alderman, D.C.L., LL.D., of the University of
Virginia

The Father of this University, whose name has been upon the lips of
so many during these days of commemoration, combined in his vivid personality
something of the insight of the prophet, the imagination of the artist,
and the engineer's passion for constructive detail. Like Kubla Khan in
Xanadu, he could here a stately culture-dome decree, but he had no satisfaction
until he had set down with a precise hand the specifications of the
dream structure looming in the eye of his mind, enumerated its concrete
tasks, and defined its immediate objectives. So clearly did he do this that
he has enrolled his name among those who cannot be passed by in any enumeration
of the educational reformers of the modern world.

As the culminating unit in the great national moulding force which he—
first of American educators—conceived education to be, he drew in one comprehensive
sweep a charter of University function. It was declared that the
task of the University was—

It may be doubted if any agent of society ever received general orders
more liberal and catholic than these as it adventured forth to enlighten and
elevate human thinking and increase human knowledge. Let us recall that
they were drawn up in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless,
the light from the sun of the democratic theory, then not high advanced
in the heavens, illuminates each separate syllable. Inherent in them may
be seen that interdependence of democracy and education which constitutes

the basis of modern society, and out of them alone might be deduced
the belief that in this secular world the highest optimism of mankind is embodied
in the democratic theory and given heart and substance by the
processes of education.

I fancy there is clear to all of you the curious, impressive likeness between
the scene of the world as it then lay before Jefferson's vision and the
scene of the world that our own eyes behold. The century was young then
as now. The slumbering injustice of ages had awakened and broken up the
settled forms of order and society only to develop its own special brand of
chaos, a vaster philosophy of force, and to meet its doom then as now before
the free and unconquerable spirit of man. A world in transition and confusion
had forgotten its high, unselfish emotions, succumbed to temporary
pessimism and disillusion, substituted personal and class aggrandizement
for patriotic passion, and, freed from the fierce stimulus of war, exhibited
lassitude and a tendency to turn from big issues to immediate economic
advantages. Then, as now, men felt that they beheld the end of an age and
the beginning of another epoch; and the new seminary of 1819, like the mature
mother of 1919, faced a convalescent world, fretful in its moods, let
down in its morale, dull in its thinking, commonplace in its ideals, waiting
irresolutely for guidance into right paths of peace and reconstruction. Then,
as always, in this troubled but advancing world, the saving remnant saw the
two great forces of permanent reconstruction—youth, unbound by tradition,
unbroken by war, undepressed by events, because sustained by the glorious
buoyancy that surrounds the morning of life, and, secondly, a new social
theory of intelligent coöperation for the common good supplanting dull
autocracy or benevolent despotism. Though thus alike in certain outward
external characteristics, the transformation of the daring Republican experiment
of the west during the passing of this century from a hope to a reality,
the growth of democracy from the status of a dogma to the status of a practical
governmental policy, the application of natural science through inventions
to human needs, inaugurating the most rapid and extensive industrial
revolution in all history, the advent of nationalism and its investment with
almost religious sanction, separate the eras by a gulf of political motive and
social purpose. It would seem to be a proper time to enquire if our University,
sent forth so confidently, instructed so minutely, and beholding so
clear a field of operation, has thus far played a just part in the drama of
democratic society? Has it met the specifications of the great educational
architect fairly and honestly? Let us not be tempted into mere boasting,
for it is the last word of vulgarity, but I do proudly claim that the University,
which forever hereafter you shall acclaim as your Alma Mater, has,
under tragic difficulties, fulfilled the law and satisfied the contract, and has,
therefore, a right to stand upright here to-day looking along the paths of the

The Academic Procession from the Rotunda to the Amphitheatre

new century with the vigor and purpose that come of an unclouded conscience
and a quiet spirit. Have the young men of successive generations
nourished here—twenty-two thousand in all—done their duty to the public
and kept their honor clean? I challenge the records of the nation's service in
all vocations, the rolls of the Senate, the Cabinet and diplomatic service,
the Governor's chair, the roster of the Army and Navy, for proof that they
have so lived and acted. This University has faced each crisis in the progress
of the national life from the period of raw confidence in its virile youth
to the portentous strength and moral dominance of the present most venerable
republic of the world, with the leadership suited to each crisis; and it
has made for itself institutionally in travail and self-examination a definite
spirit and an atmosphere compounded of intense individualism, democratic
sympathy, religious freedom, uncompromising integrity, distinction of
standards and austere toil. These are granite virtues, and a house built
upon them, let us thank God, is built upon a base that revolutionary storms
cannot disintegrate or waste away.

You and I, young men, have business with this University no less
solemn, significant, and fateful, than the work which Thomas Jefferson and
his associates found to do, and which has been carried on so faithfully by
great teachers and scholars of succeeding generations. It may be that we
shall not look upon their like again, for they were great democrats who
issued out of aristocracy, and our reliance must be, in this later age, upon
great aristocrats bred of democracy. But the University which they built
stands here still for us to perpetuate a symbol of deathless fecundity, institutionally
barely mature, its strength even now multiplied a hundred-fold,
its responsibility a thousand-fold. Here the nation, its wildernesses conquered,
its wealth piled up, its civilization composite of all mankind, its
surging society made over literally in industrial method and social aim,
beset with new perils and temptations, and awed by new grandeurs, seeks
direction toward an ideal of Americanism which shall somehow define
republican citizenship in terms of enduring value for all mankind. Yonder
throngs over wider lawns and greater spaces and through nobler edifices
at our bi-centennial, the great assize of your great grandchildren, asking
with appraising minds, and the old sentimental loyalties, what part their
University has played in the State and the nation and the world as the great
social theory out of which it was born, still further unfolded its purposes,
enlarged its implications, and strove toward its ultimate ascendancy. In
that far future, we shall be the past, and we shall be a worthy past in proportion
as we have served the present future. No past ever wins respectability,
much less reverence, in any other way. We shall serve the future worthily
in the degree in which we approach the majestic problem of human progress
with openness of mind, with clear knowledge that does not deceive itself,

with faith in trained men, and with sympathy for humanity erected into a
practical philosophy.

Liberalism, faith in God and man, sound and varied learning forever
pushing back the horizons of knowledge, human coöperation—these are the
cornerstones of the university of the future. Without them democracy
itself may become a tyranny more gross and rapacious than ever cursed
society and mere learning, as we ourselves have seen it, the sword of the
cruel and the selfish instead of the torch of him who seeks the truth.

I am aware that I seem to indicate a program of idealism so vast and
slow as to suggest the processes of geologic growth. I am aware, too, that
this program involves dealing with all grades and conditions of men, and
may seem to take not sufficient thought of the obvious and immediate, or to
yield brilliant and romantic results, but in its patient grandeur and resistless
strength, it is warp and woof of the mighty theory inherent in its logic and
necessary to its progress. Undoubtedly what the world most urgently and
constantly needs is unusual and capable individuals who are valuable to
life. I, for one, do not fear that education thus considered as a great socializing
force, slowly moulding national life into higher forms, will miss these
precious sports and rare individuals, and thus flatten out the surface of life
into amiable mediocrity. I rather believe that the stature of mankind is in
process of definite enlargement and that its giants will be giants still and
taller if less detached and lonely. The qualities of men must make such
differences in them forever as to preclude the fall of life to dull commonplaceness.
The liberalism which I have planted as the first cornerstone of
the University of the future, though far too comprehensive a creed to be
written out here, means essentially emancipation from the dead hand of any
authority that rests upon the human mind or spirit, to paralyze its energies
or weaken its ardor. It means protest against treating as if it were a mutiny
in a regiment the thinking of thinkers or the play of the conscience. John
Morley points out that, after all, respect for the dignity and worth of the
individual is its real root and while, like democracy itself, it is charged with
explosives, almost everything that is new in any age may be traced to its
hand. Thomas Jefferson was a greater liberal than John Morley. Those
who invoke his name as a static influence in modern life have never met the
man himself but only a wraith conjured up out of ignorance or misunderstanding.
They certainly do not understand the young Albemarle farmer-lawyer,
who at the age of twenty-two, stood tip-toe in the hall of the House
of Delegates, at Williamsburg, and listened with bated breath to the fierce
eloquence of Patrick Henry, and at the age of thirty-three, after giving the
world the Declaration of American Independence, appeared in the colonial
Capitol of the Old Dominion with four or five bills in his pocket which proposed
to revolutionize the existing social order and to inaugurate a new

economic, religious, and educational life in the Commonwealth. In letters
to Joseph Priestley and others, Jefferson thus set forth a plain philosophy of
belief in the orderly growth of human institutions unhindered by dull
conservatism:

"The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards
for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our
ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning,
is worthy of those bigots in religion and government, by whom it has been
recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea
which this country will endure.

"When I contemplate the immense advances in science and discoveries
in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward
with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no
doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than
our fathers were and they than the burners of witches.

"We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him
when a boy, as civilized society to remain under the regimen of their ancestors."

The World War, just ended, subjected the social theory, out of which
this University was born and to which it is dedicated, to a pitiless crossexamination
by the mind and spirit of mankind. What is the verdict? It is
generally agreed that this theory has accomplished more for the improvement
of human society than any other social scheme in history, that it is
nevertheless no patent social panacea and harbors many weaknesses. It
is agreed by some with alarm that it has greatly advanced its point of view
from a theory of the political rights of man to a theory of social and economic
fairness and even perfection. It is clear that it is triumphant, indeed
that it is about the only thing in the past century that has never stopped
advancing, despite the apparent collapse of 1914, from its faint beginnings as
small group cooperation for the protection of common rights to the emergence
of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the bravest and most reasonable
effort in all political history to rationalize world relations and to protect
all mankind against its deadliest enemy. However severe an indictment
may be brought against it as a perfect system, its defenders can safely put
the question—What better alternative do you offer? Did not the American,
the French, and the British democracies, under the great test, demonstrate
the essential spiritual validity at least of the doctrine and give proof that
its strength was grounded on the best there is in the nature of man?

The eighteenth century sought the answer to the question—What are
the rights of man? It was the age of Constitutions, Declarations, Revolutions.
The insistent query of the nineteenth century was—How are these
rights to be made available for the production of wealth? The twentieth

century, which most concerns us and which we must deal with, is grappling
with the problem—What is the duty of society in regard to the wealth which
it has created and the liberty which it inherited? Lord Bryce asserts that
the ideal of securing material conditions of comfort and well-being for
everybody, erected into a doctrine of humanitarianism, has so dominated
the minds of modern leaders as to endanger and obscure all other ideals and
especially the ideal of individual liberty. Men fear discomfort more than
tyranny and hardship more than autocrats. The great question of our time,
then, toward the solution of which universities must furnish right wisdom,
is to restore liberty conceived in the old American sense to the place it once
held in men's thoughts and yet to find somehow the golden mean between
the individualism which safeguards human freedom and the collectivism
which ensures social progress. Men will no longer love a government which
seems to them merely "anarchy plus the policeman," and they will not have
any government to love if it shall become a vast benevolent society preoccupied
principally with promoting material welfare.

The solid glory of this nation, or any nation, must, it would seem, finally
be determined by its ability to comprehend and readapt the theory and
practice of democracy as it reacts upon society in its progressive changes as
an eternal faith elastic enough to confront and strong enough to overcome
the changing forms of human error and injustice. As democracy thus
redefines itself, education, as its foremost policy, must redefine itself, and the
University as the chief servant of education must re-examine and re-relate
its power to the life about it.

Do not imagine that I shall here seek to define an American University
in any rigid terms. Experience has been called the best definer, and the
pressure of social situations the logical moulder. For us Jefferson's educational
specifications stand as steadfast in their field as his other great Charter
in the field of political liberty, needing only to be expanded to meet the
needs of a world society made into one organic unit by the rise of new scientific
inventions and economic laws, the advent of new professions, the call of
new knowledges, the implications of that great modern outlook which proclaims
that the community must seek to obtain for all of its children what
the wisest parent desires for his own child.

I dare to declare to you, young gentlemen, my belief that the future of
this University will not be unworthy of its past. The century that lies
before us with its unimagined wealth of new truth and new aspirations and
new entanglements will behold the University of Virginia, clothed in greater
strength and beauty, standing, as of old, at the northern gateway of the
South, embodying in its physical form and spiritual essence something of the
note of romanticism, with its central quality of exaltation of personality,
its deep loyalties and that balancing power of conservatism peculiar to the

region out of which it sprang. Power to interpret the distinct sections of
American life to each other will reside in it, and out of it will issue into the
mighty national stream the values of old Americanism and the best inheritances
of the English consciousness, moulding the individual man into dignity
of life and skilled usefulness, and yet working toward a larger collective
future, where every man may seek to earn a power to use and a dignity to
cherish.

As a Fortress of truth hardly won, I behold it undertaking to assemble
and preserve the bequests of civilization in its museums, libraries, and
laboratories. As a Workshop, it will be busy seeking to liberate the mind
and spirit of men and women by acquiring through honest work the truth
that exists and winning through discovery the truth that lures, while through
wise selective processes, it will sift the masses of young scholars and craftsmen
within its walls for talent and genius. This is its daily, primary, elemental
task. In this Workshop scholarship is the product sought for and
the power to adjust the mind to the greater issue as it arises, the end aimed
at. As a Dynamo I perceive it sending its force through all the avenues of
life in such fashion as to touch and mould the sources of public opinion, thus
realizing Fichte's dream of a University as a place from which, as from the
spiritual heart of a community, a current of life energy might be poured
through all of its members. As a Commander-in-Chief in the great warfare
against incompetence, it will seek to coördinate the whole daring process of
public education—elementary, secondary, cultural, and vocational—into
one unified servant of the State, in accordance with Edmund Burke's noble
conception of the relation between the State and the University as "a
partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every
virtue and in all perfection, and, since such a partnership cannot be attained
in one generation, a partnership between all those who are living and those
who are dead and those who are unborn." As a Watch-tower, it shall stand
upon its hill and strive to discern and comprehend the flow of life about
its base, so that it may furnish, through trained leadership, technical
guidance, liberal direction, and spiritual power to that life. As an Altar
and a Home, seated amid classical and peaceful scenes, where friendships
are made and convictions formed and youth emerges through self-expression
into manhood, it will contrive to distill an atmosphere to
which the creators of the new civilization may repair for quiet standards
of straight thinking, good taste, Christian living, clean honor, and
fidelity to trust. As a Lighthouse, it shall rise above the tempests of
the times, a beacon to those who voyage in darkness, a shelter to those
who have found the light, a luminous guide to juster and wiser paths of
action and life.

And now, finally, young gentlemen of the Class of 1921, may I recall to

you that you are in a very real sense a most fortunate group. You entered
here as a class when the University was a military camp, organized to train
you to become soldiers of your country then engaged in a great war in defense
of liberty and public right. You have served under the flag of
your country by land and sea and in the air. You reach your collegiate
climax amid the big emotions, tender memories, and high hopes of this
Centennial festival, and you pass out into a world sadly out of joint and
calling for brave and capable men to set it straight. I believe you are
men of such quality. I bear testimony that you have borne yourselves
handsomely in this University world. You are to take your part in your
country's life in a period of world-wide dramatic unrest, of definite conflict
between the old American individualism and the demands of new social
and industrial organization. To do your part well will test you to the utmost
in mind and character. The spirit of youth is the salvation of society.
Your University has affection for you and faith in you.

ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNIVERSITY

One year ago the alumni of this University conceived the plan of presenting
to their Alma Mater, on her One Hundredth Birthday, a gift expressive
of their faith and gratitude. On March 7th, after wise organization,
the movement was launched to realize this purpose. I need not
remind this company that this has been a period of unusual depression
in the world of business. I hold in my hand a statement authorized
by John Stewart Bryan and Frederic William Scott, Joint Chairmen of
the Centennial Endowment Fund, and prepared by Armistead Mason
Dobie, Executive Director of the Fund, formally presenting this gift to
the University of Virginia, and informing me that its total amounts, to
date, to $1,300,000.

In behalf of the Governing Bodies and the Faculties of the University,
I accept this handsome gift of her loyal sons, of two great foundations—the
Carnegie Corporation and the General Education Board—and of wise
patriotic citizens of this State and nation who were not trained here, but
who believe it to be for the public good that Jefferson's University should be
properly equipped to face the demands of the new century. The gratitude

Old Alumni in Procession (Class of '61)

and appreciation of this University goes out in full measure to every subscriber
to this fund.

I have mentioned Messrs. John Stewart Bryan and Frederic William
Scott, the Chairmen of the Fund, who have given of their best strength and
substance to this movement. I take leave to mention again with gratitude
the name of the Executive Director, Armistead Mason Dobie, who has given
to this work for one year his ability, energy, and devotion, without stint.
I cannot pass by the names of Lewis Crenshaw who has devoted his strength
to Alumni service and Charles A. McKeand, who has served so ably as
Executive Secretary. I wish time was afforded me to call the roll of the
faithful regional chairmen and indeed the whole list of subscribers—alumni
and non-alumni. Suffice it to say that their names will find place in our
history and in our hearts, and we shall not forget them. Such manifestations
of public spirit are rare in the lives of state universities. It is the
State's business to maintain and develop its own University. If it seemed
proper after a century of service that the privilege of giving to this faithful
agent of society should be afforded to good citizens and loyal sons everywhere,
it was not intended to relieve the Commonwealth of Virginia of the
primary duty and responsibility of maintaining adequately an institution
which it brought into life and which exists to serve its people. In recent
years, the State has greatly increased its appropriations to higher education
and under circumstances of great difficulty. May this example of general
public appreciation incite Virginia to still more adequate treatment of its
chiefest public servant!

It is my pleasure to announce further, as an independent gift to the
University of Virginia, the sum of $200,000, for the distinct purpose of establishing,
on the basis now existing, a Department of Commerce and Finance
in this University. This contribution is the gift of a great citizen and
far-seeing student of social affairs in his own State and the nation—Paul
Goodloe McIntire.

Mr. McIntire has already enrolled himself among the great benefactors
of the University—indeed the very greatest in its history—and of this community
in so distinguished a way as to make it difficult to add new appreciation
to his services. In the School of Fine Arts, bearing his name, he has
sought to care for the spiritual and cultural aspects of life. In this new
department, he seeks to care in a high way for training in the great
field which develops trade and commerce and material prosperity.
The South has furnished more than its share of great soldiers, statesmen
and lawyers. It is his belief that we must now prepare to train
great business men for the important services of trade and commerce.
The University repeats its former expressions of gratitude to this wise
helper of men.

ADDRESSES AT DEPARTMENTAL ALUMNI CONFERENCES

I. The Clerical Alumni

RELIGIOUS MINISTRATIONS IN STATE UNIVERSITIES BY DENOMINATIONAL
AGENCIES

By Rev. Beverley D. Tucker, Jr., D.D., of the Episcopal Theological Seminary,
Alexandria, Va.

The opportunity for service which the State universities offer to the
Church is one that has been largely neglected in the past. The older universities
and colleges in America were established under definitely religious
auspices, and long after the rise of the State university the various Christian
communions tended to limit their sense of responsibility to those
educational institutions, which bore the imprimatur of their respective
denominations.

Moreover, with the principle of the separation of Church and State
fundamental in our national constitution, the problem of how the Church
may wisely minister in a State university is a delicate and complicated one.
The utmost care has to be exercised to avoid denominational prejudices—
no system will be tolerated in which the privileges are not theoretically equal
for members of every religious affiliation. As a corollary of this principle of
religious freedom, the system adopted should not involve any form of coercion;
attendance upon religious exercises must needs be voluntary.

Dr. Philip A. Bruce has recently described at length (in his History of
the University of Virginia) the extreme caution which Jefferson observed in
eliminating every trace of denominational influence in the formative period
of the University of Virginia's life. So scrupulous was he to enforce his
fundamental principle that "education and sectarianism must be divorced,"
that in his original plan for the University, states Dr. Bruce, he made no
real concession to religious feeling beyond providing a room in the Rotunda
for religious worship.

As religion, however, is an irrepressible factor in human life, the demand
that the University should be other than neutral in religious expression
soon made itself felt. The first proposal to make good this deficiency was
put forward by Jefferson himself. The proposal was that each of the principal
denominations should establish its own theological school just without
the confines of the institution. Thereby would have been established a
natural liaison between the secular education of the State and the religious
education of the Christian communions. One can only voice the regret that
the leaders of the Church in that day had not the vision to carry out the
proposal. Through such an arrangement mutual confidence and respect
might have been the resulting relationship between the religious and educational

forces of the State rather than the suspicion and misunderstanding
that has too frequently characterized their mutual attitude.

While this opportunity for coöperation between the University and the
Church on a large scale was not taken, yet the demand for some religious
expression in the life of the faculty and students soon received a modified
provision. As early as 1829 a plan of engaging the services of a chaplain
was undertaken by those interested. The support was arranged by voluntary
subscriptions, and the chaplain elected, in rotation, from the leading
denominations of the State. This plan continued in operation, in one form
or another, until 1896. For a portion of this period regular religious services
were held in one of the University halls set apart for that purpose; later, a
chapel was built on the ground, the funds for the purpose being contributed,
not by the State, but by friends and alumni of the institution.

From 1896 until 1917 the plan was adopted of inviting distinguished
clergymen from the various denominations to conduct religious services in
the Chapel as a substitute for the earlier plan of having a resident chaplain.
The Young Men's Christian Association, through its general secretary,
stood sponsor for the plan and, in addition to the Sunday services, made
provision for Bible study groups and fostered opportunities for social service.

Theoretically there is much to be said for each of these plans. Their
primary motive was to furnish a method of religious cooperation, which
would be interdenominational in character. Practically neither method
proved an adequate solution of the real situation. The latter plan lacked
continuity both in the personality of the leader and in the mode of worship.
Both plans failed to furnish any definite connection with the previous religious
training of the students or to make any positive preparation for the
church life, to which the student might go after leaving the University.

In 1917, the Faculty Committee on Religious Exercises decided to discontinue
the chapel services and to make an appeal, through the Charlottesville
Ministerial Association, to the various religious denominations to assume
a more definite oversight of their adherents at the University. The
immediate occasion for taking this step was the general upheaval at the
University owing to war conditions, but the committee frankly recognized
that the chapel system had served its day and had become a burden to be
borne rather than a stimulus to the religious life of the University. While
such a system might supplement, it could not serve as a substitute for the
organized ministrations of the various communions. Moreover, this appeal
to the Church as such to assume the leadership in providing religious opportunities
for the members of the University was in line with Jefferson's
original policy, namely, of making no provision for theological education in
the University curriculum and proposing that the various denominations
should establish their divinity schools in the university neighborhood.

As early as 1910, the Episcopal Church had taken a positive step in this
direction. Recognizing the inadequacy of the university chapel system in
providing pastoral oversight and cultivating church loyalty; recognizing,
furthermore, the practical difficulty of adding the pastoral care of the Episcopal
students at the University to the extensive parochial duties of the
rector of the local church in Charlottesville, the Diocese of Virginia has
organized a parish, with its own rector, in the University community, for
the avowed purpose of ministering to its adherents among the students and
faculty. An excellent building site has been purchased and a temporary
chapel erected, where for the past ten years regular services have been held.
The plans provide for the building of a permanent church as soon as the
funds are available.

While a local congregation, over and above the student and faculty
members, has come into being, yet the work is regarded in the nature of a
diocesan responsibility. The bishop has authority to insure the selection
of a clergyman who is qualified to be a helpful pastor and preacher to a
student community, and the diocese assumes the obligation of assisting the
local congregation in the financial outlay for building and retaining such a
church.

An alternative to this plan, and one that is being tried in many State
universities, would be to add to the staff of the local congregation a student
pastor, who will serve the university community and foster the affiliation of
the students with the Charlottesville church of their respective denominations.

The fundamental principle to be observed in both of these plans is this,
that the State University, where our young men and women gather from
many parts of the country at a critical stage in their intellectual and spiritual
development, should be regarded as a special field of service by the
Church. It requires an oversight more definite than a collegiate chapel
system can furnish. It calls for leaders, who are especially qualified and
trained for work among students; for leaders, moreover, who can give their
whole time and thought to the moral and religious life of the university
community; and is a work of too great importance to be tacked on as an
incident of the busy life of a local rector or pastor.

In this day when the outlook for Christian unity seems more hopeful
and encouraging than in the past, the system outlined above may seem to
imply a backward step, a building higher the walls of partition. Personally,
I should conceive it as a step forward in the direction of Christian
unity. The colorless, vague religion of a college chapel makes not for
religious unity but for religious negation. I have greater confidence in the
fact that a group of broad-minded student pastors, working together for the
moral and spiritual life of the University, will do far more to create that

attitude of mutual trust and tolerance, which is the first step toward cooperation
and unity. The problems confronting the different college pastors
would be much the same. Through conference and through combined efforts
in service extension and Bible study there will be many natural opportunities
for fellowship in the Christian life. Unless our ideal is for a dead uniformity
rather than for a lively unity, I have greater hope of Christian unity
in the direction of positive loyalties than of amiable negations.

Abstract of an Address by Rev. Samuel Chiles Mitchell, Ph.D., LL.D., of the University
of Richmond

In addition to the plans of the preceding speaker, the only suggestion
I can make is that the various denominations coöperate with the Young
Men's Christian Association in the maintenance of a University Preacher
on permanent tenure. In this way I believe a man on the order of Phillips
Brooks could be secured, who would give his whole strength and time to the
religious life of the University. Such a man as Bishop McDowell, or Dr.
Gilkie, or Dr. Jowett would make a lasting impression upon the University
community by his continuous presence and by his messages, springing out
of the changing needs of the student body.

The advantages of a permanent tenure over the chaplaincy for two
years, which was the custom in my student days here, and over the place of
having different visiting ministers from Sunday to Sunday, are apparent.
By permanency of office you can get a really great personality whose voice
will command attention everywhere. His interpretation of the spiritual life
will be progressive in spirit and cumulative in effect. He will enter sympathetically
into the life of the individual student as well as reënforce the religious
purposes of the University community as a whole.

In Madison Hall we have an agency with which the denominations
can work to this end. Whatever might be lost to specifically denominational
interests by this plan, would in my opinion be more than made up by
the emphasis upon the essentials of Christianity which such a preacher would
give, thus enriching religious life and truth for all through the University.

HOW MAY RELIGIOUS CULTURE BE GIVEN TO THE STATE UNIVERSITY
COMMUNITY?

By Rev. Thomas Cary Johnson, D.D., LL.D., of the Union Theological Seminary, Richmond,
Va.

The subject as assigned—"Religious Culture in State Universities by
Denominational Agencies" suggests several theses which hardly require
discussion in this body, to wit:

First: The university community should have religious culture.

There may be small groups of people here and there which would
dispute this thesis; but it may be asserted safely that the vast majority of
thoughtful people the world over would maintain that the university community,
as certainly as it is included within the grade of rational and
responsible agents and as certainly as it is to exercise an indefinitely large
influence for weal or woe on the rest of the State, should have religious culture.
It may be even more boldly assumed, also, that this body of "clerical
alumni" would consider it worse than a waste of time—an impertinence,
indeed—to set about proving on this occasion, the truth of a thesis which
our very calling proclaims that we hold—a thesis which we can deny only on
pain of professing ourselves to be hypocrites.

Second: The State University in these United States of America cannot
of itself give an adequate religious culture.

Men are found to say: "If theism be true and discovered, and if its
teaching be necessary to the stability of the State, the State may teach it."
Granted for the sake of argument; yet we all say that bare theism—the
doctrine of a personal God, the Creator and Moral Governor of the Universe
—is inadequate religious culture; and for adequate religious teaching the
State has neither warrant nor fitness—no warrant, its constitution gives
none; no fitness through possession of an adequate religious creed, or of a
holy character. So far is it from possessing an adequate creed which it may
teach, its sovereign people hold some of them one thing and some of them
the contradictory thereto. Nor has the State the holiness of character to be
desired in a teacher of religion. The State as represented by its government,
and as represented by the Board of Regents of the University, may be
pious in one era and impious in the next. The State has no fitness, as no
commission, to teach any other religion than bare theism, if to teach that;
and its attempting to do so would be an impious assumption.

Good Americans and good Virginians, it is taken for granted that we all
agree that the State must not attempt to give an adequate religious culture,
and that the State University—an organ of the State—should not attempt it.

Third: That religious denomination which possesses in its creed the
largest amount of cardinal religious truth, is, other things being equal, under
the weightiest obligation to attempt to give religious culture to the university
community. The knowledge of religious truth—the truth about God,
about man's relations to Him and man's duties to Him and to His creatures
—the grasp of the eternal realities—is a possession, a leverage for uplift,
which any true ethics urges him, who has it, to give to his fellows. That
religious denomination, therefore, which claims the largest possession of
religious truth, virtually avows, in the claim, its obligation, circumstances
permitting, to impart that truth to all men; and, in particular, to impart

it, as speedily as possible, to any body of men destined to be as influential
on other men as the university community.

In the present point it is not ours to determine which of the denominations
has most of religious truth and largest ability to impart it. We are
concerned with the principle that largest possession of truth and of power
to put others in possession of it carries the weightiest responsibility to do the
service.

Fourth: Other religious denominations are under obligation to take a
hand in the religious culture of the university community proportioned to
the truth of their teachings and their ability, through holiness of life and
favoring Providence, to put their teachings across. This will hardly be
denied. It cannot be denied consistently by any Christian denomination,
for Christ commissioned his disciples to evangelize every creature and to
disciple all nations.

If the foregoing propositions be accepted as true, we may properly
confine ourselves to suggesting and discussing answers to the question:

How may religious culture be given to State university communities by
Denominational Agencies?

It is conceded that this is not the exact form of the subject set us; but
it is, at the same time, believed that an effectual plan by which the Denominations
can give to the university community religious culture is what is
sought after.

To the present speaker the following seems a practicable plan: Let a
denomination conscious of the possession of priceless religious truth and
conscious of ability to do such service, under the good hand of God, to the
university community, acquire a convenient plot of ground, erect on it a
building containing an auditorium, lecture-rooms, classrooms, reading-rooms,
a room for a specially selected library of the standard religious
literature of the ages—a building for a church of the institutional type in
short; let it endow this Church with such liberality that for it can be commanded
a man of singular abilities as pastor, preacher and lecturer and
teacher. Let him have such helpers as necessity shall dictate. Let him, in
addition to preaching on the Lord's day, and looking after (as a faithful
pastor) his whole contingent in the university community, plan and conduct
a course of study in religion which shall be as effective in disciplining or
informing, or in both disciplining and informing, the mind, as any course
of the same number of hours in the university curricula so that, if the
university pleases, the successful completion of this course may be rewarded
by a credit equalling that received for any elective university course of no
greater number of hours.

Such a plan, if put into operation by any given denomination, would
insure the pastoral oversight of the student and faculty members of the

university community of that denomination; would secure preaching of the
type of doctrine peculiar to the denomination. Those two functions, if ably
performed, would affect the life of the whole community to a degree. And
the special course, taught with vigor, ability and learning, would produce a
more intense effect on the class.

Suppose four denominations had such material plants established and
ably manned, the university community would be affected in no small
degree.

The university would be made a place of larger privilege, its cultural
opportunities would be enlarged as by the establishment of a new chair; and
the character of the whole body morally invigorated and ennobled.

It should not be difficult to secure plants and endowments. There must
be men, in each of the great denominations who would at once see the limitless
importance of bringing such influence to bear on the university community,
and, through the outgoing students, upon the world—men ready to
establish just such foundations as we have described.

Look them out, gentlemen; invite them to make religious culture by the
denomination they love best and respect most a certainty in this city set on a
hill, that the pathway of our future leaders may be lighted not only to true
greatness in this life but to God and blessed communion with Him in the life
beyond.

RELIGIOUS CULTURE IN STATE UNIVERSITIES

By Rev. Byrdine A. Abbott, Editor The Christian Evangelist, St. Louis, Mo

The poet Tennyson in the first part of his immortal elegy on the death of
his college friend, Arthur Hallam, breathes a prayer which might fittingly be
used as the daily litany of both minister and teacher, for it states the whole
case of the true relation of learning and religion. He sings:

True religion includes real education and genuine education must
eventually lead to true religion.

On the recent foundation of the university for the natives of South
Africa the Government declared, according to the British Weekly, that to
educate them without religion would be to raise up a nation of devils.

To educate Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans or any other people
without religion would produce the same result.

The deepest thinkers of our day have come to see the evils of a purely

materialistic education. It makes the world merely a huge machine that
grinds up men and women, soul and body.

The idea is brilliantly expressed by Paul Elmer More in his latest
volume of the Shelburne Essays. He says:

A demon at the wheel of the ship, or in the cab of the engine, or admitted
into life in the formative hours of youth is scarcely more to be feared
than a conscienceless man in possession of the secrets of chemistry, electricity,
government, commerce, or war, or in charge of the ordinary machinery
of society.

These things have filled the modern father and mother with almost a
poignant anxiety as they have seen their sons and daughters go forth to the
great universities with their brilliant and sometimes fierce intellectual lights.

This fear has made it easy for the ill-informed and the mischief-maker to
create prejudice and make cleavage between the church and the university.
To continue this and allow it to grow would result in calamity to civilization.

It would be possible to overcome this problem in the independent
universities by ordinary processes of influence, but the State universities
present greater obstacles, owing to the separation of Church and State in
this country. The church college will afford some relief. Through it the
student may be so thoroughly trained that he will need no special religious
opportunity after getting to the university. It would be possible to make
out a strong case for the position that a student ought not to be admitted to
the State university unless he had had training in a church school of worthy,
educational standards. Plainly, however, this course would be found
impracticable because the State universities will always grow greater and
stronger and more students, rather than fewer, will attend them directly
from the public schools.

It is left to the churches, then, to find a way to follow their young people
to the State universities and throw about them such influences, put before
them such opportunities, and lay upon them such obligations, that in pursuit
of the knowledge and training requisite to their aims in life they will not
surrender the mastership of the soul nor abandon the conviction of the
reality and greatness of God nor of the supreme value of things eternal.
But that the student may keep his spiritual vantage ground the church must

follow him to the classroom, the campus and the dormitory of the university
as far as possible.

It is now twenty-eight years since the Disciples of Christ, the body of
Christians with whom I am identified, took definite steps to supply this
urgent demand. Through the Christian Woman's Board of Missions, an
organization which recently became merged into the United Christian
Missionary Society, it was determined to institute Bible Chairs at such
universities as would receive them, even if only on toleration first. And it
may have been that on their first advent they were very narrowly watched.
They might contain possibilities of annoyance and a certain kind of trouble
even if not of mischief. They might be crusaders of proselyting, they might
stir up friction between the adherents of different denominations, they might
introduce quite an unhealthy emotionalism or at least encourage an unscientific
approach to learning and to life. If there was such cautionary bias
it was unnecessary, for the Bible Chair at the university has proved its value
in many ways.

The Chancellor of the University of Kansas said, referring to one of
these institutions: "The Bible Chair is a real factor in the religious life of
the university, and I desire that its influence increase."

My people are now supporting such chairs at the State universities of
Michigan, Texas, Virginia and Kansas. In addition we have The Bible
College of Missouri, which is operated in its own building at the University
of Missouri, the "Indiana School of Religion" at the University of Indiana,
the Eugene Bible College at the seat of the University of Oregon, and at the
present time, buildings are in course of erection for the "California School of
Religion" in Los Angeles, just across the street from the University of
Southern California. The initial amount of money raised for the "California
School of Christianity" was $800,000 which will be quickly increased
to $1,000,000 and added to thereafter until the school has satisfactory
support.

In addition to these schools and chairs we support student pastors at
Purdue University, the University of Illinois and the University of Washington.
It is their duty especially to establish confidence and form pastoral
connection with our own young people and also to render such Christian
service generally as may be considered proper in the student body at large.

These schools, Bible Chairs, and pastors give fine opportunity for religious
contact with, and training of the young people and they are doing much
to achieve the ends sought by their establishment.

Of course they are absolutely non-sectarian and the Bible Chairs and
schools do not presume to offer courses of study sufficient in themselves to
equip men and women for the pulpit or the mission field. But they bear
witness to the part religion must have in a well-rounded and fully girded life.

They help to create an atmosphere which permeates the entire school and
makes teaching easier and more delightful. They make a moral and
spiritual appeal and, because the big men of the universities like to have them
there, they gain respect from even those who do not patronize them. "The
Bible Chair building itself is a protest against the scientific materialism of
the campus, and stands a silent but impressive reminder that there is a God
of truth and that all truth, both scientific and religious is His truth."

While we do not presume that other and better ways of spiritual
culture for the young people in the State Universities are impossible, we are
happy in what has been achieved in that respect and we hope to increase
the value and number of these agencies in keeping regnant the soul life of the
students destined to become the makers of all the to-morrows.

II. The Law Alumni

THE LAW SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

By William Minor Lile, LL.B., LL.D.
Dean of the Department of Law

In the University catalogue of 1849-50 there appeared the following
announcement: "The year 1850 being the twenty-fifth since the organization
of the University, the ceremonies, it is expected, will be of more than
common interest, and an unusually large concourse of alumni and friends of
the institution will probably assemble on this solemn occasion." History
does not record how solemn the occasion proved to be. But as it occurred
before the adoption of the XVIII Amendment, and during a lull in the city
of Richmond's clamor for at least a portion of the University, we are entitled
to wonder why the catalogue-man anticipated an event of such solemnity.

Nothing appears in the program for this Centennial Year likely to lead
your thoughts along funereal lines, unless it be the announcement that you
are to be addressed, at this solemn hour of three o'clock, on a sultry summer
afternoon, and on a topic that one would not voluntarily select for a holiday
diversion. By the time, therefore, that the present exercises are concluded
possibly you may agree that in one feature at least we have matched the
forecast of the reunion of 1850.

The privilege of welcoming so large a body of the sons of the Law
School—the largest number ever assembled within our walls—is the most
grateful of the many happy experiences of my twenty-eight years of life as a
law teacher.

Responsive to the official writ, you have come from the seven seas and
all the remote parts adjacent thereto—and on behalf of my colleagues and

myself I bid you a right royal welcome. If you will present your writs, in
person or by mail, I shall be glad to endorse a proper discharge thereon.

Some of you hold diplomas antedating my own; others were my contemporaries
in the Law School; while still others represent that interesting
interval when your speaker was performing, in a neighboring bailiwick, those
marvelous professional stunts with which every student since 1893 is familiar.
But I note with special interest, and with a kindling heart, that the
larger number of those before me are my own sons in the Law, to whom it
is indeed an honored privilege to extend a father's greeting.

No daughters have as yet graced the family circle, but they are well on
the way, and perhaps our next family reunion will be graced by many sisters
and daughters—fair Portias, "fresh from brawling courts and dusty purlieus
of the law."

The lives of the law teacher and the practitioner, are in strong contrast.
The essential qualities and aims of the two, in some respects similar, are, on
the whole, widely different. The practitioner spends most of his life as a
partisan, in the endeavor, not to ascertain what sound principle is applicable
to a given state of facts, with the reason upon which it rests, but by astute
argument to qualify or distinguish the basic principle to suit some special
case in hand. He has studied disconnected propositions of a particular
topic as applicable to some narrow state of facts, rather than the field of the
topic in its entirety, or with attention to the relation of one branch of it with
another. He conceives of the law not so much as a science as a collection of
isolated rules; and he has less concern whether his contentions be sound or
unsound than whether he can establish them in a given case.

The teacher, on the other hand, must work out his subject in its entirety
and with judicial poise reach his conclusions regardless of consequences.
He must seek the truth and that only. He does not deal with concrete facts,
nor with living personalities. John Doe and Richard Roe constitute his
clientele, and Blackacre and Whiteacre his horizon. For him the fine points
must give away to broad and basic principles—and kindred but disjointed
propositions must be brought together and correlated. Day after day he
speaks to the same uncritical, and often uncaring, audience, on the same
subject—to be repeated year after year, with a new but equally apathetic
assembly. The teacher participates in no warm contests on the hustings or
at the bar. For him there is no gaudium certaminis. He wins no victories
to kindle his enthusiasm, and loses no cases to teach him his errors. His
compensation is the same whether he works or plays. And to whatever
heights he may attain in his profession, the stipend of his earlier days, pitiful
enough even at that stage of his career, tends to remain as static as the
countenance of the Sphinx. One annual joy, however, is his—he is able to

A Writ of Summons

twirl his thumbs in defiance of the income tax collector, and he hoards no
surplus wealth to tempt him to invest in forbidden commodities. He leads
a sort of monastic existence, apart from the madding crowd. The newspapers
do not report his lectures, howsoever learned—or howsoever illumined
by recitals of his own prowess at the bar, or by anecdotes, culled from
his well-thumbed repertory.

The consequence is, that the law teacher finds that his most difficult
task is the maintenance of that enthusiasm for his work, without which he
is a mere wooden man on the rostrum. A burning zeal is the one essential
of the teacher as it is of the advocate. But the keen enthusiasm of the latter
needs no conscious effort to quicken or sustain it. The flame of his passion
keeps pace with his professional growth, and is the natural outcome of his
daily routine. On the other hand, from causes mentioned, it is only by constant
and persistent effort of his own, with rare aid from without, that the
teacher may hope to emulate the zeal that inspires his brothers of the bar.
He may not enthuse to-day and brood to-morrow. Six days out of the seven
he must stand upon his retired rostrum, aloof from his fellows, and do his
task with a glad heart and a joyous countenance.

If this comparison has created the impression on your minds that my
colleagues and I are unhappy in our roles, and are disposed to complain of
our tasks, you have misunderstood me. On the contrary, not one of us would
exchange places with you; for in the quiet of our academic shades we find
much to compensate us, and to teach us that even the life of a law professor
is well worth the living. Our interest in and close association with the fine
body of youth that with each recurrent season gathers within our walls—
in my opinion the finest assembly of young American manhood to be found
in the college world—blinds us to the truth that our tethers are limited and
grow shorter with the passing years, and depicts life to us in somewhat the
same roseate hue as our young scholars see it.

Nor must you alumni of the Law School forget that howsoever high
the places you occupy at the bar or on the bench, in the depths of our own
hearts we claim something of the credit. You and the best of you are but
our creations! No—we have not grown weary of our tasks, and an army
with banners could scarcely drive us from our places!

I have thus momentarily drawn aside the curtain, and given you a
glance at the inner life of the law teacher. This, for the possible interest
that you might find in this glimpse of precincts removed from common observation,
but chiefly that you might understand the depth of the welcome
already extended to you. You cannot know what a delight—what a genuine
inspiration—it is to us to greet you here, at any time, singly or in groups, but

especially on this our Centennial Anniversary. You could not know, except
from my telling of it, how hard it is for us to keep our enthusiasm alive.
Your presence here—this renewed intercourse after the lapse of the years—
your gracious greetings—the records that you have made as sons of the Law
School, standing out in plainer colors now that we see you face to face—
have given to each of us of the teaching staff a new spirit for our duties, and
a renewed ambition to deserve our places as teachers in the Law School,
and to justify your continued confidence.

It has seemed to me that it might not be inappropriate on an occasion
such as this, which comes but once in a hundred years, briefly to rehearse to
you something of the history of the Law School, with very cursory mention
of those faithful men who, standing in our places, gave of their strength for
its upbuilding, and directed its policies in the earlier days.

It has been well said that institutions are the antitheses of men who
erect them. The former, properly nourished, escape the infirmities of age,
and grow stronger as their years increase. Such has been the history of the
Law School. At the close of its century of life, it finds itself the fruitful
mother of many devoted sons—their numbers increasing with the passing
of the years, and her powers of reproducing and nourishing her offspring
responding to the ever increasing demand.

Though the charter of the University was granted in 1819, it was not
until 1826 that the Law School was opened to students. At this period there
were few law schools in the country, and few or none had attracted many
students to their halls, or gained the confidence of the legal profession in
their methods and results. "Reading law" in the office of an experienced
practitioner was thought a more beneficial course of preparation for the bar
than that offered by the law school. The law office, rather than the law
school, was, therefore, the center of legal education. Nor was there any
American precedent for a law school erected, supported and governed by the
State.

Mr. Jefferson himself had received his legal training under Chancellor
Wythe, next to Marshall the most distinguished jurist that Virginia, or
indeed, America, had then, or has since, produced. Our Founder had also,
as a member of the Board of Visitors of William and Mary, had a part in
establishing the law school of William and Mary with Chancellor Wythe as
professor, and therefore appreciated the value of a law school training.

It may be assumed that his main purpose in establishing a chair of law
in the State University was to afford facilities for legal training, superior to
the office method. But it was in keeping with Mr. Jefferson's character and
temperament to hope that through the instrumentality of the Law School, in
addition to the technical training of candidates for the bar, a sound (i. e.,

a Jeffersonian) political philosophy might be disseminated among the rising
generation of the South. Thus we find him writing to James Madison, in
February, 1826:

How far short of the Founder's hope, as thus expressed, the Law School
fell, may be inferred from the circumstance that Robert Toombs, of Georgia,
and Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, were both its products.

The first professor of law was John Tayloe Lomax, of Fredericksburg—
Francis Walker Gilmer, originally chosen, having been prevented by ill
health, followed shortly afterwards by death, from entering upon the duties
of the chair. After Gilmer's death, the position, along with the presidency
of the University, was offered to William Wirt, but the offer was declined.
The course covered but a single year. The textbooks used were (Mr.
Jefferson's advice notwithstanding) Blackstone's Commentaries; Cruise's
Law of Real Property; Selwyn's Abstract of the Law of Nisi Prius; and Maddock's
Chancery.

The complaint of insufficient salaries at the University, now so vociferous,
appears to be but a prolonged echo from those early days—as Lomax
resigned after four years of cultivating the law "on a little oatmeal," to
accept a circuit judgeship, which offered a larger compensation. To those
familiar with the history of the salaries of circuit judges in Virginia, res ipsa
loquitur.

Lomax was succeeded in 1830 by John A. G. Davis, grandfather of
John Staige Davis now of the Medical Faculty. Professor Davis held the
chair until 1840, when he was killed by a riotous student. For the single
year following, the chair was filled by the temporary appointment of N. P.
Howard. In 1841, Henry St. George Tucker, who had been President of the

Virginia Court of Appeals, a position which he had filled with singular distinction,
was appointed as Davis's successor—resigning from ill health, four
years later. In this brief period, however, he left the indelible impress of his
genius, and builded better than he knew, in establishing the Honor System,
of which he was the moving spirit—the most splendid inheritance that Virginia's
University possesses to-day. Tucker was succeeded by John B.
Minor, whose remarkable career, as teacher and author, is familiar not only
to hundreds of those still living who had the good fortune to sit at his feet,
but to the present generation of lawyers throughout the country.

Professor Minor held the chair for fifty years—1845-1895—and gave a
prestige to the Law School which made it nationally famous. The tone with
which he endowed it, the standards that he set for it, the devoted spirit that
he exemplified toward it, have been the inspiration and the goal of his successors.

In 1851, the Department of Law, then known as the "School" of Law—
in accordance with the then general plan of designating each of the several
subjects in the University curriculum as a "school"—was divided into two
schools, a second chair was created, and James P. Holcombe became adjunct
professor—promoted to full professor in 1854. Holcombe resigned in 1861,
on the outbreak of the Civil War, to become a member of the Confederate
Congress. After the Civil War, Stephen O. Southall succeeded to Holcombe's
chair, and on his death in 1883, James H. Gilmore was named as
his successor, resigning in 1897.

In 1893, chiefly with the purpose of relieving Professor Minor of the
heavy burden which for 50 years he had borne with never-flagging zeal and
tenacity, but which had become too onerous for his advanced years, William
Minor Lile was added to the teaching staff as a full professor, and the work
of the law school was equally divided among these three—Minor, Gilmore
and Lile. The work assigned to the new incumbent was taken in equal
proportions from that of the two existing chairs. This division left Professor
Minor with but two subjects, Real Property and Pleading and Practice
at Law (volumes II and IV of his famous Institutes). To ease this
burden, still further, his son, now Professor Raleigh Colston Minor, was
named as his Assistant. The son took over the Pleading and Practice, leaving
to Professor Minor, for the last two years of his life, the single subject
of Real Property, with two lecture periods a week. Those who remember
the strong will and self-sacrificing spirit of the great teacher, need not be
told that this effort to ease his latter days was not without passionate protest
from him.

Following Professor Minor's death, in 1895, Walter D. Dabney was
appointed full professor, with Professor Raleigh C. Minor as Adjunct,—
Professor Dabney succeeding to the course in Pleading and Practice, and

Adjunct Professor Minor to that in Real Property—and to these two were
assigned other courses added to the curriculum in 1895, coincident with the
extension of the course from one to two years.

On Professor Dabney's untimely death in 1899, Professor Charles A.
Graves, of Washington and Lee University, was appointed his successor.

The inception of the three years' course, in 1909-10, called for an enlargement
of the teaching staff—now composed of Professors Lile, Graves, Minor,
Armistead M. Dobie and George B. Eager, both of the latter graduates of
the Law School.

The appointment of Edwin A. Alderman as first President of the University,
in 1904, was followed by a complete reorganization of the several
departments, and the erection of minor faculties—each department presided
over by a dean. This office in the Law School has been held by Professor
Lile since that date.

The session of 1826 opened with 26 students. The average attendance
down to the outbreak of the Civil War was approximately 60. During the
four years of the Civil War, 31 students were enrolled. For the period between
the close of the Civil War and 1895, the approximate average per
session was 110. Since then, the enrollment has steadily increased year by
year. For the present session, the number of matriculates is 310, from 30
states.

Originally there were no prescribed entrance requirements, and the
minimum age for admission of students to any department of the University
was sixteen years. While graduation in Law was provided for, no degree
appears to have been offered until 1842, during the régime of Professor
Tucker. From 1842-1865, the catalogue designates the title of the degree
as Bachelor of "Laws"; but, beginning with 1865, the term Bachelor of
"Law" appears;—the plural designation re-appeared in 1905, and is still
retained. It was also during Professor Tucker's incumbency that a short-lived
statute, admitting graduates of the Law School to practice without the
necessity of a license from the judges, was enacted. This statute was repealed
in the Code Revisal of 1849. Tradition accredits the repeal to the
insistence of Professor Minor, who preferred that his students should pass
the same examination for admission to the bar as was required of other
candidates. The wisdom of this policy has been vindicated by its quite
general acceptance by the profession, and particularly by the standard law
schools of the country. Knowledge on the part of the teacher that the
results of his instruction are to be submitted to the acid test of the bar
examiners, who are in daily touch with the law in its most concrete form, is a
manifest incentive to the teacher, and a safeguard against loose pedagogical
methods and practices.

The important part that the Law School has played in the University
itself is indicated in the circumstance that out of 5571 degrees conferred by
all the departments since organization, 2051 have been degrees from the
Law School—or 37% of the total.

The Law School has never been, like the average state law school, a
merely local one, for the production of local lawyers—but from earliest days
has drawn its patronage from all parts of the United States. It has educated
thousands of young men for the legal profession. The very large
number of these who have occupied the highest places in the states and
nation, has illustrated the fine quality of the spirit that the School inspires,
and the soundness of the instruction that it affords.

When the information first came to your ears a year ago that we were
preparing to open the doors of Jefferson's masculine University to women—
and admitting them even within the sacred precincts of the Law School—
you doubtless wondered why, and recorded your mental, if not written,
protest. But it has been done—not because we of the Law School believed
the law a fit profession for the mothers of the coming generations, but for
the same reason that the gods gave the frogs a king—they clamored (I dare
not say croaked) for it so vociferously. Voters as they now are (the women,
not the frogs), their insistence and persistence—their crying aloud night and
day without surcease—their strident threats of forcing their way in by the
legislative door, and therefore on their own terms—convinced us that discretion
was the better part of valor. We surrendered on very honorable
terms, magnanimously dictated by ourselves. These terms are that the
woman applicant for admission to the law school shall be twenty years of age,
and the holder of a baccalaureate degree—or else twenty-two years of age and
having completed two years of standard college work. These requirements
are thought sufficient to secure proper maturity of mind and manners, and
the desired seriousness of purpose—and to exclude the airyfairy Lilians as
a disturbing element in our peculiarly and traditionally virile surroundings.

Those of you whose college careers antedate modern entrance requirements,
may be interested in the announcement that, at present, candidates
for admission to the Law School must have completed one year of college
work, in addition to graduation from a high school—and that with the
session of 1922-1923, an additional year of college work will be required.
This may mean that in the course of a few years the entrance standard will
be raised to the requirement of a baccalaureate degree. The existing entrance
requirements at Virginia are considerably short of the standard
exacted by the best professional and pedagogical thought of the country,
and we are already lagging behind most of the standard law schools in this

respect. A number of these already require a baccalaureate degree or its
equivalent. My own experience of twenty-eight years as a law teacher
convinces me that in keeping down our entrance standards at Virginia, we
have unwittingly done great injustice to the youth of the South, and through
them to the legal profession. My observation is that the average youth
contemplating the study of law, or of any other profession, will be content to
enter upon his professional studies with the minimum of preparation required
by the school of his choice. He is not to blame for assuming that
the wise heads who admit him to the Law School with merely a high school
preparation, are expressing to him the opinion that no further preparation is
necesary to fit him for a distinguished career at the bar. The result in our
own Law School has been disastrous. Unfledged youths, fresh from the
high schools, the parents of many of whom were abundantly able to finance
them through a complete academical and professional course, have rushed
into the Law School, with their professional ambitions as immature as their
high school minds. The result has been a veritable slaughter of the innocents.
Under such standards, an entering class of 100 would produce a
graduating class of approximately 30 or 40—with the majority of these
made up of men with college training.

Our medical friends have far outstripped us, in spite of our aristocratic
scorn of them as parvenus in the professional field. As lawyers, we trace our
ancestry back a thousand years—whereas, as a scientific profession, this new
rival was born within the recollection of some of us who are not old men.
Forty years ago in Virginia, any quack might call himself doctor, and serve
all patients rash enough to employ him—and this without let or hindrance
from the State. But, led by the well-educated members of their profession,
their standards have already been raised to a point which we lawyers of
Virginia can scarcely hope to reach in a generation. The result has been that
medicine and surgery have made greater advances in the last forty years
than in all the preceding ages.

I cannot refrain from taking this opportunity of reminding you that
one of the chief reasons why legal standards have lagged, is due to the
lawyers themselves—who, as pointed out recently by the Carnegie Foundation,
and as known to every observant lawyer who has attended sessions of
our legislatures and meetings of bar associations—lose no opportunity of
blocking efforts within the profession to raise legal standards. "Look at
me," exclaim these blind guides, "and think what the State would have
lost had your high standards excluded me from the Law School, and from
the bar of which I am such a shining ornament."

Perhaps a word about our teaching methods may not be out of place.
We still use the old fashioned text-book and lecture system, supplemented

by the use of illustrative cases. With most of the other law schools of the
country now thoroughly wedded to the so-called Case System, we find ourselves
almost in a class to ourselves. We are thought of, and not infrequently
referred to by our contemporaries, as old-fogyish, and out of date.
But we have held to our own methods—not from ignorance of the virtues
of the other system, but from deliberate choice. . The argument in favor of
the one or the other system is too long to be presented here at length, even
on the assumption that you would be interested in following it. I think it
may be summed up in the statement that the main purpose of the Case
System, as its disciples confess, is not so much to teach legal principles, as to
cultivate the student's reasoning faculties—surely a most desirable end.
Under this method the lecture room is converted into a sort of debating
society, of which the instructor is the leader and interlocutor. A half-dozen
or more cases, previously assigned, constitute the basis of the debate. The
whole hour is not infrequently consumed in the discussion of a single point,
or of a single case from the assignment. Normally, the assigned cases not
reached during the hour are passed over, a new assignment is made, and a
new debate held at the next period—the student being left to work up the
ignored cases as best he may. It is heresy to limit a lively debate in the
interest of economy of time. The point or points actually discussed are
thus thoroughly ventilated and impressed upon the student—or upon such
of them as participate in the debate, or take accurate notes thereof. An
entire lecture period may thus be devoted to the discussion of Benjamin
Butler's famous point whether the key to a man's shop is personalty or realty
and therefore the subject or not the subject of larceny—or the distinction
between a demurrer to the declaration and a demurrer to the evidence. The
natural tendency of the system is to develop a race of case lawyers. But the
most serious objection is the slowness with which the course goes forward,
and the gaps that the method must leave in the continuity and completeness
of the topics pursued. If the student had six years to devote to his law
school course, instead of three, the case method might prove ideal.

Our theory is that a large part of the body of the law rests upon no
particular reason, but is conventional, or may we not call it arbitrary?
This cannot be deduced by any course of reasoning howsoever subtle or
astute. The mere statement of the rule, with a practical illustration, is its
best exposition. One need not read an opinion of several pages to learn that
a contract must have a valuable consideration, or that the agreement must
be mutual; or that an infant is not bound by his general contracts, but
ordinarily is liable for his torts; or that an indorser's liability is conditioned
on the taking of the proper steps on dishonor of the paper; or that a corporation
cannot lawfully exercise a power not conferred by its charter; or
that the plea of the statute of limitations, or the statute of parol agreements,

is personal to the defendant. These illustrations might be indefinitely
multiplied. And considering the law of procedure, whether under the
written or the unwritten law, substantially the whole of it consists of conventional
rules, which are to be mastered only by memorizing them.

These considerations, with the further consideration that the student's
time in the law school is limited, and that under our old-fashioned methods
the student obtains a complete bird's eye view of the fundamentals of each
of his topics—succinctly stated and generally illustrated by the text itself,
and by the case-book, and always by the instructor himself—make us
content with our own methods. Under our method the subject is presented
as a consistent whole, an impossible desideratum under the other system.
Where reasons exist, and serve to assist the student's understanding, they
are properly stressed,—indeed, these are more apt to be found in the textbook
than in the opinions. But equal stress is laid upon the student's acquisition
of fundamental principles for their intrinsic value, and upon his
remembering them just as he must learn and remember the letters of the
alphabet or the rules of Latin syntax.

The conclusions reached from our theoretical study of the two methods,
seem to us abundantly sustained by the results. The reasoning qualities
of our graduates are thoroughly well developed, though possibly not quite so
highly as under the other system. Our men go out into the profession not
only with excellent reasoning powers, but fully equipped with a knowledge
of fundamental legal principles. The further cultivation of their reasoning
powers, and their alertness and resourcefulness in debate, may well be postponed
to the succeeding thirty or forty years to be spent in the forensic
contests at the bar. The high positions taken by our graduates throughout
the country satisfies us that our Law School, however old-fashioned or conservative
in its methods, is accomplishing the purpose for which it exists—
to supply the bar and public stations with accomplished, well-rounded, highminded
and efficient lawyers.

I hope that this brief summary of our teaching methods and their results
may convince you that the University of Virginia has followed along
its own lines, in spite of the new cult of the case system, not ignorantly, nor
capriciously, but for reasons quite satisfactory to those of us charged with
the responsible duty of maintaining its standards and its prestige.

THE PLAN AND HISTORY OF THE VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW

By Randolph Caskie Coleman, '21, M.A., Editor

It was intended, as appears on the program, that I should make you a
speech on the Virginia Law Review, but after the splendid address of Dean

Lile, I feel that any attempt at a speech on my part would be feeble indeed.
So I am going to tell you very simply and briefly a few things about the law
journal published by the students.

On March 5, 1913 an informal meeting was held in Minor Hall for the
purpose of considering the publication of a legal journal by the students of
the Law School. It was unanimously resolved to form an association to
issue the journal, and on April 23, 1913 a permanent organization of the
Virginia Law Review Association, with an editorial board and a business
management, was effected.

The first number appeared in October, 1913, and since that time the
Review has been published monthly eight times a year from October to May,
except during the year of 1918-'19, when owing to the late opening of the
Law School on account of the war, publication was necessarily suspended.
The current issue, which through the courtesy of Mr. Minor's committee
will be presented to each of you at the end of the meeting, marks the close
of Volume VII.

The plan of the Virginia Law Review is quite similar to that of the
Harvard, the Columbia, and the other leading Reviews. But it differs from
many of them in one important respect, that is, in being exclusively a
student publication. Some of the Reviews are published principally by
Law Faculties, others have both Faculty and student editors, and still others,
though having only student editors, have Faculty representatives who supervise
all the work that is done. It is entirely in accord with the spirit and
traditions of Virginia, with its liberal measure of student control in all its
activities, that the Law Review should be published by the students alone.
To that fact, we believe, is largely attributable the self-reliance, the interest,
and the fine esprit de corps which have always characterized the editorial board.

Each number of the Review contains leading articles of general interest
to the profession, Notes, Recent Decisions, Book Reviews, and a Virginia
Section. The articles and Book Reviews are prepared by prominent members
of the bench and bar and by law teachers, while the Notes and Recent
Decisions are entirely the work of the editors.

This year saw the inauguration of the Virginia Section. Due to the
insistent demand of many of our readers, we thought it well, although retaining
our character as a general rather than a local journal, to establish
a section devoted exclusively to comment upon the Virginia decisions and
statutory changes. While the material for this department is largely furnished
by students, yet in order to make it a real forum for the discussion of
Virginia law, we have decided to invite contributions to it from the bar of
the State and bespeak for it your interest and support.

From the first the Review has set a high standard, and we believe we
can say without undue pride that to-day it has attained a foremost rank

among the established law journals of the country. Dean Lile and Professor
Graves place it just after the Harvard and Columbia Reviews and in the lead
of the others, and the superiority of those two, says Professor Graves, is to
be found in their leading articles, in obtaining which they possess distinct
advantages over us, and not in the student work. This classification reflects
the greater credit upon the Virginia Law Review when we consider that at
Harvard and Columbia the enrolment far exceeds ours and, furthermore,
that a baccalaureate degree is required for entrance to the Law School.

The editors of our Review have been constantly encouraged by commendatory
expressions and requests, some from quite a distance. The other
day we received an order for the Review and the back volumes from the
League of Nations Library at Geneva. Recently a letter came from Regina,
Saskatchewan, asking permission to reprint in the Canadian Law Times one
of our articles, which was described as "admirable and world-wide in its
application." Some time ago Professor Isaacs of Pittsburgh and Professor
Schaub of Harvard asked leave to reprint in their coming volume on Commercial
Law some extracts from the Review, adding the statement that "in
the present state of our legal science, the law journals are the repositories
of the best thought in commercial law as well as in the other fields of jurisprudence."
Dean Wigmore has complimented the Review highly, laying
particular stress upon its form and appearance. I trust you will pardon a
reference to these things when you realize that they are due not only to the
work of the present board, but to that of all our predecessors.

While this is the story of what the Review has accomplished, we feel
that it should do a great deal more. In fact it has reached a critical stage
in its life. The present vastly increased cost of printing has made it a most
difficult matter to finance the Review with the limited subscription list we
now have. This condition has affected all the Reviews more or less seriously
according to their circulation and resources from endowment or otherwise.
Recently the Columbia Law Review issued a statement that unless it could
secure a thousand additional subscribers it might have to suspend publication.
The Virginia Law Review unfortunately has no endowment and is entirely
dependent upon income from subscriptions and a few advertisements.

Is it worth while to keep it alive and vigorous? That depends upon the
service it is performing. To the student here it is a constant incentive, since
election to the board is based upon the quality of work done in the Law
School. To the editors it is a very valuable—some of them consider it the
most valuable—part of their legal training. To the Law School it is a means
of expression, without which the School would be somewhat inarticulate,
and at the same time the best type of advertisement. Going into the offices
of hundreds of lawyers, especially in Virginia and the South, it should give a
far clearer and more vivid idea of the character of the work in our Law School

than any mere catalogue. Can it be doubted that if the Review went to
several offices where it now goes to one it would be instrumental in bringing
many more students to this Law School? If a larger attendance is not to be
desired, then we would be enabled to take another forward step in the
important matter of raising our standards for admission.

But of what service is the Review to you, our alumni? It is a direct
means of communication, of contact with the Law School. It keeps alive
your interest and your memories. As it brings to those here, through the
articles you contribute, the results of your discoveries in the field of active
practice, so it carries to you the fruits of the researches of Faculty and
students in the legal laboratory of Minor Hall.

With your active coöperation the Review can not only perform this
service, but can steadily increase its usefulness. Without your support, it
will wither and die. There is no reason why we cannot make it the leading
organ of legal expression in the South, as the Harvard Law Review is in its
field, and a potent influence with our courts and legislators. It should be in
every way worthy of our great Law School, which for sound instruction in
fundamental principles we all believe to be second to none.

Our alumni are fully equal to the task. With your contributions in
articles embodying the product of your labors, your arguments in noteworthy
cases, your views on vital questions, and your suggestions as to
changes in our law and procedure, we could publish a Review that would
stand comparison in every respect with any law journal in the country.
So when you have the material for an interesting paper, prepare it and send
it to us, as well as discussions for the Virginia Section or Book Reviews.

In this way, through your loyal support in articles and subscriptions,
the Virginia Law Review can become a powerful, living force in our legal
world, informed with the noble spirit and standards of this institution, a
teacher of true doctrine in these times of false and dangerous theories, a
champion of what is sound and progressive in law and government. Thus
it can be made a source of just pride to the alumni and to the Law School.
The achievement of this purpose rests in principal measure with you, and
we have every confidence in your decision.

III. The Medical Alumni

MOVEMENTS IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

By William Holland Wilmer, '85, M.D., LL.D., of Washington, D. C.

May I take the liberty of speaking briefly of only one phase of this
movement in Medical Education—a phase, however, that is uppermost in
the minds of every loving alumnus of the dear old Alma Mater?

When one of the very distinguished members of the Medical Faculty
of this great University courteously asked me to express my views at this
meeting concerning the question of removing the Medical Department to a
distant city, I wrote him the question had been so thoroughly discussed by
Dean Hough in his fine report that I could do very little more than to say
"Amen." But I wish to express my personal views even if they possess no
other value than that of a retrospect, as it has been thirty-six years since I
left these beloved portals. I have seen the following reasons advanced for
the advisability of taking this step: (1) The necessity of securing greater
clinical material; (2) to avoid separating the Richmond Medical, Dentistry,
and Pharmacy Schools; (3) economy; (4) athletics are a disadvantage to
medical students; (5) the medical students do not take part in general university
life; (6) the general student body does not receive any profit from the
older medical students.

The first three points are the only ones that require any serious consideration
for consenting to this radical and painful operation. The first
argument divides itself very naturally into two main lines—quantity and
quality. In the argument for removing the Medical Department, the
necessity of a quantity of clinical material has been emphasized. This
greatly emphasized quantity is not dependent upon city environment. It
can be obtained by enlarging the present hospital facilities of the University,
where there is already in existence a great teaching hospital of two hundred
beds and 3,500 patients annually under the control of the staff of the Medical
Department. A hospital is like an individual. When a reputation for work
of the highest type has been established, the numbers of patients seeking
treatment will be limited only by the capacity to care for them. Among
the most notable proofs of this fact are the Mayo Clinic, at Rochester,
Minnesota (a town of 6,000 people); Ann Arbor, Michigan; Iowa City,
Iowa; Madison, Wisconsin; the three latter being average university towns.
The hospital facilities of the great German universities were entirely out of
proportion in size to the small cities in which they were located. Dr. Edsall,
Dean of the Harvard Medical School, says in speaking of the University of
Virginia: "Of course clinical material is essential, but there is no doubt in
my mind that the clinical material can be obtained in a perfectly adequate
way just as Michigan and Iowa have done it." Ease of communication and
transportation brings the suburban and the rural districts constantly into
closer contact with hospital centers. With the annihilation of many of the
problems of time and distance by the fast trains, the automobiles and the
prospective airplanes, those hospital centers will be increasingly independent
in the future, in regard to their location. Even now in regard to transportation
the University of Virginia is excellently placed. While the
demand for quantity could certainly be adequately met, it is well to remember

that quality is even more important. For after all, valuable preparation
does not lie in the number of cases seen by the student, but in the great care
taken in the study of each case and in the acquiring of the proper method of
pursuing that study to the very best advantage. One case exhaustively and
efficiently studied is worth a dozen or more cases considered hastily or imperfectly—the
great temptation where the mass of clinical material is very
large. Furthermore, I wish to emphasize the point that it is the method that
must be studied and not merely the individual case. That great student of
medical teaching, Sir James MacKenzie, says: "It is far better to be trained
to understand a few matters thoroughly than to have a superficial knowledge
of a great many things."

In addition to these points of "quantity" and "quality" there is
another question about this suggested change that requires serious consideration—vocational
instruction versus the teaching given by the busy
practitioner of medicine in a large city. The practitioner is certainly
handicapped. He is often harassed by a number of serious and pressing
cases that demand his attention. At best, it is difficult for him to find the
time for regular didactic lectures or for clinical instruction—often to the
detriment of his students. In Outdoor Departments, the teaching is often
left to younger men who have not sufficiently broad experience to enable
them to give the student the best viewpoint in the most important study of
the beginnings of disease. In the fundamental branches there can be no
comparison between the advantage of the instruction under the professor
who is vocational, and the teaching by the practicing physician. This is
well illustrated by the teaching of anatomy at our Alma Mater. I know of
no other university in any land where anatomy has been so well and unforgetably
taught. This splendid instruction has been a very great and lasting
asset to every one of the medical graduates of the University. The achievements
of its alumni prove that the teaching there in the past has been
efficient in lines other than the so-called "fundamentals." The recent
graduates, too, have been most successful in competitive examinations for
hospital positions, where clinical and laboratory tests were required. For
the last five years, not a single one of the graduates has failed to pass the
examination of any State Board. I have known of instances in New York
where among all the men who took the examination for filling two hospital
vacancies, both of the coveted positions were won by graduates of the
University of Virginia.

The second argument, that it is necessary to associate with the Medical
School the departments of Dentistry and Pharmacy, as now exist in Richmond,
is easily met. These two departments can function, as they do in
other cities, apart from a Medical School; and, at present there are needs
more urgent than the addition of these departments here. In due time this

can be brought about. I personally feel that Dentistry is becoming such an
important part of the Medical Science that a Dentistry Department should
be instituted later at the University of Virginia and I am sure that it could
be accomplished without difficulty. The atmosphere of university life would
be of inestimable value to the dental student. There is no reason why a
practical clinical department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics should not be
established also. In this connection it may be interesting to quote what
Sir James MacKenzie says in regard to medical education: "Each time a
drug is given, the teacher must give the reason for presenting it, and the
student must be set to watch the effects it is supposed to produce." This
sound and practical advice can only be followed in a faculty-controlled
hospital. By this means the student may have the opportunity of seeing
remedies prescribed on grounds of reason and not of credulity. These
suggestions for two new departments are made, because, in my mind's eye
I see a well rounded, evenly balanced, vitalized University in the future,
and not one shorn of its glory. Even the division of the four year course is
detrimental to the highest medical education.

There is much dissatisfaction in the minds of the broadest thinkers
upon the subject of medical education. It is a cause of thankfulness that
they do not apply to the University of Virginia as now conducted. The
objections are that anatomy, for instance, "is often but an intelligent
description of facts, so that the student is burdened with an accumulation of
many trivial details." Sir James MacKenzie in regard to medical education
says that "Physiology is such a broad subject that it is difficult to determine
how much is necessary to impart to the medical student." This
criticism is true of the other so-called medical sciences. However, in a
medical department, with buildings clustered around the campus, the
teachers of the fundamentals come into closer contact with their fellow
professors of clinical work and laboratory investigation than could possibly
be the case in a large city away from the Mother University. In this way
they have a closer insight into the practical problems necessary for the
student.

The third argument for removing the Medical Department is economy.
"Efficiency and not retrenchment is true economy," wrote that sagacious
statesman, Disraeli. This is a saying for all time. The education that is
the most economic is not the one that costs the fewest dollars, but the one
that is the best, the most efficient and broadening, for the least relative
financial outlay. Dr. Flexner wisely says: "It is easier and cheaper to
bring patients to Charlottesville than to reproduce the University laboratories,
workers, libraries, and spirit anywhere else."

A University like our beloved Alma Mater, with its beautiful and
healthy situation, its charming social advantages and its broad cultural

opportunities, will always attract the best type of instructors; but separation
from the life of a great university and the associations of colleagues,
together with the higher cost of living in the city, would have the reverse
effect.

The disadvantage of athletics to medical students forms the fourth
argument. Quite to the contrary, athletics, which have become such an
integral part of college life—and justly so—are benefited by the participation
of medical men. The instances where medical students have led in all
types of athletic sports are too numerous to mention. It is equally true that
medical students are vastly helped by athletics. Quick and accurate response
of brain and muscle to each stimulus is thereby inculcated. The
medical student above all others should have a "sound mind in a sound
body."

Whatever may be the case at other universities, the fifth and sixth
arguments that the medical students do not take part in general university
life, and that the general student body does not receive any benefit from the
older medical students, are not at all applicable to the charming life at our
dear old University. As far as my own personal experience goes, my dear
friend and roommate of my first year at the University was a student in the
academic department and he is now a very distinguished Episcopal minister.
In my second year, my roommate was a brilliant student of law and the
judge of the "moot court" the following year. The third year my room on
East Lawn was in the midst of men who have since become leaders in their
respective walks of life—distinguished scientists, senators, judges. As class
commander of 1885, some of the most delightful letters received have been
from classmates who had not been in the Medical Department. To illustrate
the close cultural relations between the students in the different departments,
I have only to recall to my collegemates of long ago some of the
episodes of our college life. I can remember as if yesterday the eloquent
lecture of Professor Smith upon "Gravity"—not to be erased by the theories
of Relativity. Notable too was the fascinating lecture upon "Opium" by
Dr. Davis. There were many such occasions when the lectures were so interesting,
so charming, so impressive that they drew students from all
departments.

The very association with the great men who were teachers in those
days was a liberal education in itself. This has been equally true in years
since then.

Who in the eighties could forget the gentle tap upon the door and in
response to "come in," the entrance of Dr. John Staige Davis. After an
apology for interruption he sat down for a chat for fifteen or twenty minutes.
The medical student was left charmed and energized and returned to even
his fundamentals with renewed zest. Or, who could forget the kindness and

helpfulness of that commanding figure, Dr. Cabell? Dr. Towles taught
anatomy in such a way that he made it as delightful as it is indelible. These
men had the true vision—not to pitch the greatest number of students, but
to set a high standard and to elevate the men to that standard, and thus to
secure the greatest number of well-trained men for service.

William James, in his interesting brochure, "On Vital Reserves," emphasizes
the fact that all men "energize" far below their normal maximum.
Athletes are familiar with this fact of "second wind." The successful and
most useful men push farther and farther away the barrier of fatigue. This
is an evident fact that the busiest men are those who still take time for outside
activities. The student in contact with the multifarious activities of
university life will "energize" at a higher level than those segregated into a
class—which too often occurs when one department is located in a large
city away from the parent university. It has been well said that "The
most important factor is university contact, ideals and activities." On
the whole, the body thus isolated will be inferior to a similar body "run at a
higher pressure." Can the State of Virginia afford to take away from the
medical students within its gates, those great stimuli that "awaken the
energies of loyalty, courage, endurance or devotion?"

The tendency of medical science is towards prevention and not cure.
The advance in surgery is marvelous beyond expression, but it is a confession
in each case of the failure of prevention. It should be resorted to
only when there is no possibility of relief in other ways. If this applies to the
individual, how much more does it apply to the growing, vigorous University
of Virginia, where dismemberment by amputation of one of its most essential
parts seems as abhorrent as it is unwise?

Even at the risk of repetition, the words of men like Dr. Edsall and Dr.
Flexner should be emphasized at this critical juncture in the affairs of the
University. The former feels so strongly the importance of intimate contact
with the general university that he says: "I should be very glad indeed
if the mere three or four miles that separate the Harvard Medical School
from Harvard University could be wiped out."

After calling attention to the fact that "the independent medical school
has practically disappeared in the last ten years," and that "the universities
have simply had to take charge of medical education because they alone
have the correct point of view of spirit," Dr. Flexner, one of the greatest
authorities on medical education, goes so far as to say: "It is my conviction
—a conviction born of observation over a very wide area—that Virginia
will hardly be able to develop a school of the highest grade except as an
immediate part of the State University in Charlottesville."

Thus it will be seen that the specialists in Medical Education are
against this transfer. Four college presidents, eight deans of medical schools

and fifty professors have registered their opposition. The Medical Faculty
of the University of Virginia is against it; and I do not personally know a
single one of the medical alumni who has not protested against this step.
Moreover, there is no precedent for the transfer of a medical school that has
been functioning efficiently for a hundred years. Those who are pressing
favorably this transfer must bear the burden of proof. If, in the face of the
opposition of the Medical Faculty, the alumni body, and the experts in
medical education from all sections of the country, they carry through this
unfortunate policy the burden of responsibility for the unnecessary handicap
fastened upon the future graduates of the Medical School, will be theirs.

From a broad philosophic point of view no doubt can arise concerning
the great wisdom of keeping intact the present structure of our beloved
Mother University. Sir James MacKenzie says that "We are all creatures
whose mode of thought is influenced by tradition and environment. Teaching
and particularly medical teaching, is more affected by tradition than
almost any other subject." When the tradition is as noble as it is here, and
the environment as inspiring, it would be indeed unfortunate to lose them.
There is an old text that "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get
wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." The man who has
the deepest understanding, the broadest point of view and the widest vision
is the man who will give the greatest service to humanity. President Alderman
has said: "Scholarship and knowledge fulfill themselves only in
service to men."

While close association with men of diverse trains of thought is a most
potent factor in producing the wise psychiatral point of view so essential
to the highest success in every form of life's activity, environment is an equal
force in man's development. Who could spend a portion of the plastic period
of youth in this ideal spot, with its beauty of hills and valleys, its inspiring
architecture, its splendid ideals and ennobling traditions without being
better fitted for service to his state, his country and to his fellowman?

This Centennial Celebration of our Alma Mater has been a memorable
and happy occasion. Her sons have returned to her in goodly numbers.
Her sister universities and scientific and educational bodies have striven to
do her honor. Speakers of rare eloquence have expressed in glowing phrases
their conviction that her vigorous and inspiring past is but an earnest of her
splendid future. The far-seeing Rector with pointed epigram and eloquent
appeal has shown us the way of duty and of lofty ideals. He has extolled
her vital essence, and shown that it was her spirit, breathed into those
valiant youths while in these sacred precincts, that enabled them to fight
for the cause of freedom, and to make the supreme sacrifice for the right.
Shall we who have not been called upon to lay down our lives, be less true
than they to the inspiration of this beloved Mother? They have glorified

her in their sacrifices; shall not we add to her strength and beauty until
another generation can take from our hands the privilege of loving upbuilding?
But even while all honor is being paid to her and her praises sung by
all, a shadow falls across the hearts of many of her devoted sons at the
thought of the dismemberment that is purposed for this nurturing mother.

In the mind of Thomas Jefferson there was a true university with all
of the schools that we have now—and more in addition. He did not seek to
found an academy or a college, but a university of glorious proportion.
Shall this beautiful dream be turned into an unrestful nightmare? What
excuse can we offer the "Master-Builder" if we do not strive to avert this
work of disintegration of the fabric that he wrought so lovingly?

The medical student is as true a son to Alma Mater as any other son.
Is he therefore to be denied his rightful inheritance? If so, then other sons
will ultimately be deprived of their portions, once this vicious process has
begun. Do not take from the medical student his precious heritage inspired
by the brilliant genius of Thomas Jefferson—this beautiful creation called
the University of Virginia. Leave him where he can exclaim with his
brethren of the other schools, as they look from the beauty of architecture
to the mountains of blue: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence
cometh my help."

IV. The Engineering Alumni

OPENING DISCUSSION OF THE TOPIC, "ORGANIZATION OF AN ENGINEERING
ALUMNI COUNCIL"

By Allen Jeter Saville, '08, M.E., Director of Public Works, Richmond, Va.

Some years ago while on a visit to the University several of us were
talking of our experiences, and discussing what we thought of the training
at the University in the light of these experiences. That conversation resulted
in my being asked to present this paper to-day.

As you know, engineers are now split up into so many different specialties
that it is not possible for a young man at college to get familiar with all
of these specialties. The best thing to be done at college, I believe, is just
what is being done here. That is, teach the foundation principles, and leave
it to the man to later supply the technic of his chosen specialty.

There are several reasons why this is the best course but perhaps the
one that will first occur to a man who has not been at college for ten years is,
that it is very difficult to dig into the fundamental principles, after a few
years out of college.

There are some drawbacks, however, to this method of teaching only

the fundamentals at college. I think that the greatest of these is, on account
of the theoretical nature of his training a graduate does not appreciate the
practical limits of application of theory. I remember hearing of the two
Engineering seniors who had to get the contours of a mountain ravine, and
set their pegs ten feet apart each way. Of course their work was accurate
but there was no need of this accuracy. Another result of the specialization
that is now in vogue is, that college men become narrow and develop in a
one-sided fashion. This is decidedly to the disadvantage of the students, as
very few of them know exactly what line of work they will get into before
they have been out of college many years.

How to retain at the University our present system of teaching the
fundamentals, and at the same time remedy the drawbacks to this method
is the proposition that we are here to consider this afternoon. When I
speak of the University teaching fundamentals, I do not mean that practical
consideration is altogether neglected, but I mean that theory rather than
practice is emphasized.

The suggestion offered for your consideration as a remedy is as follows:

That at least once each term an alumnus read a paper before the whole
Engineering School, on some practical work, in some branch of Engineering.
This scheme, I believe, has many interesting possibilities.

In the first place, it provides for the student some definite, tangible
evidence of the practical application of the work he is doing. In the
second place, these papers will necessarily be on various kinds of work so
that the student gets a view of the practical limits used, and also gets some
insight into the practical work of many lines of Engineering. Incidentally,
it will undoubtedly help the younger student to decide what branch of
Engineering he would most likely take up, by giving him a clear picture
of the work being done in the various lines. The benefit to be derived will
not be confined to the student. Such a scheme will keep the alumni interested
in the University, and I believe will be also very interesting to the
faculty in that it would keep them informed as to the methods used in
practice that would perhaps not otherwise be brought to their attention.

I do not believe it will be difficult to get the alumni to take hold of this,
as the papers are not supposed to be essays on highly technical subjects, but
rather simple descriptions of work done and methods used. I think that
these papers should preferably be written about work the alumnus was
engaged in himself. They might describe design or construction. The
main point should be that they are to be practical, and as far as possible in
detail.

Now, as to the practical operation of such a scheme, I would suggest
that there be a committee of ten, consisting of two professors, two students,
and six alumni, with the dean of the department as chairman; the two

professors to be appointed by the dean, the two students to be elected by the
student body, and the six alumni to be the last six speakers. This may seem
a rather unwieldy committee but I believe that these many are needed in
order to keep in touch with the various interests.

Of course, money will be needed to pay expenses. My suggestion would
be that the students contribute one dollar a year each, and each alumnus
be asked to contribute an amount sufficient to meet all expenses, perhaps
not over two dollars and a half each.

I think that in order to relieve any embarrassment, the University
should pay the expenses of every alumnus who returns to the University.
I believe that if this scheme is put into operation it will prove to be both
interesting and profitable.

There is no reason why engineers not alumni should not be asked to
address the student body, but I believe it would be best always to have three
a year from the alumni. Of course we all know that engineers are not very
keen for making speeches but this proposition is simply reading a paper
describing some work with which he is thoroughly familiar.

If this scheme is good enough, it should be adopted, and if adopted
carried out enthusiastically.

There are many other benefits to be derived by this contact between
the alumni and students, and I hope the scheme will be given a trial.

THE CIVIL ENGINEER'S POINT OF VIEW

By Walter Jones Laird, '09, C.E., of Wilmington, Del.

I have been asked to make a few remarks, from the standpoint of a
Civil Engineer, regarding the feasibility of forming an Engineering Alumni
Council.

To my mind such a Council is a very necessary adjunct to the fullest
development of the Engineering courses and for general helpfulness in many
other apparent ways.

I am sure we all feel the necessity for keeping the Engineering courses
abreast of the times, just as the Engineering profession in general must
continue to progress. We cannot be in the position of the old mountaineer
and his bride from one of the neighboring mountains, who came to Charlottesville
during my college days and proceeded to take a trolley ride from the
lowe end of town to the University. As the car became crowded the conductor
came in and asked the passengers, in a rather harsh manner, to move
along. The mountaineer got up indignantly and said to the conductor:
"I've done paid my ten cents and Mame is going to sit where she damn are."
We cannot sit where we are even though some of us Alumni are inclined to

think that the Engineering courses and methods of our college days are
sufficiently good for any of the younger men entering college. We too must
"move along" and realize that just as the last few decades have seen the
ferryboat of one-man power, on certain of our rivers, replaced by beautiful
spans of steel and masonry, and have seen the mule and winch of other days
replaced by the Corliss engine or the Turbo Generator, representing engineering
skill of to-day, so technical education must advance and we must
help where possible to provide the men who are going out into the Engineering
world from our colleges with the best that can be given them in a well
balanced, practical, and theoretical Engineering course.

This is being accomplished in great measure by our Faculty at Virginia,
but their efforts could undoubtedly be facilitated by proper coöperation from
the Engineering Alumni.

There is certainly no reason why an Engineering Council is not practical,
if we do not attempt to carry its functions too far. The members
could either be appointed by the Dean of the Engineering Department or
elected from time to time by the Alumni by means of the letter ballot, or the
Council brought into being in some other approved way. In order to command
more diversity of talent and advice, and also not place a too permanent
burden on any one group of Engineering Alumni, it would seem wise to
have the term of Council members limited to about three years for each
individual and to have terms rotate so there would be a majority of older
incumbents in office all the time.

This Council would place on certain Alumni the definite duty of keeping
in touch with the curriculum of their Alma Mater and of suggesting from
time to time changes or additions that appear important when viewed from
the standpoint of an engineer who has observed everyday practice and usage
in his particular locality.

It would be of value in helping establish a series of Alumni lectures on
practical engineering subjects and it would help maintain a proper balance
between the practical and theoretical sides of the Engineering courses. For
example: Many engineers have advocated greater shop facilities and very
much more extensive shop and field training than is now given in many
colleges, including the University of Virginia. It is undoubtedly advantageous
for an engineer, upon leaving college, to have a sufficiently practical
knowledge of some phase of engineering work to enable him to make a decent
living from the outset. If, for instance, a man has obtained in college or
during summer vacations a thorough knowledge of transit work, he may at
once after leaving the University be self-supporting; whereas, he might
otherwise lose some time in getting on his feet, and in some instances might
be discouraged to the point of going into some other line of work.

Personally, I think a very limited course in the fundamentals of shop

and field work is sufficient in most cases and allows of additional time being
given to important correlated studies which are of great value to the
average engineer in everyday practice, and are very much harder to obtain
out of college than is additional practical experience. Some years ago,
courses in Economics, Contract Law, etc., were considered unnecessary to
the average engineer, but now we find many of our engineers requiring a
knowledge of these subjects as much as of some of the straight Engineering
studies, hence the need of including such subjects in a complete Engineering
course.

This leads an Engineering Faculty to the problem of arranging, where
possible, for auxiliary courses in practical shop and field work between
college sessions, rather than to take an undue number of hours out of the
important college sessions to devote to the purely practical sides of the
student's work. Such coöperative courses are in successful operation at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Cincinnati, etc.
An Engineering Council could undoubtedly offer some valuable suggestions
in a case of this kind.

A further important feature of the Engineering Council from another
side would be to keep all of our Engineering Alumni alive to and keenly
interested in the activities of their Department in college. Too many of us
are inclined to forget what our own college is doing and when an opportunity
comes from time to time to advise some student what college to enter, and
to explain the advantages of our college training, we are not in a good position
to do so; nor are we apt to be as interested in helping to place Alumni
who leave the University. The mere fact of having an Engineering Alumni
Council working among us would tend to stimulate continued interest in the
University and its Engineering Department. Therefore, I hope such a
Council can be brought into existence in the near future.

THE MECHANICAL ENGINEER'S POINT OF VIEW

By William Carrington Lancaster, '03, M.E., E.E., of New York City

It is a far cry from the young engineer graduate proudly wearing the
emblems of many college societies, and glorying in a long list of honors won
in the classroom and in athletics, to this same graduate, a few months later,
in overalls and a flannel shirt. No matter how brilliant has been his career
through college, no matter how high have been his marks on examinations,
no matter how profound his knowledge of mechanics, of hydraulics, or of
thermodynamics, the mechanical engineer graduate must don the garb of the
laborer, and learn by the sweat of his brow, the practical details that are
essential to the successful practice of his profession.

More appealing is the early work of the civil engineer. His life is largely
in the open. "The Call of the Wild" attracts him. His is a picturesque
figure as he peers through a transit, standing in sunny fields of green and
waving to his rod-man away off across some babbling brook. He appeals
to the popular imagination. The hero of the novel, if he is an engineer, is
always a civil engineer.

Not so happy is the lot of the young mechanical engineer. There is
nothing picturesque about the grease and grime of the machine shop, or the
rattle and bang of the boiler factory. But he must spend several years, at
least, in some such shop or factory, before he has learned enough of the
practical side of engineering to be eligible for a position of responsibility.
This is true even when he had graduated from one of the large colleges with
magnificently equipped shops and laboratories, where he has spent many
hours and has become familiar with every machine. How valuable then is
the college degree to the mechanical engineer?

The great national engineering societies all have as a requirement for
full membership, an engineering degree plus a certain number of years of
experience in responsible charge of engineering work; or, a certain larger
number of years of experience without the college degree. For example, the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers requires an engineering degree
and three years, or five years without the degree. In other words the degree
is considered equivalent to two years of experience in responsible charge of
engineering work.

The engineering college then does not turn out a finished product.
When he leaves college, the engineer graduate is nowhere near ready to
practice his profession. To a limited extent, the same thing may be said of
the other professions. The graduate in medicine generally takes a postgraduate
course at some hospital; the young lawyer often serves as little
more than a clerk in some large law firm; and the preacher begins with a
small country church.

But the medical graduate is very soon a full fledged doctor. His hospital
course may last only a few months, or he may elect to take none at all.
Just as soon as he passes the State Board examinations, which he does
promptly before he forgets what he has learned at college, he starts the
practice of medicine and is in responsible charge of the lives of his patients.

The graduate in law likewise passes the Bar Examinations just as soon
as possible and can then practice law. He is in responsible charge of the
rights of his clients.

The preacher starts to preach as soon as he enters his little country
church and immediately is in responsible charge of the souls of his flock.

It is not so with the engineer. He has no State examinations to pass.
The law does not create him an engineer by giving him a license to practice.

No license is required of him. He stands solely on his merits. Perhaps it is
partly for this reason that he must go through long years of arduous work
with small pay before he is recognized as a real engineer.

An important question then presents itself.

Is there something fundamentally wrong with our method of teaching
engineering, and should the engineering college attempt to turn out the
graduate so thoroughly instructed in both theory and practice that he can
more quickly take his place in the world as an engineer ready and capable
of taking responsible charge of engineering work?

Apparently the answer is both "yes" and "no."

In the first place of course the graduate is too young to be immediately
put in responsible charge of important work. He must first learn such
things as organization and directing the work of others. His judgment is
apt to be faulty. These things come only with experience and the passing
years. But we are not concerned with these. His shortcomings merely
because of his youth cannot be helped by the college, and they apply equally
in other professions.

What we have to consider are questions as to whether the courses of
instruction can be changed for his benefit, and if so how we Alumni can
help to do it.

Doubtless many young men are deterred from taking up engineering,
and especially mechanical engineering, by the thought of the long years of
disagreeable and poorly paid work that must follow their graduation. Possibly
many brilliant minds are thus lost so far as mechanical engineering
is concerned. Other professions get them. For this reason it would seem
desirable to so change the course of instruction, if possible, that the young
engineer may arrive at the desired goal with less time given up to drudgery
of his profession.

The chief criticisms of the young mechanical engineer, fresh from college,
seem to be:

On the other hand, can the engineering college be expected to give
sufficient training in shop work and practical engineering methods? Obviously
it cannot. Not even the great northern and western colleges, with
endowment funds of vastly more than "three million dollars," can afford
the large and expensive machinery, nor could they keep up with the rapid
changes and improvements even if they once had this machinery. And too
something more must be learned than mere familiarity with this and that
type of machine. One must rub elbows with the mechanic and eat from the
same dinner pail to reap the full benefits of the democracy of the flannel
shirt.

It would seem then that some middle ground must be found. Certainly
there is room for improvement in the teaching of theory and its
practical application to engineering problems. As regards shop work, would
it not be better to let it be clearly understood that the college makes no
attempt to educate the engineer along these practical lines? Let us tell the
prospective young student of mechanical engineering, frankly, that he will
receive only the theoretical side of his training at college and that he must,
after graduation, devote several years to learning practical things in some
large machine shop, power house, or factory. Then reduce the amount of
time that the student must spend in the college shops to a minimum. Use
the machinery only to illustrate the application of the theory. Give the
student every minute of time possible to work on fundamental theory; for a
man can do only so much in a day, whether that work be done by his hands
or with his brain. There is no use in his learning to be an expert lathe hand
in the college shops, for he may have to go all through it again on a bigger
and better lathe. If he learns this work at college he neglects his theory,
which he will find it vastly harder to learn in the years that follow his graduation.
Four years are little enough to learn even the fundamental theory,
especially when each college year is only some eight months long.

But these are all grave questions. They are perplexing. Engineers
doubtless differ regarding them. They require deep study. Changes in
existing methods of instruction should be approached carefully, and with a
full knowledge of modern engineering practice and what will be required of
the young engineer. How then can the college professor be expected to
answer these questions and plan the courses of study without the continual
coöperation and assistance of the practicing engineer?

An Engineering Council, to act in an advisory capacity and composed
of some ten members chosen from the engineering alumni, has been proposed.
Surely such a council would be of inestimable assistance to the
engineering faculty, and aid them to shape the courses of instruction so as
to best meet the difficulties that have been pointed out.

As loyal alumni we have given of our means to the endowment fund,
every cent that we could afford, but every one of us would like to have given
more, had he been able. Here then is an opportunity to give of our time and
our brains. The Council will be of little value unless its members give it
their best thought and are willing to sacrifice ample time to it. Those who
are not on the Council, too, can be of assistance by answering intelligently
and promptly the questions that the Council will doubtless put to them.

Our beloved Alma Mater asks us, through her engineering faculty,
to help her. Let us welcome the opportunity. Let us have the Engineering
Council.

THE ELECTRICAL ENGINEER'S POINT OF VIEW

By Matthew Orpheus Troy, '96, B.S., of Pittsfield, Mass.

I have been requested by the Dean to discuss the above topic from the
point of view of the Electrical Engineer.

After an experience of twenty-four years with one of the largest electrical
manufacturing organizations in the world, I am convinced that the
electrical graduate in the practice of his profession can be of great assistance
to his Alma Mater and to the undergraduate body, and that such assistance
should be rendered. Before taking up more in detail the questions of how
this may best be accomplished through an Engineering Alumni Council, it
may first be well to outline the kinds of work which the modern engineering
graduate may be called upon to perform, and in that way see just what
it is he should expect from his college course in preparation for his life
work.

Without attempting to draw a definite parallel between the electrical
profession and any other, it has been my observation that the electrical
graduate has a very limited choice of paths from his Alma Mater to the first
step of his business career, even though the path he may choose ultimately
branches in every direction, and affords a tremendous range of application—
a range which is constantly expanding.

A very high percentage of each year's electrical graduates head at once
towards the larger electrical manufacturing organizations, or as is more
probable towards one of the two American organizations that substantially
cover the entire field of electrical apparatus manufactured in the United
States. Other paths lead to the large telephone or telegraph interests; to

the operating companies; to the syndicates combining or controlling these
companies; or to the large management, engineering, or operating associations,
of which there are quite a number.

Initially, therefore, he does not have a wide choice as to how he will
direct his steps upon graduation. After having become a part of a large
organization, however, the path which he pursues, either through choice or
force of circumstances, is one of a vast number to which, each year, are
added many others, and I can probably be most helpful in tracing a few of
these paths in a large manufacturing company like the one with which I am
associated.

Assume that the graduate has applied for entrance to the testing department
of an electrical manufacturer and been accepted. Here the
student engineer, so-called, is given an experience of from six to eighteen
months in the testing and inspecting of machines, apparatus, and appliances
of every description. If the demand for men is great his career in the testing
department may be cut to six months. If, however, he is to obtain a reasonably
broad experience his stay may be extended to the full eighteen months.
A year, however, is a fair average.

Twenty years ago, if a man were shifted at reasonable intervals, he
could in a year obtain through his testing experience quite a comprehensive
idea of the product of the manufacturer—the details of construction, as
well as methods of testing and operation. To-day, whether he stay in the
testing department one or two years, he can only obtain an experience
touching upon a few of the more important lines of manufacture, and it is
not improbable that even then, before he completes his work some of the
lines which he tested earlier in his course will have been superseded by a
new product, embracing new developments and new ideas.

A new catalogue recently issued by the General Electric Co., which
only covers certain of its more standardized product, contains over twenty
thousand catalogue numbers, and this omits much of the Company's product.
Over this great diversity of product the graduate's testing experience
is well directed towards that which will be most useful to him in his future
work.

From his testing course the graduate will probably go to a designing-engineering,
a commercial-engineering, or a research department—in most
instances direct to the designing-engineering department, where again his
path may branch in one of many directions.

There are a great number of designing-engineering departments, and
he may from choice or necessity go into any of them. The field is too broad
and life is too short to cover many of them—the probabilities are that his
experience will be limited to one, at the outside two. At this point the
engineer may become a highly specialized designer, carrying on developmental

or specific research work; may remain with the department in some more
or less subordinate position; or may go to the head of it in an administrative
capacity, which calls for ability to direct men, design, developmental, and
research work in the lines for which he is responsible.

Instead of remaining with a designing-engineering department he may
transfer to what is called a commercial-engineering department, of which
there are a large number. These are departments which are intermediate
between the designing and general office selling organizations. They help
the commercial organization in the selection of equipment, or combination
of apparatus best suited to the proposition in hand, or they assist the designing
engineering department in changing its design to suit either general
or specific commercial requirements of specific propositions.

In some instances the commercial engineering work of a given department
is combined directly with the sales proposition work, and there is no
clean-cut line of demarcation between the proposition work and the commercial
engineering relating thereto. Important commercial sections are
usually under the direction of highly trained technical graduates, or at least
under men who through broad experience have developed into broad gauge
commercial engineers. Not infrequently these large commercial departments,
in addition to a commercial engineering department have, as a part
of their staff, consulting engineers, to whom both the proposition men and
the commercial engineering men refer.

If the technical graduate leaves the designing engineering department,
he may take up general commercial work along any of the lines described.
He may be fond of travel—a broader contact with the outside, or for various
reasons wish to enter the outside organization, or it may be to the company's
interest to send him there. Many take this path, and become a part of one
of the various district office organizations. He may go direct from the
designing engineering, commercial engineering, or general commercial departments
to the district offices, and there be assigned to the engineering,
sales, or administrative department of the District.

The electrical salesman of to-day is in a different category from the
electrical salesman of twenty years ago, and in a very different category
from what we generally mean by the term "salesman." He is either a man
of very specialized training—what we term a "specialist"; or he is a very
broadly trained commercial engineer, capable of analyzing and studying
the conditions on a large transmission system, and should be in a position
to advise the engineer of an operating company as to the best selection,
combination, or application of apparatus, appliances, etc. He should be
more properly called either an "engineering specialist" or a "sales engineer."
His foundation is his technical training and engineering experience, but his
success is measured by many other qualities, such as initiative, forcefulness,

personality, his knowledge of people, his ability to assume responsibilities,
his knowledge of psychology, his ability to make wise engineering decisions,
and to convince others of their soundness.

It is a field of endeavor to which many graduates aspire, in which they
succeed, and find much real enjoyment in their work. After this experience
they may later become department heads in the District Offices to direct the
efforts of other sales engineers, or may be put in charge of important offices
where they have large numbers of men under them, direct their efforts, and
become responsible for the success of that office in a given territory or
district.

In the foregoing I have traced a few of the paths more ordinarily pursued.
There are others too numerous to mention. Some of them lead to
the great research departments of manufacturing organizations where
specialization is carried to the extreme, and work is taken up and carried
beyond the point where all other investigators have stopped. They pry into
unexplored fields, and delve into unfathomed depths. It may be the electrical
engineer, the chemist, or the physicist who carried on the work.

The graduate may enter one of the large manufacturing or production
departments, find that he is particularly fitted for this work, and ultimately
become a manufacturing superintendent or a production manager handling
large organizations and an output that runs into many millions of dollars.

He may choose other paths that lead into the general administrative
offices of the company, assist the president or vice-presidents of the organization,
with possibilities in this direction limited only by his own resources.

This aeroplane view of a large manufacturing organization has been
expanded for a particular purpose. I wish to leave the inference that the
work which will open out before the graduate is so tremendous in its magnitude
and scope that no one mind can grasp it all, nor can any college curriculum
cover the field. The curriculum can but lay the foundation on which
the superstructure is built, and the superstructure in the career of each
individual is most apt to differ from that of every other. There may at
times be striking points of similarity, but the structures differ as individuals
differ, and it is very apparent in most instances that the individual's ideals
and abilities form a very important part in creating the superstructure;
furthermore, the superstructure is never finished. It begins when the individual
enters the organization, and continues to the end. There is no
stopping point except as enforced by the limitations of the individual. This
is true even where the individual picks out a particular line of specialization
and adheres to it. The work grows, develops under him, he expands with
it, and adapts himself to the changing conditions of the country and the art.

One point I wish to emphasize particularly is that in a large manufacturing
organization these paths are not charted in advance, except in a

most general way, and the individual graduate from the time of his entrance
into the organization becomes a keen competitor of all his fellow graduates.
Even though all might be progressive, some will progress more rapidly than
others, and the extent to which one rises or forges ahead depends largely
upon his resourcefulness, initiative, and all those qualities which go to make
for leadership. This is a very happy condition because it makes work interesting,
one sees achievement and possibilities ahead of him, and strives
constantly to add to-day to the achievements of yesterday.

In the future of the industry with which the electrical graduate associates
himself, no part of the work is more important than the research work,
even though the research effort departs widely from what is commonly
known as electrical engineering. Many of the greatest advances and noteworthy
achievements are the work of the great research departments associated
with the large manufacturing institutions. The work of these large
research departments is in a measure distinct from the more specific research
work carried on daily in engineering and developmental sections or departments
of the company.

We find a very striking analogy between all this and what is being
accomplished in medicine. One has but to compare the work of the general
practitioner, specialists in medicine and surgery, and the great research
departments of organizations that have given us our serums and anti-toxins
to obtain a picture of what is going on in the large electrical organizations.
The latter has its general engineers, its special engineers assigned to specific
problems, its research work carried on in connection with these specific
problems, and in addition its large research organization which goes into
general problems of every description, and from year to year accomplishes
almost the impossible, often discovering new truths which contradict the
facts of the past as we supposed them to be.

Dr. W. R. Whitney, Director of the Research Laboratory of the General
Electric Co., has written many able articles bearing on this topic, and
these articles are available for reference. A footnote is appended giving
some of them.[1] I cannot refrain, however, from quoting a few extracts from
his address—"Incidents of Applied Research." The diversity of research
work in a large manufacturing organization is summed up as follows:

Looking back on my own experience among the vicissitudes and worries
of the undergraduate, the two things which were uppermost in my mind
were—first, the question expressed in the old song—Where Do We Go From
Here, Boys? My future was a great unknown. I hoped to arrive somewhere,
but I had not the slightest conception where the path would take me.
The second great worry was somewhat associated with the first. Not knowing
what I was to do I had no way of judging which of the great mass of
detail in my curriculum was most important in the work I was later to
pursue, and I know now that I laboriously tried to master many details
subsequently proven to be unimportant and I passed over others of basic
importance.

While there are many ways in which an engineering council, made up of
graduates in service, can assist Alma Mater and the undergraduate, I can,
speaking for the electrical graduate only, say that if it does no more than
assist the undergraduate in the two ways mentioned, i.e., in guiding his steps
after graduation toward the path he is best suited to follow, and in giving
him an idea of what is vital in his undergraduate course, it will accomplish

much for the undergraduate engineer, stimulate interest in electrical engineering,
and thereby assist its Alma Mater.

Under the conditions of to-day, an engineering council could offer very
definite suggestions to the prospective student, the freshman or the senior,
as to the path to choose after graduation, or at least a very definite choice of
paths, and thus having something definite before him, the student will take
up his engineering studies with an added interest. As bearing on this point
I quote from an address by Dr. Whitney at an Alumni Dinner given by
Union College, February 17, 1921:

Referring to the second of my worries as a student, I fear that the first
part of my paper offers no solution, as it emphasizes, even more than does
the diversity of a college curriculum, the wide field to which the graduate
may in future life be expected to apply himself, and emphasizes the impossibility
of complete preparation. This is true. The curriculum can at
most merely lay the foundation, and all of the superstructure has to be
erected in subsequent effort, application, work, and study, but it is of greatest
importance that the foundation be the best which can be devised for the
superstructure which the graduate is to build for himself.

The graduate who has been away from college for many years is not an
authority on textbooks, curriculums, etc., but he should be in a position to
help the University's staff, if only indirectly, by bringing to its attention
from time to time some of the everyday problems which face him in his
outside career. I will not attempt to discuss this phase of the subject in
great detail, but in looking over the present day curriculums they are spread
out too thin in many places, and the foundation is not deep and thorough
enough in others.

I am constantly in contact with electrical graduates, and without having
University of Virginia graduates in mind, I am impressed by the fact that
very few of them really learn their mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
When they have struggled through their mathematics, and passed their
examinations by a narrow margin, possibly having learned enough to appreciate
its importance, they have a feeling that they will pursue the subject
further, and will then perfect themselves. The majority never do; and there
is a tendency in after life to sidestep difficult problems involving mathematics,
or to look for assistance to those who have been more thorough.
They trail rather than lead in this respect, though they may in other directions
make up their shortcomings. A student who has thoroughly learned
his mathematics has a foundation which need not be disturbed, irrespective
of what is new in electrical discoveries—at most only the application has
to be changed.

When a student has obtained his basic training in mathematics, the
application of this training to problems of various descriptions—such as
the solution of electrical equations and the actual design of electrical apparatus—serves
to fix in his mind his mathematical fundamentals so that they
cannot be effaced. A basic training in chemistry and physics is of equal
importance, but in order that these fundamentals, like the mathematics,
may become firmly fixed, or for that matter thoroughly understood, the
laboratory work is of the utmost importance. By this I refer to the experimental
work in the chemical, physical, and electrical laboratories.

Very few electrical graduates have occasion to apply any of the training
they may have received in civil engineering, except in the fundamentals,
particularly the details that cover the use of instruments, transit, etc. He
may in his work with a large operator find that some civil engineering has
to be done, but he is not called upon to undertake such work. A graduate
civil engineer is available for the purpose.

The same is true, though to a somewhat less extent, of large hydraulic
projects. While a general knowledge of these subjects is necessary, it would
appear in the case of the electrical engineer that they could be touched on
lightly, and more time given to fundamental electrical problems.

Knowledge of thermo-dynamics and steam engineering is frequently
of use to the electrical graduate, but it is doubtful if much time should be
devoted to obsolete steam engines, intricate valve motions, and mechanical
features that have outlived their day of usefulness. A more intimate and
thorough study of a representative steam turbine makes for a better foundation.

In industrial chemistry, instead of trying to cover a field of almost
unlimited breadth, let the technical graduate concentrate and learn more
thoroughly the industrial chemistry of what will be most useful to him; the
manufacture and preparation of insulations—their qualities and characteristics;
insulating compounds—their behavior under the action of heat,
oil, and electrical stresses; study of oils for insulation purposes and heat
dissipation; study of porcelains, glass, and other similar materials for their
mechanical and electrical properties, as they relate to the development of
electrical apparatus, and the development of transmission and distribution
systems.

All education is broadening and develops the mind, and on this score
we can defend the study of a great variety of subjects, as a part of the training
of the electrical engineer. There is so much, however, that he should
obtain in his four-year course—in fact so much more than he can obtain of
basic fundamental facts, that are directly applicable to electrical engineering,
that it would seem to me the present day curriculums could be improved
with this thought in view.

While many of the topics above touched upon might be classified as
encyclopædical training, they cover interesting details, apparatus, subjects
and applications which might profitably form parallel reading to the University
course, but should not be allowed to crowd out fundamental training
or fundamental training plus the essentials of a direct professional training.

In closing I would emphasize that this is a day of specialists, whether
it be in finance, business, manufacture, medicine or engineering. The man
who stands out above others in some particular field of endeavor obtains a
satisfaction from his work, a standing and remuneration from his profession
which the general all around good man infrequently receives.

Let the engineering undergraduate pursue fewer subjects, but pursue
them thoroughly, and if possible specialize in some particular field of endeavor,
either research, or the design of a special class of apparatus. The
man who thoroughly masters the transformer diagram, the mathematics
relating to all the formulas involved in the design, who knows the design
thoroughly, who can analyze wave form and study the stresses applied in
service to every piece of insulation under the diversity of conditions to which
the transformer will be subjected, can readily take up the induction motor
and study it in the same way, although he did not have time to do so at
college. It would be better for him in future life to have mastered the transformer
thoroughly than to have obtained a superficial knowledge of both
the transformer and the motor, even though later he specialize in motor
design.

The technical student who will learn thoroughly how to design a 200,000
volt transmission line, understand the phenomena which go on in such a
system—the high voltage stresses, corona losses, behavior under impulses of
every description, steep wave fronts, high frequency line disturbances; who
will learn how to analyze the stresses over its insulators—the reactance,
capacity and induction of the lines—its regulation and compensation, has
placed himself in a position to obtain recognition which cannot be obtained
by the student who has a superficial knowledge of wiring and distribution
in general.

THE CHEMICAL ENGINEER'S POINT OF VIEW

By John Marshall, '13, Chem. E., of Swarthmore, Pa.

Mr. Thornton has asked me to discuss from the standpoint of the
Chemical Engineer the organization of an Alumni Council which would
presumably be advisory to the Faculty of the Engineering Department of
the University in the outlining of courses of instruction. Such a subject as
this at first resolves itself into a discussion of the necessity for the organization
of this Council. Certainly it would have no excuse for existence unless

deficiencies existed in the present courses of instruction which are within
the power of the Alumni to assist in remedying. I wish, therefore, to confine
myself to a discussion of the advisability of establishing this Council.

With my present ignorance of the courses which are offered now in the
Chemical Engineering work at Virginia, it is impossible to give a discussion
of the subject as applied to Virginia alone. So far as I know, the work here
is practically the same as that offered by the other Engineering schools of
the country, and I believe that the Chemical Engineering graduates of
Virginia are on an equal footing as regards knowledge and ability to apply
it with the graduates of other Engineering schools.

There are, however, a number of points which I have noticed in the
Chemical Engineers I have seen in the industry, and things which other
chemists and Chemical Engineers have told me which I believe indicate a
lack in the fundamental training given men of this profession.

In the first place I have never met a man who was able to give me a
good definition of the term "Chemical Engineer." I imagine the first man
to call himself by this title was engaged in the design of chemical plants and
chemical apparatus, and that the usual course in the subject has been based
upon this same idea. The requirements for the Chemical Engineer have
expanded mightily since that time, however, and to-day I suppose that only
a small percentage of the men calling themselves Chemical Engineers are
engaged in apparatus design alone.

My own idea at present of what should constitute a Chemical Engineer
is a man qualified to design a plant for a chemical process, operate the plant,
and develop the process economically, but I would not venture to offer this
as a definition.

It is certain, however, that a satisfactory college course for the Chemical
Engineer cannot be designed unless we have arrived at a sufficiently broad
definition of Chemical Engineering; and here is the first point at which the
Alumni could give assistance, because from their direct contact with the
industry, they should have learned first hand what is required of the Chemical
Engineer.

The next point I have had in mind is linked up in a way with the foregoing,
and has to do mainly with the method in which the colleges bring
home to the student the real nature of the profession he is studying. Chemical
Engineering is a relatively new profession, and the courses of instruction
in it are in the main the result of selection from already existing courses
offered in the same college. As a result, therefore, we have Chemical Engineering
taught as a more or less of a hodge-podge of Civil Engineering,
Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Chemistry, instead of
as a single well-rounded course in Chemical Engineering designed to meet
the needs of a Chemical Engineer. Under this system, the men taking the

work are not given a fair chance to learn what is the nature of their profession
and what will be expected of them in after life.

I realize that this condition of affairs has been inevitable. We cannot
justify the teaching of Chemical Engineering by Chemical Engineers until
the profession has assumed sufficient importance, and until enough men are
applying for Chemical Engineering training to justify it. But I do believe
that constant contact of the Engineering faculty with the chemical industry
and familiarity of the faculty with the needs of the industry as brought out
by that contact would go far towards overcoming the difficulty. The Alumni
Council would present an obvious means by which this contact could be
brought about.

So far I have dealt with generalities, and perhaps the two points so far
raised are sufficient, but there is one particular phase in the training of
Chemical Engineers that I feel should be mentioned as being particularly
lacking. To my mind the thing the Chemical Engineer needs most, and the
thing that he apparently gets least, is ability to analyze a problem or a
process in order to develop the proper method of attack. Perhaps this is
just another way of saying that he lacks research experience. It is reasonable
that he should lack this experience, for his time is sufficiently filled up
while in college with all the other things he must study. But, nevertheless,
it is all-important that he get this ability from his college work, for most of
his success in after years will depend on how rapidly he can reach a conclusion
on questions of change in process or apparatus, and the rapidity with
which he reaches the conclusion will depend directly on the accuracy with
which he has sized up his problem in the first place.

Inseparable from this is the ability to analyze costs. Cost is the final
deciding factor of any chemical operation, and yet, in spite of its evident
importance, I believe I have never seen a Chemical Engineer, or for that
matter a graduate chemist of any description, who when he left college had
any knowledge of how to develop a problem from the cost standpoint. Cost
analysis is not easy under any circumstances, and on a plant producing many
interdependent products, it may be extremely difficult, but the successful
Chemical Engineer will have to learn it some time. If he can learn it in
college, his advancement will be hastened by years.

I do not believe that ability to analyze costs can be gained by a study
of accounting methods, but I do believe that it could be developed in a well-designed
industrial research course in which would be gained research ability
as well. I believe the Alumni could be of assistance here, in helping lay out
such research courses and in selecting problems.

To summarize briefly, it appears to me that the terms Chemical Engineer
and Chemical Engineering have been too vaguely defined in the past
to permit the most logical arrangement of college work; that the various

subjects taught Chemical Engineering students in the past have been imperfectly
correlated; and training in research and cost analysis have been
slighted. I believe the Alumni would be more than glad to give any assistance
possible in overcoming these defects, and it appears to me that the
proposed Alumni Council would be an excellent agency through which this
could be accomplished.

V. The Collegiate Alumni

THE ACADEMIC SCHOOLS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

By William Harrison Faulkner, Ph.D.

In the time at my disposal, it is naturally impossible to give anything
like a history of a century of development in the academic schools of the
University. Nor can I consider the response in their growth to external
conditions. I must limit myself to discussing what seem to me the internal
causes affecting this development. These internal causes can be studied
most systematically in the varying requirements for graduation and degrees.
From this standpoint our discussion may be divided into five periods, viz.:

• 1. The Period of Jeffersonian Ideals, 1825-1831.

• 2. The Period of the Master of Arts of the University of Virginia, 18311890.

• 3. The Period of Transition, 1890-1900.

  • a. To the Undergraduate College.

  • b. To the Graduate School.

• 4. The Period of Full Undergraduate Growth and Development, 19001921.

• 5. The Period of Future Graduate Growth, 1920-

The original Enactments of the Visitors, written by Jefferson and
printed in 1825 (before the faculty had been installed), are, as it were, the
Jeffersonian constitution of the University, under which its great founder
expected it to function and develop. The distinctive and even revolutionary
characteristics of this constitution are, first, the independence, the
autonomy, of the individual school; second, the advanced nature and the
extensive character of the instruction to be given; and third, the freedom of
the individual student to select any course or courses for which he might be
prepared. Under this constitution the University was a federation of sovereign
and allied institutions rather than a single organism. In matters of
discipline only and in the conferring of diplomas did the federal law take
precedence of the rights reserved to the states. With the one exception of
the School of Law, the head of a school was the sole and final arbiter as to

courses offered, textbooks and methods used. Absolute Lehrfreiheit was
the guiding principle.

In the list of subjects to be taught in the individual schools, one is
immediately struck both by the advanced and specialized nature of the
courses to be offered and by the broad conception of the field of learning
allotted to each school. In the schools of Ancient and Modern Languages
were to be taught not only the language and literature, but also the history
and geography, the political and social institutions, the economic conditions,
ancient and modern, of the nations whose languages were studied,—as a
matter of fact, philology in its widest sense. The school of Natural Philosophy
was to give instruction in the whole realm of modern physics, and in
mechanics, geology, mineralogy, botany, and astronomy, that of Mathematics
in all branches of Pure and Applied Mathematics, including surveying,
engineering, and navigation. The school of Moral Philosophy comprised
not only Logic, Ethics, Psychology and Metaphysics, but also
courses in Criticism, Belles Lettres, and Political Economy. The School of
Chemistry was most restricted in its field, being limited to Chemistry and
Materia Medica, the latter, however, being especially for students of medicine.

As is well known, Jefferson's original complete plan included a system
of state-supported commonschools, a group of ten state colleges, and the
University as the apex of his pyramid. When it became evident that circumstances,
political, social, and economic, made impracticable the carrying-out
of the whole scheme, the University alone was retained. The
pyramid was to begin with the apex, the educational arch with the keystone.
Whether such topsy-turvy architecture possessed a validity in the
world of ideas, failing it in the realm of space, time alone could show. In fact,
for over two generations the history of academic schools is that of a constant
effort to build downward, to adapt themselves to a very slowly growing foundation
and thus save the structure from the usual fate of castles in the air.

For Jefferson, uninfluenced by his failure to establish state colleges as
feeders, adhered to the university conception of the institution, as distinguished
from the collegiate; rather a university of instruction, however,
than of research.

And here I feel I must attempt to clear up what seems to me an almost
universal misunderstanding. The freedom in choice of courses given the
individual student was not the so-called elective curriculum, later appearing
as a revolutionary innovation in undergraduate colleges. It was a necessary
concomitant of the University as distinguished from the colleges,—the
Lehrfreiheit of the student as a complement to the Lehrfreiheit of the
professor. Jefferson cannot be called the inventor, or, as some would put it,
the instigator, of unrestricted election in undergraduate education.

Nor was his university, as has sometimes been asserted, a university

The Lawn and Cabell Hall from Top of Rotunda

without a degree. The Enactments of 1825 provide for two diplomas: that
of Doctor and of Graduate. Though not so limited in the Enactments,
the Doctor's diploma was from the beginning restricted to graduates in all
the courses applying to the practice of medicine, and so does not concern us
here. The degree of Graduate in its original application has been frequently
misunderstood. It was not given to any student who merely attained
the first division (the term "passed" is of much later origin) in a senior
course in any school, or in all the courses in the school. This merely qualified
the student as an applicant for candidacy for the degree. The degree
was conferred on the basis of a special examination for graduation. The
scope of these examinations is described in the faculty minutes, and in
addition the actual examination given is outlined in presenting the report
on each individual candidate to the faculty. The examination oral and
written covered every phase of the subject and is essentially the rigorosa of
the German Ph.D., rigorously interpreted. Moreover the original Enactments
provided: "But no diploma shall be given to anyone, who has not
passed such an examination in the Latin Language as shall have proved him
able to read the highest classics in that language with ease, thorough understanding,
and just quantity. And if he be also prepared in Greek, let that
also be stated in the Diploma." The reasons given for this are interesting
as indicating Jefferson's conception of "a well-educated man," and also
what his opinion of any elective system which omitted Latin and Greek
would have been. The regulation continues: "The intention being that
the reputation of the University shall not be committed but to those who,
to an eminence in some one or more of the sciences taught in it, add a proficiency
in those languages which constitute the basis of a good education
and are indispensable to fill up the character of a `well-educated man.' "
This practically amounted to requiring of a graduate in any school or the
recipient of any diploma the completion of Senior Latin and, by implication,
also of Senior Greek. We shall see that it was so interpreted in the case
of each graduate with diploma (including M.D.'s) until the establishment of
the M.A. degree. We shall also see that the graduates of this first period
did not apply for candidacy for the degree until they had attained the first
division in the senior course of the school for two sessions, and that each of
them had regularly won previous to the conferring of the degree similar
distinction at intermediate and final examinations in course in four other
schools, including Latin and, in all cases but one (Grad. in Chem.), also
Greek. By subsequent enactment (April, 1828), the faculty added an
English Examination, to be required of all candidates. This consisted of a
composition of not less than twenty-five lines, on some subject from the
course in which the candidate applied for graduation, and of an examination
in syntax and orthography. It was held before the entire faculty. The
degree of Graduate in a School could not be obtained in less than three
years, and actually was not. Such a degree was what we think of as a
Ph.D., minus a dissertation or thesis. The latter was required only of the
doctors of medicine, and included also the public defense of the thesis, if
the candidate was called on.

Let us see now the working out of these three characteristics of a
university in application to contemporary conditions. Mr. Gilmer had
been eminently successful in his hunt for "characters of the first order."
No new institution of the time could have shown a more competent faculty.
And this faculty proceeded rigorously to put into effect the constitution
drawn up for its guidance and control. The autonomy of the individual
school and the academic freedom of instruction caused no trouble. Quite
otherwise the academic freedom of the student. It became almost immediately
evident that only a few students of exceptional ability and
unusual advantages in preparatory education were willing or able to profit
by university instruction and academic freedom, if success in examination is
a criterion of such profit. The number of students attaining distinction in
examinations in course was very small year by year, and after three sessions
only six made application for the degree of Graduate in a School.

An examination of the record of these first graduates of the University
will show how strictly the stated requirements for graduation were observed
and also the advanced nature of the examinations for graduation. May 31,
1828 was set as the last day on which application for degrees might be made.
The nine applicants (three for M.D.) were examined in English the same
day. All were accepted, though one was recalled and reëxamined, as there
seemed some doubt as to his qualification. The examinations for graduation
began on the fourth Monday in June and the results were reported
to the faculty and the degrees conferred on the 14th and 17th of July. Four
examinations of two hours each were held in Greek: two in writing, on
Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, and on Greek prosody,
especially the trochaic, iambic, and anapæstic of tragedy; two on Greek
history, geography, and philology; and an oral on Xenophon. The two
examinations on Mathematics were held on separate days and consisted
of questions selected from one hundred examples from Peacock's Collection
of Examples in Differential and Integral Calculus, and of questions chosen by
the faculty from La Place's Traité de Mécanique Céleste and from Coddington's
Optics. The two examinations in Chemistry of two hours each
covered the following topics: the Rationale of all Chemical Operations; the
Elements of Practical Chemistry, more particularly with respect to the use
of Tests and Apparatus; Nomenclature; Laws of Composition; Applications
of Chemistry; History of the Science. In addition the candidates in
Chemistry were required to furnish a week before examination a written

statement of all speculative subjects in Chemistry, and to explain, if called
upon, the existing theories respecting them, and to write by dictation upon
subjects connected with Chemical Technology. Each candidate had attained
eminence for two sessions in the senior course of the school in which he
graduated. In addition each had passed on four other senior courses. These
in every case included Senior Latin, and in every case but one Senior Greek.

This then was the academic degree system in theory and practice until
the M.A. was instituted. I have gone into it in some detail, because the
three principles involved: the autonomy and independence of the individual
school; the high standard for graduation with almost exclusive emphasis on
the senior courses; and the freedom in choice of studies allowed to the
student, dominated the development of the academic courses for nearly
three quarters of a century and influences it strongly even to-day.

It had become evident that the degree of Graduate in a School either
could or would be sought by only about one student in twenty. In 1828,
the year in which these first diplomas were conferred, began in the faculty
the discussion of a more general and coördinated degree. Three years later
the Master of Arts of the University of Virginia was superimposed on the
degree of Graduate. From the scanty records available of the discussion
preceding the recommendation of the degree, the faculty seems to have
intended by it to obviate the disadvantages of study without fixed plan—in
other words, to supply a curriculum. The degree of Graduate in a School, as
originally conferred, was beyond the powers of nine out of ten of the students.
This new degree required graduation in all six schools, a total of eight senior
courses, as Latin and Greek were both required in Ancient Languages, and
one Romanic and one Germanic tongue in Modern Languages. As three
schools a year had already become the standard maximum of work undertaken
by each student, the degree could not be taken in less than three
sessions, and then only if the student entered prepared to take senior courses
in all subjects but one.

At first there was no abatement in the difficult standard of graduation
in the individual school, except that Latin was no longer rquired as a
qualification for the diploma. The distinction between examinations for
graduation and examinations for distinction was still made. In addition,
the candidate had also to stand before graduation a general examination in
all courses required for the degree, and show by examination a satisfactory
knowledge of English, and also to prepare a graduation essay or thesis.
These last three requirements, however, were gradually relaxed in severity
and finally abolished.

There still remained, however, the most striking characteristic of the
degree,—the almost exclusive emphasis placed on the senior courses. This
seems to have had two effects,—disregard of the educational importance of

lower courses, and a gradual common-sense reduction in the amount of work
required in the higher ones as the number of academic schools increased.

Prior to the period of the development of the sciences as educational
subjects, only two additions were made to Jefferson's original six academic
schools. From the beginning the University had been subject to criticism
because it offered no specific instruction in English and General History.
Jefferson probably considered that History would be sufficiently provided
for in the schools of Ancient and Modern Languages, and that the courses
in Latin and Greek would afford adequate training in English composition
while the course in Anglo-Saxon would teach the history and development
of the language. From the beginning, however, the faculty imposed an
additional English requirement. Finally in 1856-57, the establishment of
the School of History and Literature was announced, with that most versatile
of scholars, George Frederick Holmes, as Professor. At first, the
instruction was for the most part in English Composition, with lectures on
Literature, but gradually, the interest of the head of the school shifted to
General History and Sociology, with consequent change in the courses offered.
Its courses were not listed among those required for the M.A. until after
1856, so that the requirements of the degree remained unchanged until then.

The second new school made no increase in the courses given. By
1857 the number of students in Latin and Greek was so great as to be beyond
the strength of a single professor, even with two or three assistant-instructors.
In 1858, therefore, Basil L. Gildersleeve was elected Professor
of Greek, and the School of Greek created as an independent school. The
precedent thus established, that the creation of a new professorship meant
the establishment of a new independent school, was closely adhered to until
1905. The logical development of Jefferson's broadly conceived academic
schools would have been the creation of professors of individual subjects in a
school, without further subdivision. This departure seems to the writer
to have been unfortunate. It weakened the individual school. It led to
lack of coördination in the programmes, both undergraduate and graduate,
subsequently established. And the principle of the independence and equal
importance of the academic schools, now applied to what should have been
minor subdivisions, produced an impossible multiplication of subjects
required for the "old M.A," and even for the first real undergraduate degree
established, so that freedom of election amounted to little more than a
choice (frequently unwise) of the chronological order in which the required
courses could be taken.

In connection with the School of Greek comes the first indication that
the degree of Graduate in a School was no longer the highest conception of
specialized academic study. In 1859-60, the School of Greek announces
the formation of "a post-graduate department, in which graduates and

more advanced students have opportunity to extend their acquaintance
with Greek literature under the personal direction of the Professor. The
course embraces such of the higher Greek classics, as are unsuited, either by
form or by subject, for the general instruction: e.g.: Æschylus (sic),
Aristophanes, Aristotle, Hesiod, Pindar, Theocritus." Seven graduates in
Greek of the previous session entered it, among these Launcelot M. Blackford,
later the most distinguished preparatory-school principal of the South,
and H. H. Harris, afterward Professor of Greek in Richmond College.
When the close of the Civil War allowed the wounded veteran to return to
the University, Professor Gildersleeve resumed the post-graduate course.
It continued to enroll from half a dozen to a dozen graduates annually, and
was, so far as I have been able to discover, the first graduate course, in the
modern sense, offered in an American university. In 1867 a similar "postgraduate
department" in the School of Latin was announced by Professor
William E. Peters.

In spite of its long history and the fanatic reverence shown it, even
by those students who could never hope to obtain it, "the old M.A." did
not fulfill the purpose with which the faculty established it, nor was it suited
to educational needs. It was too general for graduate work and yet the
courses required were too advanced for the great mass of academic students.
By depreciating the esteem in which the degree of Graduate in a School was
originally held, it lowered the high standard of graduation in the individual
school, without producing, in compensation, courses suited to the great
majority of the students. Finally, it was so difficult that scarcely one
student out of twenty could ever hope to obtain it or actually did. In
consequence the other nineteen lacked, while students, the sense of organic
connection with the University which a candidate for a degree has; were
without the added incentive to successful work which this gives; saw no
especial academic inducement for more than a session or two of study;
and, leaving without a degree, had not, as alumni, that feeling of continuing
membership in the living organism of the University which a degree gives.

The faculty was not unaware of these defects. In 1848 it established
a B.A. degree, but one that shows how difficult it was to break with the
tradition of the overweening importance of the senior courses, especially in
Latin and Greek, and the independence and equal sovereignty of the academic
schools. It required graduation in all but two schools and a proficiency
in the junior courses of the remaining two, and was therefore almost as difficult
as the M.A. Despite this it seems to have been regarded as a contemptible
consolation prize. At any rate, few students ever applied for it.

After the Civil War, during the period in which schools of Biology and
Agriculture, Analytical and Industrial Chemistry, and Geology were
established, repeated efforts were made to break from the "old M.A.'s"

dominating influence without abolishing it. New baccalaureate degrees,—
at one time three in addition to the B.A.,—were instituted. None "took,"
so to speak. All suffered the fate of the first B.A. The addition of new
schools, with new M.A. courses, as they had now come to be called, only
increased the impracticability of the Master of Arts degree.

Despite this, the development of the University continued, a development
that must be attributed to the ability, scholarship, and personality of
the individual professors rather than to any coördinated educational plan.
Nor were these qualities confined to the lecture-room. Two of the faculty
became, through their books, great popular educators. The names of
McGuffey and Holmes carried the reputation of the University into almost
every primary school in the country. In addition to this, Professor Holmes
quickly became one of the most prolific and versatile of publicists, his versatility
being only equaled by the soundness and depth of his scholarship.
Dr. Mallet began the publication of those articles which were to make his
name familiar to every chemist, while Professor Schele de Vere's publications
in linguistics and etymology gave the University international standing in
these rapidly developing sciences, and Courtenay's Calculus was long a standard
work in this branch of mathematics. To the weight of scholarship and
learning in these and other members of the faculty was added the energizing
force of the strong and distinctive personality of each individual.

Nor would I imply that the great mass of academic students, who went
away without degree, were on this account uneducated. Their training
had resembled that which one acquires in the contacts of real life in the
world rather than the coördinated discipline of a curriculum. They had
been educated by personalities rather than subjects. And the man who had
"had" "old Pete" or Colonel Venable or Basil Gildersleeve, or Dr. Mallet or
Professor Smith may have failed on Latin, Mathematics, Greek or Physics,
but he had learned something that none of these subjects alone could have
taught him. Moreover, the students of this middle period, particularly in
the ante bellum decade, had an intellectual stimulus, which their present
successors seem to me to have lost They belonged to a governing class,—
an aristocracy, if you will. Almost without exception, each one could look
forward, in one way or another, to direct power in political life. Their reading,
as shown in the library records, their work in the literary societies, even
their daily conversation, so far as we have record of it, reflects this. In
this respect they resembled rather the students of Oxford and Cambridge,
those universities of English diplomacy and statesmanship, than the student-body
of the modern American college. Their history in after life shows that
education and leadership are not matters of a degree.

The twenty years, approximately 1870-90, closing the life of the old
M.A., are characterized by certain salient features. First, the growth

in natural science and the development of laboratory work; second, the
shifting of emphasis from Latin and Greek to Modern Languages, English,
and History. With each professorship a new school was established,—
independent and of equal importance with its sister sovereignties. The
M.A. was thus threatening to topple over from its own weight. Finally,
after a long and acrimonious conflict with alumni, the faculty recommended
in 1890 its abolition. In its place were instituted a new B.A., requiring
passing on nine intermediate courses, classified into groups of related subjects,
and a new M.A., conferred on B.A.'s who passed on four additional
senior courses. For the first time in the history of the University the distinction
was made between undergraduate and graduate courses, and the
foundation laid for a college.

At first, as was to be expected, the new baccalaureate degree was
strongly influenced by the conception of the importance and comprehensive
character of the work of the individual school. The small number of
courses required for it, as compared with baccalaureate degrees in other
colleges, was based on the assumption that concentration on three subjects
in a single session was better educationally than to cover the same ground in
each subject in two sessions, at the rate of from five to six courses a year.
Experience proved, however, that this was a mistake, and in 1911 all the old
intermediate courses (now designated B courses) except those in laboratory
sciences, were divided into B1 and B2 courses of a year each. The baccalaureate
degree thus became the normal 60 session-hour degree of the
standard American college, and the differentiation between the College and
the Graduate school was fully established.

During this period of transition,—indeed at its very beginning,—an
addition of transcendent importance was made to the number of academic
schools: the foundation in 1892 of the Linden  Kent  Memorial School of
English Literature, with Professor Charles W.  Kent  as its first professor.
The school of English, established in 1882, had not been a success, and the
undergraduate students were without systematic training in English composition
and Rhetoric and Modern English Literature. To a group of
alumni, who knew Dr.  Kent  and most of whom were students under him, it
is not necessary to emphasize the astounding development in these allimportant
subjects, that is due to his scholarship, educational statesmanship,
unremitting industry, high standard of work, and enthusiastic and
inspiring personality.

With the differentiation of undergraduate from graduate courses
begins also the period of close connection between the University and the
public-school system of the state, dreamed by Jefferson but so long denied
fruition. Its first sympton was the institution and growth of so-called A1
courses in foreign languages, English, and Mathematics, to fill in the gap

which was found to exist between the end of the high-school course and the
B.A. courses in the University. From this time on the coördination between
the state's secondary and higher education gradually becomes perfected.

In one particular, however, the 60-hour baccalaureate degree from 1911
still showed the influence of the independence and equal importance of the
individual academic school of the old M.A. Each school, new or old, desired
and frequently claimed, directly or indirectly, equal representation in the
degree programme. This led to such multiplication of small groups of
required subjects that the student's election of studies amounted to not much
more than a choice of the chronological order in which the required subjects
might be taken. This defect has been removed by the new baccalaureate
programme, effective next session, which provides for fundamental subjects
in the first two sessions, free election during the last two, and for concentration
by requiring that the candidate shall have completed in one
school a C course to which six hours, or two B courses, are prerequisite.

In conclusion I would sum up by saying that we have freed ourselves
from the mere letter of the original Enactments, but have remained true to
their spirit. After a century the apex of the pyramid has not been lowered
but has built downward to a firm foundation, the keystone has developed the
arch. And the result is not a dead structure, but a living organism, capable
of almost infinite growth.

A prophet is notoriously without honor in his own country. From
prophecy I would therefore refrain. I would state only what seem to me the
two general problems which the academic schools must now face and solve:
first, the evolution of some plan, which will give both stimulus and recognition
to the undergraduate student of unusual ability and special intellectual
interests: something in the nature of the Honors Schools at Oxford; and
second, the development of the graduate department, with its masters' and
doctors' degrees, into a great fountain-head of scholarship and productive
research, in keeping with the ideal of our great founder.

In the papers to be read before the separate sections, I feel sure we may
hope to find the method of approach and solution of these two problems.

I. The Language and Literature Group

THE PRESENT CRISIS IN MODERN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

By Robert Herndon Fife, Ph.D., Columbia University

The bromidic remark, heard very often three years ago, that "things
will never be the same after the war" has proved as true a prediction in the
field of modern language instruction as in other fields. The war seemed at
first to bring an immense increase of interest in our subject. For the first

time in history America sent its soldiers to fight on the soil of Europe, with
its sharp linguistic divisions and rivalries. To hundreds of thousands of
young Americans, French ceased to be a memory of the school bench or an
unreal tradition of something far off and unknown and became the daily
speech of comrades in trench and field and of a citizenry bound to ourselves
in the daily routine of a common cause. German, somewhat more often
heard here as a living language, and consequently more vital to us, was no
longer merely the vernacular of handworker or cheese-and-butter merchant,
but became the expression of the spirit, living in the mouth of prisoner or
captor, of a nation in arms, seeking to destroy our ideals. Italian and Polish,
Russian and Bohemian, Servian and Roumanian and Greek, all shot into
reality and half a dozen more tongues forced themselves as living organisms
into the consciousness of the youth of America, which up to that time had
scarcely dreamed of their existence.

The first result of all this was to demonstrate how insufficient and unpractical
our instruction in the modern languages had been. Young men
and women, who had spent precious years in the acquisition of what they
fondly imagined was a practical knowledge of the French language, found
themselves face to face with Frenchmen and unable to understand the first
word or express the most urgent want, and even months of intercourse
with the people of the country was insufficient to do more than supply the
means of conveying the simplest daily needs, because of the lack of a proper
basis of training in idiom and vocabulary.

One immediate consequence of the declaration of war was a tremendous
growth of interest in the language of the associated nation on whose soil
the western front was drawn. In camp and cantonment, in school and club
the size of the classes in French depended only on the number of available
teachers. These teachers were often blind leaders of the blind; but if they
had been the most expert of their profession, the conditions under which
they had to work could have made anything like real success out of the
question. For it now became generally clear, something which of course
was known already to the trained teacher, that the use of a modern language
for any practical purpose is an art which, to be acquired successfully,
needs the plasticity of youth and a perseverance and method which the
crowded months of the war could not admit. The urgent days of the
struggle and of repatriation of the forces did little more for the study of the
foreign modern languages than to show the defects in our system.

This revelation of defect was, however, of sanitary value, for it came at
a time when America's changed position as a result of the Great War put a
practical knowledge of the modern languages among the absolute imperatives
of national security. Whatever currents may flow on the surface of
the political waters, however politicians who have been washed to the top

by the muddy ebb-tide of war may prate of American isolation or appeal to
short-sighted selfishness with smug platitudes about America's national
interests, the intertwining of our affairs with those of Europe cannot be
undone. Economic forces as irresistible as those geological changes that
come with the cooling of the planetary crust have set us down among
Frenchmen and Italians and Germans and Poles and Czechs and Russians
and have made us industrially dependent on these peoples. Heretofore it
has been simply the bonds of a common civilization that have held us to the
Continent, and these have been drawn mainly through England. From
now on it is the life cords of economic preservation and national development
which unite our banks and farms and factories to the capitals and
commercial centers of every European country. We have recently witnessed
the effort, more or less disguised, of both former associates and foes
to make America out of its wealth pay the cost of the outbreak of European
jealousy and ambition. We may rest assured that unless we are fully
equipped for defense in the field of international finance and commerce, we
shall not only find ourselves paying the German indemnity and rebuilding
France but left behind in the planetary race for commerce which is even now
being staged.

Unfortunately also, the war has brought about changes in modern
language instruction which have left us poorly prepared to face the present
crisis. German has been very largely driven from the schools. This came
as a result of conditions which brought us into the conflict and through the
impulsive character of our national temperament; but the consequences
have been none the less destructive and from the standpoint of national
strength deplorable, for in 1917 German was, as a rule, the best taught of the
foreign languages and as a branch of secondary school and collegiate instruction
was in many parts of the country on the way to develop a methodology
of teaching at least on a par with that of the better English schools
and not far below that of the Continental schools themselves. French
was immediately lifted into a position of tremendous importance, with the
resulting overcrowding of classes. Teachers, whose sole equipment consisted
of some knowledge of the French verbs and the buoyant disposition
that came with the outburst of national enthusiasm, were put in charge of
classes where overcrowding would have made success impossible under the
most experienced instructor. Spanish, which five years ago was scarcely
known as a high school subject in the New England, North Atlantic, and
Middle Western states has, through the indifference of school directors and
as a result of an unheard-of propaganda, been given an importance among
school subjects which is far out of proportion to its cultural and scientific
value, and in most sections of our country in no relation whatever
to its commercial significance. As a matter of course, no consideration

whatever has been given to the desperate lack of trained teachers of Spanish.
Many men and women, formerly efficient teachers of German, have become
inefficient and discouraged teachers of Spanish. While it must be said of
these that they have at least had some general pedagogical experience in
modern language instruction, which may in part compensate for an ignorance
of Spanish, a great number of the newly recruited teachers of Spanish
lacks even this asset.

It would be bad enough if we had simply destroyed our former values.
We have done more. We have shaken the confidence of school superintendents
and the public generally in the teaching of the modern languages.
From every side comes the statement that pupils are discouraged and
unwilling to continue the subject, that school principals have either reduced
the already insufficient time assigned to the modern languages or threaten
to eliminate them altogether, that school committees are not sympathetic,
that parents are restive and want to see their children taught something
where demonstrably useful results may be obtained.

It must be said that the attitude of certain modern language teachers is
not of a character to recommend the subjects which they represent. At a
time when the value of violent and persistent propaganda has been demonstrated
to a sufficiency in every country in the world, the modern language
teacher has not failed to note the lesson and has cried his wares with an
insistency that does credit to a commercial age. The German teacher, to
be sure, has been under the shadow; but with the coming of technical peace
he may be trusted to rush to the fore with the others. In the meantime the
representatives of French have found conditions most favorable. The
Spanish and Latin propagandists have fought merrily over the bones of
German instruction and proclaimed the value of their substitute with
unhalting voice. The advocates of Russia were warming up for an advance
on the schools in 1917, when certain events in St. Petersburg brought their
advance to a sudden halt. Italian has a small but vociferous band of devotees.
Brazilian trade,—or its promise,—brought Portuguese to the fore
in certain cities, while the nationalistic urge from Ireland and commercial
prospects in the Orient have led to an enthusiastic demand that the schools
teach Gaelic and Chinese. In the larger cities of the East there are signs
that Poles and Czechs and Jugo-Slavs look yearningly toward a share in the
modern language programs of the schools supported by public funds.

Under these circumstances it is inevitable that the public mind should
be greatly confused as to the purpose of modern language study. The
nationalistic propaganda which the war has so much intensified fills the air
with its watchwords and seeks to make a battle-ground of our American
schools. Even those who should be able to take an expert and objective
view of education are often unclear in their own minds as to the object of

teaching foreign modern languages and the choice of the languages to be
taught, so that the average teacher is left without any proper idea of purpose
and method. School committees and school principals, all too ready to
yield to local political and quasi-political pressure, are without direction or
leadership and swing with the emotional currents of the day. In view of this
chaotic condition, it may be proper in the few minutes remaining to me to
formulate some ideas on this matter. Aside from the importance of the
national crisis, there are two considerations which make the discussion of the
problem peculiarly proper on this occasion. First, the great interest which
Mr. Jefferson took in instruction in the modern languages both at William
and Mary and at this institution, which was the first in America to teach the
modern languages as carefully as the classical; and, secondly, the distinguished
position which the graduates of this University have taken in the
service of the nation. It is from this standpoint, that of service to the
country rather than that of benefit to be derived by the individual, that
the subject should be viewed in the present crisis.

From this viewpoint, then, there are three purposes from which the
study of modern languages derives importance: for trade and commerce,
for scientific research, and for national culture. I need make no apology
at the present time for placing the cultivation of our national trade in the
first position, since through its success alone can the national bases of wealth
and progress be made permanent. It is not necessary to point out that the
time has passed when we can hope to be self-dependent, either as an industrial
nation or as a producer of raw materials. It is well known that even
before the war the United States was organized industrially to a point where
foreign markets had become a necessity for our factories, and the years from
1914-1918 speeded up this organization until not merely the prosperity,
but even the solvency of great communities in the New England and North
Atlantic states and the Middle West depend on gaining foreign markets.
It is also too well known to repeat that the war has made us a creditor
nation, something which creates an entirely new dependency on the maintenance
of intimate relations with Europe and the Orient. In the race for
the world's business we shall now have to strike into a faster pace than
that which marked our easy-going methods of seven or eight years ago.
This is perfectly clear to those who will look across the two oceans and see
how the nations of the world are stripping themselves for the conflict.
The knowledge of foreign languages was not the least of the assets which
Germany possessed before the war and by means of which she was able to
elbow her way into the front rank of exporting nations after 1895. That
is a lesson which England especially has learned from her rival. The
appointment of a committee to investigate modern studies, by Mr. Asquith
in 1916, and its important report show how fully the eyes of the British had

been opened to the necessity for overcoming the advantage which Germany
enjoyed in this field before the war. Unless American banks and exporters
and importers can find young Americans who have laid at least a sound basis
for the command of the leading languages of commerce, they will have to
entrust their trade commissions and trade secrets to foreigners. In the race
for primacy in trade the two great rivals whom we shall meet in every market
are the British and Germans, both of whom have through their geographical
position superior advantages in learning modern languages. We
must not be deceived by the fact that we enjoy for the present advantages in
capital and the disposal of raw materials. The time is not distant when
American business will have to meet the foreign trader on a battle-ground
where educational equipment will count as heavily as material assets.

The second great national demand in modern language instruction
comes in the field of scientific research. Both in the natural sciences and
the human sciences America has to create and maintain the bases
of national greatness. In the steel industry, in textiles, in the chemical
trades and in every branch of electrical technique and agricultural chemistry
and biology, an up-to-date knowledge of the languages of the other
great producing nations is in a new sense a part of the alphabet of the
scientist. The war has made the sciences more truly international than ever
and has welded into an indissoluble union laboratory experiment and
national production, both agricultural and industrial. No nation can
afford to rest its knowledge of what is being accomplished in foreign laboratories
to any great extent on the circumlocutory methods of translation.
Its scholars, down to the last laboratory assistant, must be trained in at
least the chief languages of research. If this is true of the physical scientist,
it is equally true of the historian, the economist, and the philosopher. The
possibilities of national culture and the ability for leadership depend on the
ability to take part in the great international exchange of ideas with those
nations which aspire to leadership in civilization.

National greatness depends not only on factory and farm, on scientist's
laboratory and scholar's study. It depends also upon the ability of
the great mass of educated men and women, especially such molders of
public opinion as clergymen, journalists, and political leaders, to share
at least to some extent, in the culture of other peoples. Some one has said
that while training makes men better citizens, culture makes them better
men. No nation, least of all America, can live to itself. We believe ourselves
engaged in the creation of a peculiar and original type of national
culture, but the whole basis for it in school and college is that European
culture from whose loins our own has sprung. In this sense our national
history is the prolongation of the history of England, Holland, France,
Germany, Italy, and Spain, and to some extent of the Scandinavian North.

Our poets are the heirs of Burns and Tennyson, to be sure, but also of Dante
and Goethe. Our drama is sprung from the stock of the English stage,
from Shakespere to Shaw, but also from the French realists and Ibsen
and Hauptmann. Our novel traces a long line of ancestors, which include
not only Fielding and Thackeray, but also Cervantes and Mérimée. No
American national culture is thinkable that does not rest on what is best and
most characteristically national in the civilization of Western Europe,
none that does not keep step with the philosophical, political, and economic
theory and the belletristic literature of the great peoples across the Atlantic.

The question as to the choice of modern languages for study in the
American schools and colleges is not one that can be decided a priori.
America is large and the various contacts with its continental and trans-marine
neighbors make varying demands on its business and professional
life. A very strong reason for the study of Spanish exists in the Gulf States
and Southwestern states. The importance of the Oriental trade makes it
advisable to give especial attention on the Pacific coast to the languages of
the Far East. Nevertheless, for the great bulk of American youth the question
has to be decided on broadly national grounds, with a full consciousness
of the great significance of the decision. As a rule our schools can offer no
more than two foreign languages and they do well, indeed, if they can give
efficient instruction in these. In comparison with this last consideration, the
quality of instruction, all others are of secondary importance. It is much
better to do French or German well, for instance, than to try to do French and
German, or French, German and Spanish, as has been tried in many poorly
equipped schools. It must be remembered that while each language has
concrete values and peculiar charm, when a choice is made, regard must be
had to all the factors of national service that have been outlined above.
Thus, while Italian ranks very high for the student of literature and perhaps
also of the theory of the State, its value in other fields is in so far negligible
that it cannot come into consideration where the limit is two languages for
the average high school boy or college boy. It must be emphasized also
that our schools and colleges teach a European history and civilization and
that we live to a great degree from a foreign trade that is in the main European,
though increasingly Latin-American and Oriental. In the economy of
educational life we are driven to confine ourselves to those languages which
open widest the door to all sides of business and cultural possibilities.

For purposes of general culture French stands first for the American
student as for the youth of every people in Europe. The justice of this is so
generally recognized by all who have any knowledge of the history of
Europe since the Crusades and of present-day European conditions that it
seems unnecessary to enlarge upon it. In assigning the second position from
this standpoint, one might select Italian, but for one very important consideration.

As French has been for generations the lingua franca for the
culture of Western Europe, German plays the same rôle to the East of the
Rhine and north of the Alps. For centuries even those nations which, like
the Poles and Czechs, have been in arms against the German advance have
depended upon Germany as their medium of communication with Western
Europe for all branches of culture as well as for business. The same is true,
though to a less degree, of the Scandinavian peoples, and to an even greater
extent of the peoples of the Eastern Baltic and Russia. To their own
immense and significant contributions to physical and historical theory and
economic theory and also to those of their neighbors to the East and North
the Germans open a door which must of necessity pass through Central
Europe. From the Scandinavian tier of states, Ibsen and Björnson and
Strindberg and such moderns as Bojer and Nexö and Lagerlöf found their
way into world literature first through German translations. The same
is true of Tolstoy and Gorki and Sienkiewicz and of dozens of minor novelists,
dramatists, poets, and essayists of the Scandinavian and Slavic world, many
of whom would remain unknown outside their own vernacular but for the
busy German translators.

In the field of science the same is true. Here only two languages really
come into consideration, German and French: the latter through the accomplishment
of its scholars in the fields of the mathematical and historical
sciences, medicine and philosophy; the former through its philosophers,
chemists, physicists, biologists, geologists, and mineralogists. Here again
German plays a significant and indispensable rôle as the intermediary between
West and East. For instance, all of the states that came into existence
as a result of the dissolution of the Austrian Empire and the plucking
off of parts of old Russia have been for many years busily engaged in the
development of their own national culture. The universities at Warsaw and
Cracow and Lemberg, at Dorpat, Prague, Agram and Budapest are centers of
a throbbing national culture that regards the national language as its most
cherished and distinguished asset emblem. Many of these universities
have made in the past important contributions to the world's store of
science and it is probable that under the present conditions these contributions
will be greatly increased. For centuries, however, the Slavic and
Hungarian scholars have depended on German to make their discoveries
known to the western world. It is not presumable that it can ever be otherwise,
for whatever political ties may bind these peoples to England and
France, the bases of their scientific and business life rest on an ancient bilingual
tradition, in which German holds its place as the Koiné of Eastern
Europe.

The gradation series of importance for general culture for American
students then reads, in my opinion, French, German, Italian, Spanish.

For scientific research the position of the two leading languages should
be reversed. In neither field does Spanish play an important part.

Conditions are, however, different when we consider the position of
America in the field of commerce. Here indications point to a relatively
diminishing importance for French as compared with the other languages.
Here Spanish makes a far stronger claim to consideration, for the spread
of the study of Spanish since the war rests on a solid basis, though perhaps
not so broad a one as its more vociferous advocates claim. Its importance
to be sure, lies mainly in the future, but that there is an immense and hitherto
undreamed-of responsibility both politically and commercially in our
relation to the countries to the south of us is one of the results of the falling
of the scales from our eyes that came after 1914. That we were once blind
in this direction does not, however, excuse us for becoming blind in another
direction, for blind we shall surely be if we permit ourselves, in view of the
present disorders in Russia and Central Europe, to overlook what a great
share of our national prosperity depends on the trade of the part of the world
whose Koiné is German. In general, in the choice of the language to be
studied for commerce, some regard must be had to regional considerations.
For the New England and North Atlantic and North Central tier of states,
the Central and Eastern European markets are of the greatest significance,
and even for the cotton-producing states of the South the finger of necessity
points in that direction.

It is far from my purpose to be dogmatic or to do more than to seek to
lay before you the present condition of affairs in modern language instruction
and what seem to be the fundamental bases upon which reconstruction
must rest. In this hour of our national history, when so much
depends upon the discovery of means of economic relief and cultural development,
the country needs no ex parte statements or a priori conclusions.
What it does need desperately is a broad survey of the situation by patriotic
men, among whom ought to be included not merely modern language experts
but practical educationalists and men of affairs, who shall go deeply into the
reasons and methods of modern language study in America and prepare a
program that puts the needs of public service in the foreground.

THE DEMAND FOR TEACHERS OF FRENCH AND SPANISH

By H. Carrington Lancaster, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

When I was asked to come here to-day and offer some constructive criticism
in order to show how the University would best fulfil its function in
regard to the teaching of French and Spanish, I felt somewhat overwhelmed
by the thought that the institution where I learned to appreciate this field
of knowledge should turn to me for suggestions concerning it. But I soon

came to the conclusion that you really regard me as one of many scouts
you have been sending out and that I am now called back to headquarters
merely to report on conditions as I have found them. What you prefer to
hear from me must be the conclusion to which I have come as a result of
finding myself at one of those cross roads in academic life where students
come to prepare themselves for the profession of scholar and teacher; and
college presidents to fill up gaps in their faculties.

From the outlook that I get from that observation post I have no hesitation
in saying that the great need of the profession just now is student raw
material of the quality that is produced here at Virginia. This has not
always been the case, for there was a time when our greatest need was of
another sort. But in recent years opportunities for graduate study in the
Romance languages have been greatly improved. Universities are better
equipped in books and scientific journals. The intercollegiate library loan
helps to supply the books that many institutions cannot buy. There is a
far greater variety of specialists than formerly in the various fields. There
are more numerous reviews in which they can publish their work. Opportunities
for study abroad have increased decidedly. When I was a student
it was rarely, if at all, that a man went to Europe on a traveling or research
fellowship. Now there are special organizations that provide scholarships
generously and many universities have traveling fellowships of their own.

Moreover French and Spanish scholars are more ready to coöperate
with us than they used to be. American exchange professorships, clubs like
the American University Union in Paris, and most of all the war itself have
helped to bring us all together. Proposals are now pending that may
enable Americans to study for the doctorat-ès-lettres.

In our own Universities, as well as in the French, Romance philology
and medieval literature are no longer taught to the exclusion of modern
literature, so that another reason that may formerly have kept students out
of the Romance field has ceased to exist.

Statistics recently published in the Modern Language Journal, though
by no means complete, illustrate the great increase among students of these
subjects. In some 109 colleges and universities there were, in 1914, 10,177
students of French; in 1920 there were 19,501. In 1914 there were only
2049 students of Spanish in those institutions; in 1920 there were 12,545.
Indeed, whether we approve or disapprove of this orientation in cultural
studies, the fact is that the public is coming to look upon the Romance
languages next to English, as the chief subject for study among the humanities;
upon the Romance languages with History as the chief subjects by
which we can learn to understand our neighbors in Europe and in Latin
America.

So large is the number of those who study French in an important

western university that the department has had to limit the size of beginners'
sections, but the limit is forty! It is superfluous for me to point out
to you the kind of results one gets from classes of this size unless one is an
adept in the college yell method of instruction which had, as you remember,
a certain vogue in army camps a few years ago.

But with even so generous a limitation there are not enough teachers for
the classes. When I left the Johns Hopkins in June, 1907, there were only
two openings that I had heard of and I was in a position to hear of any that
were reported to the department. This year, my colleagues and I in the
same department have been written to by the authorities in seven colleges
and nine universities. In the list occur a number of our leading institutions
and all of the positions are such that they would give a satisfactory start
to a Ph.D in Romance languages. In some cases we have been able to
supply the man or the woman needed, but in most cases we have not been
able to do so. We are considerably embarrassed by our inability to meet
this demand. The kind of man they usually want is one who understands
the American college boy, who has been abroad enough to speak French or
Spanish with fluency, who can interpret a foreign literature and a foreign
civilization with understanding, and who has shown in his own scholarship
enough originality and energy for him to be counted on for future additions
to the general knowledge of the subject.

Now we do get Ph.D. students who will develop into this type of man,
but we get far too few. And when I say we, I do not mean merely the
University with which I am connected, for I am sure you will get the same
reply from Chicago and Princeton, from Columbia and from Harvard. And
where are we going to turn?

Not, I think, to foreigners to any considerable extent. Several of them
are among our leading scholars and teachers, but their numbers are strictly
limited and necessarily so. Initial difficulties with our speech, more serious
difficulties with our ways militate against the success of many. Those who
have already won fame in their own country are not likely to leave it permanently.
We must, then, depend chiefly on Americans, just as France
depends upon Frenchmen for instruction in English.

What we do need is the graduate of an American college with enough
cultural background and capacity for work to get his training by graduate
study here and in France. While I taught in Amherst College I used every
year to see men graduating that were just the kind we needed, but most of
them were going into business. I suppose that much the same situation is
found here to-day, though I think it was better here in 1903. I wonder if
something cannot be done about it? Certainly business is far less attractive
now than it was a year or two ago. An economist said to me the other day:
"It's a good thing to have hard times now and then; if we didn't, everybody

would go into business." I hope that we can at least take advantage of this
opportunity, when business does not offer its former attractions, and put
before undergraduates the advantages and values of our profession.

And I wonder if this task is not particularly the province of our Alma
Mater. A French friend of mine the other day, after a visit to Mount
Vernon, told me that he had been much impressed by the similarity between
the life in Virginia before the Civil War, as he saw it exemplified there, and
life in France, so much so that he thought that those who were familiar
with our older culture would have a special aptitude for understanding
things French. Perhaps he was carried too far by a pleasant visit to Virginia
or by his politeness to me, but there is, after all, at least this much
truth in what he said. It was particularly here in Virginia that a form of
American civilization was developed in which, to use a consecrated phrase,
men were primarily interested in the art of living, which is, of course, the
essential vocation of the Romance peoples. And while we have doubtless
in many instances sold our birth-right for somewhat dubious advantages of
another sort, there surely remains something of the old spirit in the state
and especially here at the University. So that is one reason why one may
turn to Virginia with hope of a genuine response.

Another reason is—Dr. Wilson. If there is anything that stands out in
my memory of the years I passed here, it is the charm of his teaching. And
from what the alumni tell me he has never lost his rare gift of making
Romance civilization real and vital, of inspiring students with a devotion to
the subject he teaches that may carry them through life. If then, you ask
me how the University will best fulfil its function in regard to Romance
languages, I should say that it would be by making a serious effort, under the
guidance of Dr. Wilson, to interest men who are graduating here in going on
with post-graduate work in order to fit themselves for meeting the very
general and insistent demand for teachers who are in the best sense scholars
and interpreters of foreign manners and of foreign thought.

ENGLISH INSTRUCTION IN THE STATE UNIVERSITY

By Morris P. Tilley, Ph.D., University of Michigan

At the present time in our country there is going on a re-valuation of
educational methods in the light of the increasing cost of state instruction.
A new America is demanding a standard of clearer thinking and of higher
purpose on the part of the student who has spent four years in a state-supported
university or college. General criticism of present results insists
upon a reëxamination of university curricula, of administrative methods,
of the quality of teachers, and of the fitness of students to whom is granted

the privilege of state instruction. It is all an effort to determine and to
justify the final value to the state of the vast sums that are now being spent
in this country for collegiate and professional training.

This examination of the value of our present methods of instruction
comes at a time when there is an abnormal demand on the part of thousands
of young men and women for higher training for their life work. In order
to provide an education for these young people there must be obtained
more classrooms and more teachers! It is a fitting time, therefore, for those
to whom has been entrusted the instruction of the future leaders of our land
to take counsel among themselves and try to decide upon some means by
which better results may be obtained. The purpose of my paper is to
consider some of the problems of English teaching in the state university.
Among the most insistent of these are the necessity, first, of caring for the
freshman English work adequately; second, of securing instructors of suitable
qualifications; and, third, of developing among the members of the
department a spirit of continuous growth.

The most pressing need to-day is that of providing fully for the freshman
work. This cannot be done unless there is a recognition by the administration
of the special claim of the English department for adequate
assistance! It is true that the increasing number of students since the war
has affected the teaching conditions in all subjects. But no department is
threatened to the same extent as is the English with being submerged by
ever increasing numbers.

The large classes and the inferior quality of many of the freshmen are a
severe handicap to the English instructor already burdened with themes
and conferences. As a result he is unable to do effective teaching. The
first year student is the sufferer. He fails to receive at the beginning of his
course the stimulating instruction to which he is entitled.

To correct this condition should be the first aim of those responsible for
the freshman work in English. It should not be difficult by figures and by
comparisons to convince the administration of the urgent need of sufficient
assistance to reduce the sections to twenty-five students each. The department
should see to it, also, that the more experienced and more mature
teachers share in the instruction of the new students. The number of teaching
hours of the younger men should be reduced, where possible, to not more
than twelve a week. And every effort should be made to introduce into the
classroom such methods of instruction as may be most helpful to the student
who has not yet had time to adjust himself to college work.

To make sure of small sections under capable teachers, however, is not
the whole story. There is need of considering further, whether the content
of the course may not be so improved as to secure for the freshmen a more
stimulating appeal. Notable experiments are being conducted this year at

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the University of Missouri.
These consist in a combination of English composition with history
and economics in which the lectures and assigned readings supply the subject
matter of the themes. The general aim of these experiments is to give it to
the writing in English a more vital interest; and it cannot be too highly
commended. Indeed, the success attending these combination courses may
well bring about a radical change in the methods of conducting the written
work in our freshmen English instruction. The outstanding success as
Columbia of a "Contemporary Civilization Course," that is required of all
freshmen, points to the value of organizing first year work in such a way that
the freshman's mind be forcibly stimulated.

If the tutorial system introduced some years ago at Princeton could be
combined with a study of selected English masterpieces dealing with economics,
history and philosophy, we should then have an arrangement of study
well calculated to stimulate the freshman's mind. This course given five or
six hours weekly, would go a great way towards correcting the lack of interest
which marks much of the freshman's attitude.

II

The second problem that presents itself is the difficulty of securing men
with the requisite qualifications. The demand from the over-crowded
English departments of our colleges for well-prepared teachers is far greater
at present than our graduate schools can supply. The standard of preparation
and of personality demanded of university instructors, as a result,
has been lowered. Men have been engaged, who a few years ago would
not have been thought eligible for vacancies on the teaching staff.

But the instructor question to-day is more than one of lowered standards.
The proportion of instructors to professors in our faculties has
steadily increased for a number of years. At the same time the ratio of
students to all members of the teaching staff has tended to become higher.
In this continued weakening of the teaching force there is serious cause
for concern. We need seek no further for an explanation of much of the
criticism directed against university methods to-day. In view of these
conditions the selection of instructors is vitally important.

There is a general agreement, I believe, in the qualifications desirable
in a university instructor. The candidate selected should be the man who
has taught with the most marked success, who has pursued his graduate
work with the greatest originality, and who has the strongest and most
attractive personality. The one hundred per cent. man in each of these
essential requirements is rare at any time! Especially in a period of readjustment
like to-day it may be necessary to be satisfied with a teacher who

does not measure up to the normal standard. But there is a minimum in
teaching experience, in scholarly work and in personality below which a
candidate may not fall. He should have taught long enough to have convinced
himself and others that he finds in teaching an abundant source of
satisfaction, even joy. He should have followed his graduate studies at
least to that point where he recognizes that a scholar cannot continue
successful teaching unless he has an ever deepening knowledge of his own
particular field. And he should have progressed so far in the development
of his personality as to be able to give freely of himself to his students both
in and out of class. To consider the appointment to a university faculty
of a man who is known to be deficient in any one of these qualifications is a
serious mistake; and invites the necessity of dismissing him when he breaks
down under the rigorous tests of success.

There has been a tendency, now fortunately passing, to weight excessively,
in the selection of a new instructor, evidence that is offered of ability
in research work. The more important qualifications of character and of
ability to teach have sometimes been overshadowed by a brilliant doctorate.
But numerous instances where the gifted Ph.D. has failed to develop even
the ordinary instincts of the teacher, and other cases where he has lacked
the basic elements of personal fitness, have caused a more careful regard
to be given to these requirements. It can be safely predicated that a
starved and meager personality is not the stock from which to develop the
flower of a sympathetic and inspiring teacher, or of an original and forceful
investigator. To every alumnus of the University of Virginia it is a source
of pride that the value of an invigorating personality has been recognized
in its various departments.

It is indisputable that the clearer thinking and the higher purpose
demanded of college students to-day cannot be obtained unless their instructors
point the way by example and by precept. When our faculties
in all ranks are made up of men of strong personal and scholarly qualifications,
there wil be a corresponding higher degree of attainment possessed
by the graduates of our universities.

We have next to consider how the candidate desired may be secured.
What are we to offer him in the way of financial remuneration, of opportunity
for development, and of certainty of advancement that will make it
likely that we can secure his service?

In the first place, we must face squarely the fact that the time when we
could get a competent man for twelve hundred dollars has gone, probably
not to return. A minimum sum of eighteen hundred must be offered, if we
are to think of bidding for him with the hope of competing successfully for
his services. I know of instructors to whom two thousand was paid last
year although they had had no experience in university teaching and had not

yet received their doctor's degree. It seems clear that we must be prepared
to pay according to a much higher scale in starting men than we have been
accustomed to in the past.

Other considerations than money, of course, will enter into the acceptance
of a position. A young man leaving a graduate school will weigh
carefully the opportunities for development presented by a position. He
will consider in particular the reputation of the men in the department that
he is asked to join, the library facilities available, the number of teaching
hours required and the character of the work that he is asked to "give."

If a department is able to offer a sufficient number of attractions to be
sure of adding to its ranks only men of first class attainments, it has open to
it the surest way to the development of a strong corps of teachers. It is the
department that is not watchful of the instructors that it adds to its teaching
staff that finds itself in a few years burdened with men that are blocks to
progress. Of such teachers few die and none resign: and the difficulty of
dismissing them increases with their length of service.

III

The English department that has enough men and able men to do its
work has still another problem before it. How may it develop among its
members that spirit of accomplishment that is not satisfied merely with
fulfilling the obligations of teaching, but is determined to win for itself
recognition outside of the university in the world of scholarship? How
may it, in other words, accomplish the hard task of contributing to the sum
of knowledge at a time when the demands made upon it in other directions
are many and continuous? I know of no better way of developing such a
spirit than by a full realization of the importance to the department and to
the university of a faculty of men who are esteemed by their fellow-workers
in other institutions as leaders in their especial fields of research. Once
the importance of such a spirit has been realized there will be an active and
aggressive emphasis laid upon the value of men who are able to show substantial
results in scholarship.

It is not possible for every man to excel in research work, and to startle
his colleagues by discoveries of value. But it is necessary for a department
of English to recognize that other calls than those made by his scholarly
interest are secondary. The younger teachers especially must be on their
guard against spending too much of their time on administrative affairs.
The older members on the other hand are more likely to rest upon their oars
and be satisfied with a routine of teaching. Threshing old straw year after
year, they slip gradually into a condition of ineffectiveness. Security of
tenure and seniority of rank invite them to an increasing inactivity that

undermines their own ability to teach successfully, and encourages a similar
inactivity on the part of their younger colleagues.

The members of the English department particularly have to hold constantly
before them the importance of scholarly work. They will otherwise
find their time consumed with instructing large classes, with the correction of
much written work, with speaking engagements both within and without
the university, with giving assistance to student publications and dramatic
organizations and with many other activities of university life. In the
face of these accumulating demands a teacher will fail to attain his greatest
effectiveness unless he keep clearly in mind the fact that his duty of imparting
the truth goes hand in hand with his second duty of seeking the
truth.

The chief problems, then, of the English department of the state university
are problems of personnel. It must have enough men, without overburdening
its teaching force, to give the students a sufficiently intimate
instruction to urge them to their best efforts. It is even more necessary that
it have able and forceful teachers, who can at the same time add to the sum
of human knowledge. The successful English department to-day is the one
which has an adequate number of able teachers who are at the same time
able scholars.

II. The Mathematical and National Science Group

PROBLEMS IN SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION

By Charles Lee Reese, Ph.D., Sc.D., Chemical Director of E. I. du Pont de Nemours
and Company

During the last twenty years, I have had to handle thousands of men,
coming from many institutions of learning throughout the country; in fact,
during the war I had to do with about ten per cent. of all the chemists in our
land, at least forty-five of them being graduates of the University of Virginia.
They were men of various degrees of training in chemistry, and consequently
I have been able to observe many of their shortcomings. Among
these might be mentioned a lack of sufficient training in English to enable
them to express their thoughts, and the results of their work, in clear concise
language, a tendency toward what I might call "sloppiness" for the lack of a
better word, lack of thorough preparation in literature study before entering
upon a particular piece of work, and even lack of knowledge as to how to use
the literature, and what kind of information can be obtained from the
literature; in other words, entering upon a piece of work without a thorough
knowledge of the state of the art. The ability to judge the value of information
found in the literature is often found wanting, and I might easily go

on in such an enumeration regarding sufficient training in methods of
research, and lack of judgment in selecting the best method of attack.

"Sloppiness," I might almost say is a characteristic of the American
people, due to the fact that they are almost always in a hurry to get through
with what they are doing in order to take up something else, a tendency
which prevents thoroughness. Our primary schools are affected by it,
attempting generally to fill the heads of the pupils with knowledge, instead
of training the mind to habits of care, accuracy and efficiency. Even our
college entrance requirements are possibly responsible for too much pressure
for knowledge rather than training. The Germans have overcome this
tendency by making machines out of their school children, and it is questionable
how far we should go in this direction. When I was at the University
it was said that it took all of a man's first year to learn how to study, and
some of them never learn, consequently many never reach their senior
year.

Now to come down to the college work. Most important of all is the
personality of the teaching staff, and the effect of that personality on the
attitude of the student to his work. I have always felt that the undergraduate
should have personal contact with the principal men of the faculty,
the men who are most inspiring from a moral as well as a professional standpoint;
men who are character builders and leaders who inspire confidence
and interest in the work. As a friend of mine once said in speaking of
college athletics creating loyalty and college spirit, why should the work
not be made just as interesting, and as much enthusiasm be created over it
as over athletics. This can only be done by the ability of the professors to
create such interest and enthusiasm. Mallet, Remsen and Bunsen were
men of this type in my day, and no doubt there are many to-day of the same
kind. Owing to our hurried life, and the desire and necessity, in many
cases, for men to reach the bread winning stage, too many men enter the
profession without that liberal education included in the old-time college
course, involving modern and ancient languages, physics, mathematics,
arts and letters, history and philosophy, which fit a man for the higher
side of life, and I wish to emphasize the importance of such training wherever
possible before a man enters upon the pursuit of his professional course.
This applies to the chemist, the physicist, the lawyer, the engineer, as well
as the business man, or a man in any other walk of life. I am quite sure
that the chemist who has had such an education will forge ahead much faster
than his less fortunate fellow-chemist. With this kind of training a man
is in a much better position to determine the professional career best suited
to him.

There has been during the past thirty years a tendency to make the
training of chemists more practical, as they say, and many committees have

been appointed to study and recommend courses of training for technical
chemists. I have often been asked by professors and students to outline a
course of study for a chemist who wishes to enter the explosives or dyes
industry for instance, and my reply has invariably been to teach them
chemistry, physics, mathematics and English, and the experience and
application will come fast enough when they are up against the problems to
be met in any industry.

There is at present a tendency to make a compromise between the
liberal education and the professional education to meet the undoubted
demand, and those of you who will read the Yale Alumni Weekly of
April 29th, will see what Yale expects to do in her four-year course in
Chemistry.

In their Freshman year, besides their usual course in Chemistry, they
have English, Language, History, Mathematics and Government. In the
Sophomore year much stress is laid on Mathematics and Physics, as well as
Mineralogy and Crystallography with English and the Languages, also
electives in Drawing and Bacteriology. The Juniors devote seventy per
cent of their time to Chemistry, with some Geology, and as new features,
very important courses in Economics and Business Finance are introduced.
The Seniors devote most of their time to Chemistry, with lectures on
Industrial Chemistry, Metallurgy and Metallography, with a chemical
seminar and a course in Business Management as a supplement. As electives,
they have courses in Statistics, Business Law and Principles of
Accounting.

When I was here we had General Industrial, Analytical and Agricultural
Chemistry, with a short course in Pharmaceutical Chemistry for the
"Meds."

General Chemistry included lectures on Physics, Organic and Inorganic
Chemistry. Industrial Chemistry was a most comprehensive lecture course
on the subject, and has proved of inestimable value to me in my career.
Physical Chemistry, as a subdivision, was hardly known then, but now has
grown to be one of the most important branches of the science, and Organic
Chemistry was in its youth in this country. The word "Colloid" was used
in contradistinction to "Crystalloid," but Colloid Chemistry was still to be
born, and it has hardly yet got out of its swaddling clothes. Catalysis was a
name for the unknown, and if you should hear Dr. Bancroft deliver his three
celebrated lectures on that subject, you would learn that the theories of
Catalysis are mainly postulatory, and most of the postulates advanced can
be disposed of, in spite of which many important discoveries and accomplishments
have been attained through Catalysis, and I believe I can safely say
that it presents as fertile a field for research as any other field in the chemical
science.

It has been suggested that I say what I think the opportunities of the
Universities are in the future, and how they best can be realized, especially
as regards graduate work in pure and applied chemistry.

What I have already said is perhaps more or less generalization, but it
expresses thoughts that I have had for sometime, and you will forgive me if
I have taken this opportunity to express them.

The fields of natural science covered by the Academic and Graduate
Schools at present are Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Physics,
to all of which Chemistry is related to a greater or less degree, for we
are able to apply Chemistry even to the stone. Physiological, Biological,
Pathological and Pharmacological Chemistry seem to be included incidentally
in the Medical Department. In the chemical courses we have General,
Analytical, Organic, Physical, Colloidal, Industrial, Agricultural, Theoretical,
Metallurgical and Physiological, all covered by a few men, and these
same men must take care of the post-graduate work in any of these subdivisions,
if required. Attempts are made in other institutions to cover
special subjects such as ceramics, cements, dyestuffs and dyeing, electrochemistry,
fermentation, photography, etc. Without a very large
staff, I doubt the advisability of undertaking such special subjects, and even
then a man properly trained in the principles and practice of the science will
soon become expert in these special lines after once being connected with the
industry, and his future training in these lines can thus be carried on after
he becomes a bread winner.

The Endowment Fund will assist materially in many ways, but first
of all it should be used to increase the compensation of the present members
of the teaching staff to give them a living compensation, and the ability to set
something aside for a rainy day, and also enable the University to secure
the services of able men in the future. Second, to increase the teaching
staff to such a point that they will have time to devote to study and research
work, and enable them to gain reputations which will induce students to
remain at the University for post-graduate work, and attract men from
other institutions to study under such men. At present the number in the
post-graduate schools is small, but owing to the great impetus which has
been given in this country to the pursuit of the natural sciences, especially
Physics and Chemistry by the late war, the establishment of the Dye
Industry and the Chemical Warfare Service will create increasing demands
for many men thoroughly trained in these sciences, especially in the fields
of fundamental and applied research, so there is room for growth in the
University in this direction.

I hope to see the day, or at least the day will come, when the University
can have professors who can specialize in each subdivision of the sciences;
men who will have only a few hours each week to devote to the lecture room

and the seminar, and much time to devote to research and study, and
become leaders in research, and developing methods of research which will
draw to them a group of students devoted to their particular specialty. It
is only by such methods that rapid progress can be made in our search for the
truth, and advance in science and the arts. It is as important for our great
universities to develop great men in the field of professors and teachers; men
who can devote their entire time to the search for truth in the fields of
natural science, as it is to develop the young men of our country to practice
their profession in their particular fields, for the former is essential to the
latter.

With the establishment of such highly developed scientific industries
as the dye industry, and the recent tendency to utilize science in all industries,
many such men as I feel the universities should develop will be utilized
in the industries.

As the industries become more and more highly developed, they will
need more highly trained men in the special subdivisions of the sciences.
The present demand for highly trained specialists in the industries is a serious
menace to our country and the world, and if our great universities are to
maintain their force of such men to train others, this can only be done by
ample provision for their support. This brings me to a point where I wish to
bring up for discussion a plan which I have been able to follow in a few cases
for relieving, to a small degree, this serious situation. It is a plan which
has been followed extensively in Europe. An industry, with or without
a very complete research organization, can profitably retain professors, who
have made reputations, at a salary which, in some cases, may exceed that
which they receive from the university, by consulting work. This has
proved of great advantage to the professor himself, not only from a financial,
but also from a professional point of view in his work for the university, and
of great advantage to the university. Of course this should be done with
the distinct understanding that the consulting work is not to interfere in any
way with duties to the University. The unselfish character of some of our
consultants has been demonstrated by the fact that one of them has used his
retainer to employ a man to carry on some of his work.

The research student is much benefited by the presence of a number of
others in the laboratory doing research work, whether in the same or other
branches of science, or divisions of his science. It makes it possible for each
to be familiar with a number of problems, and the method of prosecuting
them, and increases the value of the seminar.

In closing I want to thank you for your indulgence, and although there
is nothing very striking in what I have had to say I hope it may lead to some
discussion which will be constructive, and of value to our Alma Mater in the
future.

A PLEA FOR THE PERFECT

By William Jackson Humphreys, Ph.D., of the United States Weather Bureau

The most insistent appeal to the intellect, and the most effective in
every line of human progress, is the call of the perfect. The paintings of the
great masters arouse an admiration akin to reverence, and inspire us ourselves
to work for the faultless in whatever we do. And the same is true of
architecture. He that has an intelligence at all measurably above that of the
beast of the field is himself ennobled by the presence of a beautiful building.
The towering spires of a Gothic cathedral, the stately columns of a Grecian
temple, the restful roof of a Buddhist shrine, evoke alike a reverence and a
high resolve to live the better life.

In statuary, too, and in every other art, the compelling call is the same.
Who can behold that most wonderful, perhaps, of all statues, the Daibutsu
of Kamakura, and not be thrilled by its magical calm—the peace of
Nirvana, the calm of death and eternity?

As it is in these few great things and noble arts, so it is likewise with all
the others, perfection and perfection alone—accomplishment in which no
fault can be found—commands unqualified admiration for the work of
others, and sets the satisfying goal of our own endeavors.

And now let us come home and be more specific. We here at the University
of Virginia are wont to speak of the Sage of Monticello in tones that
evidence respect and appreciation. But how did he come to be a sage?
Not alone by his invariable honesty of purpose, nor solely by his splendid
ability; but in great measure through his transcendent capacity to take
trouble—his patience to make perfect. And that over which he labored the
longest, the University of Virginia, he loved the most. He realized, as all of us
must, that without intellectual training political independence is impossible,
and religious freedom only moral chaos. Thus the most patient labor of all
his maturer years, the labor of his deepest love and most abiding hope, was
the founding of an educational institution perfect in all its plans and purposes.
An institution in which the student was from the first trusted as a
man of honor, a trust promptly justified and that has become a priceless
heritage; an institution manned by scholars of high renown who mingled
freely and most friendly with those who came to learn of their wisdom; and,
finally, an institution whose very columns and arches and domes, whose
harmonious assemblage of much of the architectural glory of Greece and
grandeur of Rome, insistently inspires to higher resolves.

Here, as nowhere else, one comes under the abiding influence of the
father of the University of Virginia, of him who heard so clearly and heeded
so well the call of the perfect. Here thousands have heard that same call,
and many have heeded in their several ways. Here, we believe, this call

was ever present with him who has enriched literature, as long as man shall
read, with such compelling and varied classics as The Bells, The Raven, and
Annabel Lee. Here, too, all was in harmony with the firm resolve and high
purpose of him who but yesterday bade a despairing world to hope—bade
it hope by showing so clearly a rational and righteous road every nation can
follow, and yet in some fashion will follow, for civilization shall not perish
from the face of the earth.

So reasoned the poet Longfellow many years ago, and the case is miserably
worse to-day. The burdens of taxation are oppressively heavy. Some
say owing to the scientific work done by the National Government, aye, even
to the duplication of such work in the city of Washington! "Blind leaders,
who strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." Had the world not been filled
with terror, had there been no "wealth bestowed on camps," the present
tax on one luxury alone, tobacco, would meet, or nearly meet, the whole of
the Government's needs—nor is this tax overly heavy, nor are our people
inordinate burners of incense before the goddess Nicotine.

The burdens of the world would, indeed, be unbearable were it not
becoming clear as the noonday sun that they are avoidable, and that, being
avoidable, they soon will be avoided. We are but in the throes of one stage
of community evolution, an evolution from the isolated savage through
the tribe, the clan, the state and the nation to the federation of the civilized
world, an evolution that has always closely followed, and of necessity must
closely follow, the development of the arts of travel and communication.
That is, as science progresses and its applications are made perfect our
relations to each other whether as individuals, communities, or nations, also
vary. To the ignorant savage restricted by natural barriers to a small
island, or other limited territory, no form of government is desirable or possible
beyond that of a primitive tribe. To the most advanced peoples of
to-day, however, those who literally can talk to each other though at the ends
of the earth, and to whose swift and easy travel there is no obstacle, the
restrictions of the tribe and the clan would be intolerable and impracticable.
To them nothing short of some form of a universal federation can be satisfactory.
One's friends and acquaintances to-day, and his councillors and
aids in whatever he is doing, are in every inhabited portion of the globe.
We cannot do without each other, neither they without us nor we without
them. Hence our plea for the perfect includes the bringing of nations together

into that form of mutual support that most encourages the growth
of each and makes for the good of all.

Now, as is known of the whole world, in the great work of formulating
a code adapted to the needs and aspirations of those in the very van of
civilization the University of Virginia can claim high honors. First,
through her great "father" and again, equally, through her most distinguished
alumnus.

But let us be critical, for self-criticism is always wholesome. What
has been the growth of science and its application to the arts since our
Alma Mater began her splendid training of young men, less than one century
ago? And what part have we, her alumni, taken in this conquest of nature?
Every chapter in the story of modern science is amazing almost beyond
belief. We live to-day in essentially a different world from that of our
grandfathers, different in many respects from even that of our own boyhood
days; and the difference is this, that the world is a better place to live in
than it was, so much so, indeed, that many of the things we now regard
as common necessities only a little while ago were not possible even as
luxuries.

Consider some of the more common events in the course of one's daily
life. All of us remember, or, at least, know those who do remember, when
that morning necessity, the ubiquitous bathtub, was practically unknown.
Of course a few buckets of water, carried from the spring and emptied into
the old wash-tub, were really worth while, but the undertaking was such a
tax on one's moral courage, that baths before breakfast were not then the
order of the day. And the cooking of breakfast, what a job it was! Coals,
kept alive through the night by a cover of ashes, were scraped out and a
wood fire kindled, not in the convenient stove, for no one had such a contrivance,
but in a big fire place, and after a time one had something to eat.
Rarely, though, did he have fresh meat (cold storage was unknown) nor did
he ever have the luxury of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables save those
alone that grew in his own locality, nor even these except in their limited
season. Who of the first faculty, or early students, of this University ever
wholesomely and delightfully began his breakfast with grape-fruit, oranges,
pineapples, mangos, or any other of the delicious tropical fruits that now
load our tables? And who in the tropics ever then tasted an apple, a pear,
a peach, a plum, or a cherry? Who in those days, here or elsewhere, ever
feasted on that luscious and most common, perhaps, of all vegetables, the
tomato—then regarded as a thing not only unfit for food, but even deadly
poisonous?

If, as was sometimes the case, you had occasion to write to a friend,
you did so with a goose-quill pen, blotted with sand, sealed with wax, and
forwarded your letter at the marvelous speed of, perhaps, twenty miles a

day. If you had to talk to even a neighbor, and he was beyond hallooing
distance, you simply had to go in person to see him, and, whatever the distance,
you could only walk, ride horseback, or go in a lumbering carriage.

If mother wanted to dye a piece of cloth she herself, most likely, had
spun and woven, she did not choose exactly the hue and tint, or shade, she
would have and then send us to a convenient drug store to get, for a few
pennies, precisely that thing, but sent us to the woods for the inner bark of a
black oak. This she steeped according to traditional custom, then dipped
the cloth in the decoction thus obtained, and accepted with fortitude
whatever stain happened to result.

Of course we did not often become ill, for only the most robust survived
babyhood, but when we did get sick it generally was the herb doctor that
came to see us, and the concoctions he made at least inspired an earnest hope
for a rapid convalescence. If, perchance, the case called for surgery, we
were indeed unfortunate. What we now call major surgery, and even much
that is essentially minor, was rarely ventured. Small operations of course
were made, but on the conscious patient and with a dirty knife. There were
no hospitals, except in the largest cities, and even these were at times centers
of infection rather than restorative institutions.

Whether, however, one got sick in those days and sent for the neighborhood
herbist, or stayed well and hoed the corn, pealed bark to dye the home
spun, or did whatever other chores the exigencies of a primitive life demanded,
the end of the day at last came as it now comes. But when it did
come there was then no movie to go to, whether instructive, amusing, or
demoralizing; no graphophone to stage a grand opera, materialize a brass band,
or set amuck a barbaric jazz, as one's whims and fancies might suggest; no
phone to chat over; no good light, electric or other kind, to ready by—only a
flickering home-made tallow candle, or sputtering pine torch, that for a
few minutes flared up unsteadily and then went out. Finally, at the end of
every such "perfect day," one scraped the live embers together and covered
them with ashes for starting the morning's fire, saw that all windows were
closed tight, the door bolted, and every other possible ventilator sealed up
lest any of the "noxious night air" might get in, and then went to sleep, to
dream, perhaps, of witches and hobgoblins, in a bed as innocent of springs as
a concrete floor.

True, we often speak, and speak earnestly, of the good old days of yore,
but in so doing we really have in mind the buoyancy of our own vigorous
youth and the loved ones of our childhood days. We never mean that we
would like to discard the latest conveniences and go back, not to our earlier
age, for all of us would like to be young again, but to the way the world lived
only a few decades ago.

Perhaps this reference to a few decades may seem extravagant, but in

reality it is not, for our knowledge of nature and the harnessing of natural
forces to our own needs grew so rapidly, and with such acceleration, with the
founding of laboratories and the consequent spread of inquiry that men
still living have seen half, aye, more than half, of that wonderful evolution
from the stick and stone of the cave man to the myriad marvels of the present.
Take from the air every aeroplane; from the roads every automobile;
from the country every train; from the cities every electric light; from ships
every wireless apparatus; from the oceans all cables; from the land all
wires; from shops all motors; from office buildings every elevator, telephone
and typewriter; let epidemics spread at will; let major surgery be impossible
—all this and vastly more would be the terrible catastrophe if the tide of
time should but ebb to the childhood days of men still living.

Nor do all those marvels exhaust our list. Give us a lump of coal, a
piece of sulphur and a bit of salt, and we will now, as but a few years ago
we could not, work such wonders as even Aladdin with his magical lamp
never dreamed of—make brighter, faster and more varied colors than are
found in field or forest; sweeter perfumes than scent the flowers; richer
flavors than season the fruit; food for plants that shames the richest soil;
explosives that rend the hardest rock; cures for many an ill; and poisons
more deadly than ever a Borgia desired. In short, with even these few raw
materials, we now raise our food, delight the palate, adorn the body, cure
ourselves, and kill the enemy!

Oh yes, the scoffer of science may say, but no exploring De Soto has
ever found the elixir of life. No, we must confess, not yet in all its perfection,
but the persistent biologist has found it for some animals, and has
successfully applied it. Already he has made excised portions of the heart
of the embryo chick live and grow until the chick itself, had it been permitted
to grow up, might well have been dead of age—and still that lone,
excised heart lived on. Already well-organized animals have been made to live
forwards and backwards from youth to age and from age to youth over and
over with never a sign that the end was near. What then is beyond our
reasonable hope? But to realize that hope we must heed the call of the perfect,
must push those investigations, as surely we shall, and the thousands
of others they in turn suggest, to their ultimate conclusion.

Finally, what have we, faculty, students, and alumni, of this University,
been doing the while this great stream of investigation and discovery has
been broadening and deepening into a veritable ocean of knowledge? We
have made many contributions to this knowledge, and of that we are justly
proud, but not all of us have lived up to our opportunities.

Let us, therefore, insist that each important position in this University
is an opportunity, as it is in any leading institution, to add to the sum of
human knowledge, and that opportunity is only another name for imperative

duty. Let it further be recognized, indeed let it become a compelling
unwritten law, that opportunity shall be given only to him who has demonstrated
his ability to improve it, and that the shirking of duty carries with it
the forfeiture of place. Possibly such a custom might seem a little drastic,
but it would be no more so, nor is there less reason for it, than is the wholesome
honor system among students. Nor let us alumni require ought of
others that we do not in equal measure demand of ourselves.

But how, it occasionally is asked, can any man both investigate and
teach? A far better question is this: How can he teach advanced students,
at least, if he has not that love of his subject that compels him to investigate?
None but the enthusiast can impart to others an earnest desire
to learn—blood does not come from turnips. Furthermore, wherever the
spark of genius shows, and if it be accompanied by industry, in the name of
humanity fan it—give its possessor every needed aid and encouragement.
Fan the live spark. No one ever yet got a glowing fire by fanning dead
embers.

And here let us once more urge our plea for the perfect. Let an investigation,
whether large or small, be given ample time, patience, and trouble.
Let it be so worked over, yea, so persistently labored over, that there can
be no occasion for any one to repeat it until other discoveries reveal a better
line of attack, or greater skill in instrumentation provides a desirable higher
degree of accuracy. And let the report, whether of progress or of finished
result, be brief. Let not our reasons be, as were those of Gratiano, "as two
grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff," where they are not worth the
trouble it takes to find them. Neither let our ideas be muddled like those
of the freshman who said he knew who Esau was—"the chap that wrote
short stories and sold his copyright for a mess of potash." In short, have
something to say, say it, quit talking about it. But above all have something
to say.

III. The Educational Group

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
SYSTEM OF THE STATE

By John Walter Wayland, Ph.D., of the Harrisonburg State Normal School

The measuring or even the estimating of influence is a task to engage
the powers of a magician or a divinity. It is a task like unto the compassing
of the sunlight or the weighing of the perfume of the flowers. Yet at the
same time, if one is not able to comprehend fully or to estimate adequately,
one can at least be certain that the sun shines, that the flowers are sweet and
beautiful, and that the world is happier and better because of them.

1. THE POTENCY OF IDEALS

The influence of the University of Virginia upon public education in the
State has been in evidence, more or less potently, both directly and indirectly
for the full century or more of the institution's history. First of all, it seems
to me, we should recognize and appreciate the ideas and the ideals that gave
the University birth and that have ever given character to its life. When
this institution was conceived in the vision of Mr. Jefferson he thought of it
as a part of a great whole: a comprehensive gradation of schools that should
include all of our citizens in its liberal provisions. In short, he desired
elementary schools and secondary schools as well as a university. He did
not perhaps employ the same terminology that we employ to-day, but in his
dream he saw schools and teachers for little children, schools and teachers
for rank and callow youth, as well as a school and teachers for those older,
maturer students who are anxious and able to climb to the sunlit heights.

It took many years of waiting, many years of working, to get Jefferson's
full plan wrought out and accepted; but we rejoice in this good day in the
belief that it is now being perfected and appreciated. And all through the
years his ideal was a potent influence, a whisper of inspiration that men
heard in their moments of reflection, a mighty call to progress in every day
of intellectual and moral action.

One may say, therefore, that a complete public school system was part
of the program under which the University was founded and under which it
has, for the most part, been operated. During the last half-century especially,
this program has been unfolded more and more clearly, with more
and more definiteness and force, from year to year.

2. THE WORK OF LEGISLATORS AND ADMINISTRATORS

For one who loves the University, an interesting task would be to scan
carefully the names of all the men who, since 1830 or thereabouts, have
composed the General Assembly of Virginia and filled the various responsible
offices in our state government—to do this with a view of ascertaining how
many of these men have at some time been students here. The number is
large, we may be certain; and we may also be certain that some of them,
doubtless many of them, have aided effectively from time to time in giving
Mr. Jefferson's ideas on education a functioning body in the laws and
procedure of the commonwealth. In so doing they have been true disciples
of our Alma Mater; and through them, whether in our own day or in the
days long past, we see going out a mighty stream of influence, carrying life,
dynamic life, to our common schools. For example, since 1902, fifteen
members of the Virginia State Board of Education have been alumni of the
University; and among these fifteen were Charles W.  Kent , Lyon G. Tyler,

Joseph L. Jarman, James M. Page, Henry C. Ford, John E. Williams, James
S. Wilson, and four governors: Montague, Swanson, Stuart, and Davis.

3. THE SERVICE OF ALUMNI AS TEACHERS

Face to face with a mighty host we find ourselves when we attempt to
number the teachers of Virginia who, at one time or another, for long or
shorter periods, have been students at the University. In the years immediately
preceding 1870 and in all the long Olympiads of ante-bellum days,
schools were being kept alive here and there in Old Virginia by those whose
torches had been kindled at Jefferson's altar and whose vision had been at
least in part uplifted with his own. Those men labored provincially, it may
be, and often under painful handicaps, but who will deny to them a meed of
honor in the better times that have come after them? They labored and
we have entered into their labors. We are building better, let us hope, than
did they; but they often builded better than they knew.

Since 1870, when our present system of public schools was inaugurated,
alumni of the University have been enabled to assume more numerous and
more definite relationships in the teaching forces of the State. This fact
appears with growing distinctness as we proceed with our investigations.
Consider, for example, the influence that has been radiated through the
thousands of teachers that have attended the University summer schools
during the past thirty-odd years. A conservative estimate would place the
total number of persons, men and women, who have attended these summer
schools within this period at 15,000. Not all of this mighty host, it may be,
have been teachers; but many of them have been teachers by profession and
by practice; and thousands of them have carried the ideas and the inspiration
here imbibed into the public schools of the State.

In recent years, as we all know, the deliberate and consistent aim in
these summer schools has been to make them the most helpful possible to
Virginia teachers. And it would be hard to find any community in the
State, however small or however secluded, in which there is not working today
at least one school teacher who is proud to speak of the days—the
summer days so full of work, so full of play, so full of joy—spent here. The
services of University leaders, like Bruce R. Payne, Charles G. Maphis,
and others, through the University summer schools, have been of incalculable
value to public education throughout the State.

4. THE UNIVERSITY APPRECIATING ITS TASK

Not only in the summer schools but also in the regular policies and
programs of the University the interests and needs of the public schools of

the State have been recognized with constantly increasing purpose and
definiteness. This has been especially true during the last half-century.
For example, as early as 1886, perhaps earlier, the University faculty arranged
for local examinations to be given in the various counties of Virginia
and other States for stimulating and evaluating the work of boys and girls
in the local schools. These examinations took the place, at least in some
instances, of high school graduation. More particular information concerning
these examinations and their value to the country schools will appear
farther on.

In 1905 the Curry Memorial School of Education was established at the
University, and ever since that time a regular aim of that department has
been to touch and elevate the public schools of Virginia. All who remember
the untiring extra-mural activities of Professor Harry Heck, the first head
of the Curry Memorial School, and all who know the character and the work
of his successors will be able to appreciate the significance and growing
influence of this foundation during the past sixteen years.

In this connection we cannot forget the potency of the University in the
famous "May Campaign" of 1905, when "one hundred of the ablest
speakers of the State, including the governor, delivered three hundred
addresses in ninety-four counties at one hundred different meetings,"[2]
all in behalf of public education.

Among the eminent leaders of that campaign were President Edwin A.
Alderman, Governor Andrew J. Montague (an alumnus of the University),
and Dr. Bruce R. Payne, whose distinguished connection with the University
was then just beginning. Another gentleman whose share of honor in this
May Campaign was second to none was Professor Ormond Stone, who for
thirty years (1882-1912) was a teacher here and whose interest in the public
schools of the State was both constant and effective. His activities in behalf
of public education have been most generous and untiring, as we all know.
The vigorous rise of public high schools followed upon 1905, and much of
the vigor and character that they embodied came from the University,
through the patience and wisdom of Alderman, Payne, and others.

How many of the teachers and alumni of the University took part in
this notable campaign cannot now, perhaps, be ascertained; but many
participated and all who did so shared in the cherished social gift that our
Alma Mater at that time made.

Thus by those who live in the University and in their work reach out,
as well as by those who have studied here and have gone out into the schools
of the commonwealth, the same or related gifts have been bestowed. The
workers within and the workers without join hands across the same cheering
altar of service.

5. ALUMNI AS ADMINISTRATIVE EDUCATORS AND AS TEACHERS IN STATE
INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING

In speaking hitherto of the teachers of the State who have been students
here, attention has been directed especially to that great army in the
common schools. When we enumerate school officials and those teachers in
our State institutions of higher learning who bear the University's seal the
number is smaller, to be sure, but no less influential. Consider, for example,
the division superintendents of schools in the counties and cities of Virginia.
Twenty-eight of them, almost exactly one fourth of the whole number, are
on the rolls of our alumni. Ten members of the Virginia State Normal
School Board, the body which since 1916 has had the oversight and the
direction of our four state normal schools for white women, have been University
men. Prior to 1916 there were separate boards for these four institutions,
and a goodly proportion of the members of those separate boards
were also alumni of the University.

The first of these four normal schools was established at Farmville in
1884. The second was opened at Harrisonburg in 1909; the third at Fredericksburg,
in 1911; and the fourth at East Radford, in 1913. From official
records it appears that up to this date 20,551 different students have been
enrolled in these institutions. Most of this great multitude have been
teachers for shorter or longer periods in the public schools of Virginia, and
they have been distributed in every county and every city of the State.
The significance of all this in our present study appears in a moment when
we observe the fact that almost or quite forty members of the four normal
school faculties that have trained these 20,000 teachers have been graduates
of the University or sometime students here.

For many years past the contribution of the College of William and
Mary to the life and administrative efficiency of our state public schools has
been so great as to win general acknowledgment and appreciation. To this
historic institution the University of Virginia herself owes much. Jefferson,
Monroe, and others saw to it that the rich legacies of the older foundation
became really and truly the younger school's inheritances. But may we not
say, speaking truly and gratefully, that in some measure, through the century
that is closing, the talents that were received have been invested and
returned? For instance, during twenty-one years (1898-1919) the honored
president of William and Mary was Lyon G. Tyler, an alumnus of the University
of Virginia; and contemporary with him, or at least serving the same
generation with him, we may count twelve other distinguished sons of the
University on the faculties of William and Mary. Surely, therefore, one
may be justified in saying that, in this splendid contribution that
William and Mary has made to our public schools, the University has

had some cordial share. The coöperation of kindred can certainly be no
robbery.

It would doubtless be possible, if one had time, to trace relationships of
wholesome coöperation between the University and every other State institution
of higher learning in Virginia in this laudable task of uplifting
the common schools; but a reasonable limit must be our law.

6. INFLUENCE THROUGH PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING

And what shall we say with reference to these same relationships as
between the University and those institutions of higher learning not owned
by the State? Between the University and some of them the bonds have
perhaps not been so close or so strong as to be discerned or acknowledged;
but with regard to others the coöperation has been both conscious and deliberate.
Two examples must suffice.

In 1839 Charles Lewis Cocke, a college senior nineteen years old, determined
to dedicate his life to the higher education of women in the South.
"Inspired by the University of Virginia—opened fourteen years before—he
resolved `to give to Virginia women the same thorough mental training as
that afforded to young men.' "[3] In 1846 he moved to Botetourt Springs,
near what is now Roanoke City, to take charge of a school. "The educational
ideals of Thomas Jefferson became the inspiration of his youth";
and throughout an eminent career he cherished them. For more than fifty
years he labored in the light of his splendid hopes; and for three-quarters of a
century, now, Hollins College has been his growing monument.

In many counties and cities of Virginia the graduates of Hollins College
have taught worthily in our public schools. Some in this capacity have
served well two generations. One of them, Mrs. Betty Chandler Snead, who
graduated in 1868, taught in Halifax, in Essex, in Northampton; had a
family; returned to the schoolroom, and in 1915 was still at the post of public
service. Another, Edwina Chandler (Mrs. Walter Jones), who graduated in
1870, taught in Fluvanna. She married and reared a large family. Then
she took up teaching again. She was one of those teachers who used the
University local examinations to "standardize" her pupils. Miss Mary
Miller Snead, now the valued principal of a Fairfax County high school,
another Hollins graduate, is one of the number who testifies to having taken
the "University locals" in "Old Flu" under Mrs. Jones.

Hollins records show a long roll of alumnæ who have served Virginia
effectively and worthily in her public schools. Many other names might be
recited, but we must content ourselves with a very few more. Miss Bessie
Randolph of Farmville, Miss Elizabeth Cleveland of Harrisonburg, Miss

Lucy Puryear of Radford, Miss Berta Miller of Lynchburg, Miss Sully
Hayward of Roanoke, and Mrs. Ellie Marcus Marx of Norfolk are all alumnæ
of Hollins. They are eminent yet typical examples of the Hollins
graduate as a vital force in the public schools of Virginia. And it was one
of them who said:

"Recalling how often we heard the name of the University from Mr.
Cocke's lips and how bracing was the constant touch with its standards, we
are not surprised to find his biographer writing: `The educational ideals of
Thomas Jefferson became the inspiration of his youth, and with astonishing
tenacity and unity of purpose he pursued them until he worked out Hollins
College.' "[4]

Hollins College, therefore, is a notable example among the so-called
private schools of the State that have deliberately aided the University in
giving to the public schools their delayed birthright.

Another school of this same class, younger than Hollins but eminent
in the same way, is Bridgewater College.

This school dates its beginnings only forty-one years ago, yet within the
period of its brief history it has sent out hundreds of efficient teachers into
the public schools of the State. And every one of them has carried to his
work some gift that is openly and generously credited to the University.
The reason at once becomes obvious when we note the fact that eighteen
different members of the Bridgewater faculties have been students here.
For thirty-three years the presidents of the college have been University
alumni. Daniel C. Flory, the founder of the school and its head for six years
was a student here two sessions. Walter Bowman Yount, president for
eighteen years (1892-1910) was a student here six years. And John S.
Flory, who was president for nine years (1910-1919), and whose entire
service at Bridgewater to date totals twenty-four years, was a student here
three years and holds from the University his degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Every Bridgewater student is able to testify that the bond between his
school and the University is very close.

This bond and source of influence upon our public schools appears not
only in the rank and file of teachers trained at Bridgewater, but also in
certain notable leaders in education and legislation. John C. Myers, division
superintendent of schools in Rockingham County, is an alumnus of
Bridgewater and of the University. William T. Sanger, who needs no introduction
to Virginia educators, is a graduate of Bridgewater. Frank J.
Wright, whose record as a distinguished teacher and as a member of the
General Assembly of Virginia is well known, is an alumnus of Bridgewater
and of the University. Jacob A. Garber, whose service to public education
in the last General Assembly was so conspicuous as to win unusual approval,

is merely passing on the fine things that he has received, at least in part,
from Bridgewater College and from our Alma Mater.

7. THE UNIVERSITY A SOURCE OF BOOKS FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

And, finally, what shall we say of the books for our common schools
that have been written and published by University teachers and University
alumni? Bonnycastle's Mensuration, Holmes's United States history, and
Venable's arithmetics were widely used for many years; and the famous
spelling books and readers by McGuffey have had an influence that is at
once potent, far-reaching, and wholesome. It is said that McGuffey's
activity in 1870 and later, both in the University and elsewhere in the State,
in securing the establishment of public schools and in commanding them to
general favor, were most earnest and effective.

The excellent series of readers prepared some years ago by President
Alderman was a notable contribution to our school libraries and literature.
In attractive form and easy grading he has made a fine collection of prose
and verse—classics old and new—and placed it at the disposal of our teachers
and their pupils. The history of education in Virginia, published in 1916,
by Cornelius J. Heatwole, a son of Virginia, cannot be overlooked in this
connection; and the biography of J. L. M. Curry, by Alderman and Gordon,
while it is not a text book of the ordinary type, is an informing, stimulating
story for teachers—the story of a great man who was a teacher and a leader
of teachers.

And one could not end this catalogue, however brief and fragmentary it
may be, without mentioning specially the Library of Southern Literature, a
monumental work in sixteen splendid volumes, the compilation of which was
directed largely from the University of Virginia and which is a veritable
boon not only to Virginia schools but to those also of every state of this
nation.

To indicate further the influence of the University upon Virginia public
schools and to illustrate more particularly some of the statements already
made, the following charming story is presented. It is a first-hand contribution
to this study, made by one who has recorded definite observations of
the influences we are tracing, and who is herself an eminent example of those
students and teachers who have received rich gifts from our Alma Mater,
even though they have not, as a rule, been numbered among her sons and
daughters.

"Judge James O. Shepherd, a University man, was the first superintendent
of schools in Fluvanna County. He rallied around him a teaching
force representative of nearly all the leading families of the county. He thus
(and in many other ways) set the standard high and established from the

beginning the respectability, and even the gentility, of the public school. I
recall playing with a child-visitor from an adjoining county, who spoke so
disdainfully of `free schools' that I did not once dream that they were the
same thing as our honored public schools—and I now have reason to believe
that they indeed were not the same.

"Later Judge Shepherd harped on this one string until every child
among us caught the note: `We need good public schools devoted to the
higher branches. We have the elementary school for the foundation.
Yonder we have the University for the top. But we have a great gap between.
We need to make the connection by means of a public high school
that can prepare the boys for the University.' And he worked the citizens
up to contribute liberally to this cause and obtained special dispensation
from the General Assembly to establish at the county seat that new thing—
a standard rural public high school. I was always led to understand that
this was the first of its kind in the State. . . .

"Is it at all significant that the lifelong home of Judge Shepherd is
`Mountain View?' Certainly it was from that hilltop that they used to
point out to us a symmetrical little blue peak, Monticello, adding in tones
almost reverent that just beyond was the University.

"One more fact about the Judge. When I left for Hollins, he gave me a
lead pencil with the parting injunction that I should write and rewrite Latin
exercises very carefully, `looking up things' which I did not know.

"It was in 1886, when Judge Shepherd and his neighbors, the school
trustees, were moving heaven and earth and the State Legislature to establish
a rural high school at the county seat—always with the definite ideal of
preparing boys for the University—for that was never omitted from the
statement of the case—that my teacher read in the Louisville Courier-Journal
of certain `University Local Examinations' which would be held
at various centers throughout the South just one month later. Her
prompt letter of inquiry brought from the University itself a pamphlet
definitely stating the subjects, the scope, and the requirements of these
examinations.

"The next year, perhaps, a center was established in Fluvanna, and
for some years thereafter it was the habit for the private schools of Fluvanna,
as well as for the new public high school, to stir their students'
ambition to pass these examinations. No doubt this was true in many
other sections also,—these local examinations taking the place of high
school graduation.

"First there was a preliminary examination in elementary subjects—
geography, grammar, oral reading, etc.—which must be passed before the
candidate could be considered for the `higher branches' of geometry, Cicero,
Shakespeare, etc.

Fireworks on the Lawn: The Closing Scene

"I think I shall go on now that I am recalling this occasion and set down
some of my own experiences of that new era for me, as a sample of what these
examinations might mean in inspiration.

"My teacher said that I was to go to the University and take these
examinations instead of my own `finals.' The delight of it—the thing that
made it a great adventure instead of a heavy task—was that she said if I
passed she would consider it a success, but if I should not pass she would not
judge it a failure, under the circumstances of the brief four weeks of preparation.

"Such a sense of the greatness of this quest! Such a reviewing of
geometry (and geography)! I had never heard of the Manilian Law, but it
read very much like parts of Cicero that I had been taught. I had never
studied `literature' except Shaw's History of English Literature. Neither
my teacher nor I knew that there was such a thing as an annotated edition
of a play or a poem. But there was a leather-backed Shakespeare in the
house, of course, which people read, and sometimes read aloud, though the
required play, The Tempest, was new to me until that full month when,
armed with the unabridged dictionary, I hammered at the bard's
meaning.

"Upon reaching Charlottesville (the first night I ever spent in a
town) I found the other candidate for the examination to be a girl attending
Mrs. Meade's school—Emma Moser, afterwards for many years
a valued teacher in the Charlottesville High School. This girl mentioned
her Hudson edition of The Tempest, with notes. I soon had it in my possession,
and studied it all night long (the noise of the great city of C. being
too much for a wink of sleep anyway). Why, Hudson told you everything
you had wondered about! He seemed the friendliest writer in the
world.

"Again, the gracious dignified Mrs. Meade, in gold-pinned cap, having
to leave me in her library when her class bell rang, asked whether she could
do anything for her timid guest. `If you could lend me a history of England
fuller than Goodrich's.' `Why, yes; here is one sent me lately by one of my
former pupils.'

"Thus I was introduced to Green's Short History of the English People.
I devoured its pages about Pitt's plans for applying among his countrymen
the great principles of Adam Smith's Political Economy, and how the French
Revolution broke into his high hopes. The book was so different from Peter
Parley! Best of all, the writer of the examination questions for the next day
had evidently just been reading Green also, for he followed his lines exactly,
and I could write voluminously in answer, and love Richard Green as a
friend evermore.

"At last the hour actually came for the examination. Charles S. Venable

was in charge—the first professor of the revered University that my
eyes had rested upon—and even then they rested only upon his shoes. I
was too much abashed to look into the face of the great man `who had made
the arithmetic and who understood exactly why you invert the divisor, and
everything.' So I gazed at his feet. I recall now just how they looked and
that I felt distinct satisfaction and almost a touch of wonder that they
rested upon the earth. He was kindness itself, and the thought of that good
and wise man still brings always an upward pull.

"The first thing in the preliminary examination was to read aloud some
page from some book. Professor Venable walked casually to one of the
many shelves and just as casually pulled out a volume, turned its pages and
chose one at random. Would it all dance before me like hieroglyphics?
It was the only page in that book I had ever seen. The winter before I had
been studying in my teacher's room one evening. An old lady was visiting
her. My teacher was reading to her from this very book. The old lady
dropped a stitch in her knitting. It misbehaved sadly, that stitch. It
ran back row after row. The teacher had to stop and pick it up. She
handed me the book that the reading might not break off. I read aloud
a page, and then the stitch was all right and I went back to my lessons.
And now that page was handed me to read as a first omen at the University
of Virginia. . . .

"At the end of the last examination there was a question that seemed
to invite my opinion. (It was on Shakespeare.) Could I dare to offer
what nobody thought but just ME? I recall saying to myself, `I'm twenty-five
miles from home. They'll never hear of the audacity of it. I'll never
see these professors again. I believe I'll do it. I'll take a fling.'

"And I did. I remember feeling as if I were flying—as if for once
and in some far off way—and never to be dared again—I were flying
—and in the atmosphere of those whom my imagination ranked the
highest.

"He must have laughed—whoever looked over that examination. One
could easily laugh at the importance which I attach to it now. But I go
back to that day when I see the word Renaissance. That examination was
the enfranchisement of my thought. However pitifully little that has
meant to anybody else, it has meant a good deal to me, and I thank the
University and Thomas Jefferson for it.

"There was a student who brought his books and `sat with' the candidates
when Professor Venable could not be there. In spite of my high respect,
I must have looked him over from toe to top, for I recall distinctly his
red head. He hesitated when I asked him how to spell Guinea, but I thought
it was because his mind was on higher things. I asked him whether I'd
better write fully or concisely. `If it's literature,' he said, `I think you'd

better chat along'; which I thought a delightfully familiar and condescending
mode of speech for one whose own daily words must all be exalted far
above `chat along.' "[5]