In Germany

Five German universities are closing down. They include, according to report, the internationally famous colleges at Halle, Marburg, Frankfort-am-Main. They have surrendered to poverty.

The central tragedy of the university situation in Germany is in the middle-class home. From the German bourgeois family were recruited the upholders of the liberal tradition. Today the middle-class son finds it difficult, almost impossible, to finance a university course.

The sons of speculators, industrialists and big baronial landowners fill the college halls.

The democratic element is not totally eliminated only because of a remarkable development of student selfhelp. Guided from a national headquarters at Dresden, cooperative stores, student kitchens, employment bureaus are operated. And there are loan banks to which all who can contribute, and from which the most gifted students, regardless of social status, receive money without interest during the months before their final exams. John R. Mott, through the World’s Student Christian Federation, has been largely instrumental in the success of these self-help activities. The Society of Friends (American Quakers) have cooperated.

Say university professors in America: “The rich heritage of learning given by Germany to the world may be laid waste.”

At Louvain

Hopes of completing the library of the University of Louvain in 1925 have sagged because American money has ceased its flow. Building operations have been suspended.

The beautiful structure which was to have replaced the famous Clothmakers’ Hall, destroyed by bombardment in 1914, stands only one-fourth completed, and a fresh call is being issued to the colleges of America which in effect pledged themselves to finance this enterprise two years ago, when President Butler of Columbia University laid the cornerstone.

The building will cost $1,000,000, and so far only $300,000 has been contributed. The Committee was led to expect a dollar each from 1,200,000 American students, but whereas institutions like “West Point, Annapolis, Hunter, Amherst, Bryn Mawr, St. Stephens, Yale have oversubscribed their quotas, and half a dozen schools have fulfilled their promises, almost three-fourths of all the students concerned have failed to contribute. Another campaign is about to be made.

1925 will mark the 500th anniversary of the library, and if the present delay is not permanent, the completed building will be a timely memorial. Each institution contributing is to have a column, stone, arch or window inscribed with its name. The result will be an enduring record of America on Belgian soil.

“College Spirit”

The Americanization of Europe (which the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, views with alarm) proceeds. The Committee for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation, headed by Herbert C. Hoover, is selecting plans for a group of dormitories on the American plan to be erected at the University of Brussels. John Mead Howells, consulting architect, claimed for the program recently that it would encourage ” college spirit ” on the Continent—something which, for better or worse, the Continent has so far got along without.

Of Historical Interest

Near Haverstraw on the Hudson, where Benedict Arnold met Major André, a tablet was erected and a speech was made by the State Historian of New York (Dr. Alexander C. Frick).

Runs the inscription:

Between this boulder and the river is the place where Benedict Arnold first met Major John André, Adjutant General of the British Army, to plan for the surrender of West Point to the British. Major André” landed from the Vulture the evening of Sept. 21, 1780. Early the following morning the conspirators repaired to the home of Joshua H. Smith, about three miles to the north, where Arnold finally agreed to surrender West Point for £10,000 and a commission in the British Army. From the Smith house André” attempted to return to the British lines. He was captured at Tarrytown and tried, convicted and executed as a spy at Tappan, Oct. 2, 1780.

Other spots of historical interest are in process of being marked.

Washington U.

Last spring the colorful name of Herbert S. Hadley (TIME, July 2) came out from the shadowy mountains of Colorado, whither he had repaired for his health. He was appointed Chancellor of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.

Last week he was formally inaugurated. The speech of the occasion, delivered by Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, contained the following passages:

“The University takes its place by the side of the Church and the State as one of three fundamental institutions of modern civilization . . . The Church represents the organized faith of Christendom and its collective worship. The State represents the purpose of civilized man to live happily and helpfully together in organized society. The University represents man’s inborn love of truth, his persistent curiosity, which has given rise to all science, and his dominating idealism which is the origin of all literature and of all philosophy.

“Long experience has shown that the University may and can only achieve its end by a three-fold activity . . . The University must gather and conserve knowledge; the University must advance knowledge; the University must diffuse and apply knowledge. These are its three necessary and characteristic functions. …

“The unhappy and conflicting diversity of religious beliefs, and the unhappy and conflicting diversity of social and political theories, find their reconciliation and their unity in the University, whose frame is so secure, so broad and so generous that there is room in it for each and all of these if only they be held in sincerity and pursued in a spirit of truth-seeking and of service.”

Mr. Hadley, when Governor of Missouri in 1912, was looked upon as a likely President of the U. S. He declares he will not return to politics.

Geo. Washington U.

George Washington visualized and advocated a national university at the nation’s capital. John Quincy Adams did the same.

A century ago someone started George Washington University at Washington. It had 39 students. Today it has 5,000 and has set out upon a building program to make itself yet bigger and yet better.

The newly inaugurated President of the University is William Mather Lewis. He hopes to realize the hope of his country’s founder—to make an institution which shall be free from local discoloration and provincial prejudice and one which, by virtue of its position, can operate more centrally and more importantly than others.

To date, the greatest universities have been, first, born; then, made. Consequently most great universities possess the defects of their virtues and the redeeming charm of their vices.

President Lewis is presented with an opportunity to fashion the ideal university. And, if the improbable occurs, the ideal will move and breathe and have spiritual being.

“Tallest in the World”

A feature of the campaign of Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) to secure $5,000,000 for buildings on its new Lake Shore Drive campus in Chicago, is an emphasis placed upon the fact that one of its new buildings will be the ” tallest educational structure in the world.” This potent superlative will aid in producing the $2,500,000 as yet uncollected.

The Chicago site will eventually be occupied by the schools of law, medicine, dentistry, commerce.

Negroes and Mr. Rosenwald

In 1912, Booker T. Washington, Negro humanitarian, called upon Julius Rosenwald, Chicago merchant. Said he: ” In my state, Alabama, Negroes number about half the population of the state. Last year $2,865,000 was spent on education, but only $360,000 of that for Negro children. Sixty per cent, of the white children were enrolled for an average term of seven months, whereas only 20% of the Negro children were enrolled for an average term of only four months. Something must be done.”

Mr. Rosenwald agreed, and something was.

Since then nearly 2,000 schools have been established in the South and $7,000,000 has been spent through the Rosenwald Fund for Negro education. Mr. Rosenwald specified that whatever sums he gave must be matched by the Negroes themselves. To date, the Rosenwald Fund has contributed $1,400,000; Negroes have raised $1,800,000; the balance has come from public school authorities and individual whites.

Another Girard?

Girard College in Philadelphia was thought to be the richest school of its kind (industrial) in America. But the disclosure of a $60,000,000 benefaction to the Hershey Industrial School at Hershey, Pa., has produced its financial equal.

The benefaction consisted of 99% of the common stock of the Hershey Chocolate Co. It was made by Milton S. Hershey five years ago; but modestly he said nothing about it.

Last week the secret leaked out; Mr. Hershey has been busy explaining his gift.

The motives are simple. They are not, as George F. Babbitt ignorantly supposes, an ” advertising stunt” for Hershey almond bars. Mr. Hershey was a poor boy. He had no education. He learned a trade and made a fortune out of it. He has no children. Now he would like to give an opportunity to as many boys as possible to make fortunes for themselves. Girls he does not provide for, on the ground that they can always get married or do housework, and so find homes. “Girls don’t need help like boys,” said he, ” so I decided on boys.” Boys will be accepted who are poor, without fathers, white, native-born, healthy and between the ages of four and eight.

The parallel with Stephen Girard is curiously close, and it is significant that Mr. Hershey went to Philadelphia and studied the college there before he opened his own school in 1909. Girard’s will in 1831 specified that ” poor, male, white orphan children” only should be admitted. Preference was to be given first to those applying from Philadelphia, and then to those from elsewhere in Pennsylvania and the U. S. Mr. Hershey directs likewise that the first favors be shown to applicants from surrounding counties. Girard enforced a prejudice of his against sectarianism when he directed that no ecclesiastic be allowed so much as to enter the grounds as a visitor. The prejudice betrayed by Mr. Hershey, is in favor of woman’s place being in the home.

Mr. Hershey’s generosity is colossal. He keeps only $1,000,000 and his automobile for himself. The question will undoubtedly be asked whether, on the whole, it is good or bad for education to be subject to the personal whims of its benefactors. But meanwhile the Hershey Industrial School will be teaching a thousand or more boys to support themselves.

The Rockefeller Foundation was a broader project, but the candy man has done exactly what he pleased, and there is a peculiarly American flavor about that.

The man who built the village of Hershey is a genial, unimpressive widower of 66. He lives in the village palace with his “old crony,” Harry Lebkicher, formerly a candy apprentice.

Occasionally he packs his grip, walks to the depot (or rides in his battered 1914 model) and goes to Europe for as long or as short as he likes. But mostly he stays near the farmland where he was bred, buys his clothes at the local emporium.

Evangelical

Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches

Dwells another race; with other customs and language.

Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic

Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile

Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom.

These are among the last of the “tedious but popular” hexameters of Evangeline, written by Poet Longfellow.

A former Minister of Education of Ontario (the Rev. Dr. Cody) now demands that the poem shall no longer be taught in the schools of Canada. He contends that it wrongly portrays the British as unmerciful, and is used in American schools as anti-British propaganda.

Librarian Locke of Ontario defends Longfellow on the ground that his poem was based on a history written by a loyal imperialist, Chief Justice T. G. Haliburton.* And the American poet is also defended by most Canadian newspapers, whose chief point is: ” Americans who are anti-British are to be found most generally among those who never heard of Longfellow and who do not care whether Evangeline is a chewing gum or a new style underwear.”

— Justice Haliburton was best known as ” the first American humorist.” author of Sam Slick, which ran into 142 editions.