Symposium

Because a foreigner might well mistake the football stadium for the fortress or temple of U. S. education, the editors of The New Student, intercollegiate clip-sheet, published a symposium on the stadium’s significance.

The editors asked of excitable Henrik Willem Van Loon, whilom college professor. Said he : “It is really quite useless, my writing upon this subject. Whenever I open my mouth and say something about football, the answering chorus is, ‘Oh well, but how could we expect a poor foreigner to under stand our national game?’ … I have nothing against the stadia (or stadiums or stadiumses, or whatever you wish to call them in an un-Greek age). This is a free world. Go ahead and build all the stadiums and hooch-factories and bawdey-houses you wish, but do not build them on the campus … Of course I know the usual answer; the cheering crowds, the gay sights, the strong virile hemen, idolizing the even stronger, more virile he-coach, the grand young future before the boy that makes the winning punt, admitted straightway to a prominent position as bond-chaser in Lee Higginson’s well-known counting-house . . . They [the s. v. he-men] are fed warmed-over editorials by Doc. Crane about ‘Jesus on the Bleachers’ and ‘Saint Paul on the Field of Battle,’ and this may account for the fact that they cheat with a sort of early-Christian simplicity which is almost touching . . .”

The editors asked of Coach Zuppke, football teacher of Illinois University and the famed “Red” Grange. Said he: “‘Why should men play football?’ To learn 49 Dent’s which develop control of self and to develop 51 Do’s which develop controlled initiative guided by the above 49 Dont’s. To learn when to express oneself with abandonment and to get the habit of finishing after one has made the start. To realize as soon in life as possible that everything has its price.”

Said a typical young graduate : “Football is a product of our youth as a people. It gives us an outlet for our animalism far less injurious than war. I need and enjoy that outlet …”

Said Heywood Broun, journeyman, in ruminations after the rainy Harvard-Yale game of 1924: “The game must have become tied up in the minds of many with some precious symbol. Attendance was a rite. To stay away would be heretical, to leave before the end would smack of infidelism. At the moment I can think of no other activity in America, religious, social, or political, which could possibly induce so large a crowd to endure so much suffering and discomfort. … It is extremely useful to the world to have recurring proof that 70,000 people can all get excited about something at the same time . . .”

Said the Amherst Student in an editorial: “The college is at best but the reflection of the society which created it. … The tentacles of materialism have by imperceptible degrees come to encircle the Nation. As a phase of this change, into the college inevitably came men who had been reared in the new code. They tended to scoff at the intangible benefits of learning … In their own interest they altered the college . . . founded social clubs, enlarged athletic activity, fired the publications with renewed vigor, evolved elaborate regulations for managerial appointments, stressed competition … It was the era of organization … A return to the standards of the past century is urged . . . But first the country must change. In the meantime, to attempt to arrest natural courses is vanity. . . . Yet all things pass, even materialism.”

Addressing himself to Yale Alumni in Rhode Island, James Rowland Angell, diplomatic chief executive of Yale University, assured his hearers that a new era was at hand in which universities would not concentrate upon the development of the student’s mind to the exclusion of his other capacities. “No man has greater influence over a larger number of students than the football coach or coach of crew,” said Dr. Angell; then marked the necessity for having in these spots at Yale “men of the same high type that we select as members of our academic faculty.”

Duke

Suddenly from the picturesque valley town of Charlotte, N.C., came one of the most amazing announcements in the history of education, and, indeed, of philanthrophy.

James Buchanan Duke gave $40,000,000.

This sum is in trust. Each year 20% of the income must be returned to the trust until the total amounts to $80,000,000.

The remaining income is to be distributed according to the following percentages:

Duke University 32%

Hospitals 32%

Orphans (white, black) 10%

Methodist Churches in North Carolina (building) 6%

Methodist Churches (maintaining). 4%

Preachers’ pensions 2%

Davidson College (Presbyterian) … 5%

Furman Univ. (Baptist) 5%

Smith Univ. (colored) 4%

100%

There is now no Duke University. If Trinity College at Durham, N. C., will change its name to Duke, it will get the money. If not, there will be a new university in North Carolina.

The Carolinas are the beneficiaries of the trust, for there was the cradle of the Duke tobacco fortune.

Excerpts from the statement announcing the trust:

“I have selected Duke University as one of the principal objects of this trust because I recognize that education, when conducted along sane and practical lines as opposed to dogmatic and theoretical lines, is, next to religion, the greatest stabilizing influence.

“And I advise that the courses at this institution be arranged first with special reference to the training of preachers, teachers, lawyers and physicians, because these are most in the public eye and by precept and example can do most to uplift mankind. And, second, to instruction in chemistry, economics and history, especially the lives of the great earth, because I believe that such subjects will most help to develop our resources, increase our wisdom and promote human happiness.”

A unique specification of the trust (which will be administered by a self-perpetuating body of fifteen, composed at first of relatives and friends) is that the $40,000,000 shall be kept, as far as possible, invested in the Southern Power System. Mr. Duke:

“In my study of the subject I have observed how such utilization of a natural resource which otherwise would run into waste in the sea and not remain and increase as the forest would, both gives impetus to industrial life and provides a safe and enduring investment for capital,”

Gloomy?

The contest, John Jay Chapman vs. “The Aggression of Rome,” continued.

John Jay Chapman, graduate of Harvard, resident of Manhattan, author and publicist, is a man of intensity, energy. What he believes, he believes passionately. His right arm is off at the elbow. Few have the exact reasons for this, but it is commonly believed that, for having struck a friend (or teacher), Mr. Chapman did penance by thrusting his right arm into a blazing furnace.

Last month, Mr. Chapman addressed an open letter to Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts, calling the attention of the latter to phrases employed by Cardinal O’Connell of Boston in dedicating a Catholic church near the gates of Harvard University. The Cardinal had said: “Some centuries ago, some of the great schools of Europe, like Oxford and Cambridge, forgot their duty to their mother.” Of Harvard, the Cardinal had said that, if she “had the old faith of Christ for which she was supposed to have been erected, her influence would be tremendous, and we i. e., the Roman Catholics] would be the first to gather round her. . . . This temple of God represents the whole truth, the real truth. . . . Life can dispense with every other sort of half truth. So much for Harvard’s boasted advantages.”

Mr. Chapman called the Bishop’s attention to “the customary silence with which such statements by Roman pre lates are received in America. It is thought unkind and subversive for any Protestant to resent the claims made by the Roman curia, or even to call attention to them. The outspoken purpose of the Roman Church is to control American education.” Later in his letter, Mr. Chapman referred to the election, some years ago, of a Catholic (James Byrne, of Manhattan) as one of the seven Fellows of Harvard. “Under present conditions of Protestant speechlessness, the presence of a Roman Catholic on the governing board of a non-Catholic college or school makes it impossible to discuss the great issue frankly.”

With one exception (Owen Wister, of Philadelphia), the Harvard Fellows demurred at Mr. Chapman’s identification of their colleague with “the out spoken purpose of the Roman Church.” Ralph Adams Cram, Boston architect, Protestant, wrote to Mr. Chapman: “Will you . . . state explicitly where and when the Roman curia, or any other official body of the Roman Catholic Church, has declared it to be its ‘outspoken purpose’ to control American education? . . .I do formally challenge you to show cause for making your amazing statement. For my own part, I deny it explicitly.”

Last week, Mr. Chapman answered Mr. Cram: “I refer you to the history of the papacy. . . . Let us look about us. We see the Roman Catholic Church in every branch of its discipline, whether in its universities, seminaries, schools, monasteries, convents or in the parochial commands that are read aloud in its churches, openly drilling its adherents into contempt for American institutions and especially proclaiming its intention to control our education . . . With regard to the Board of Fellows of Harvard … I call your attention to the fact that Bishop Lawrence has not yet noticed my letter.”

Westerners

At Kansas City, Mo., Henry L. Doherty, public utilities man, speaking of selecting new executives for his extensive enterprises, declared : “I don’t know why it is, but we always have better luck with Western men. Once in a while an Eastern university graduate makes good, but not so often. Approximately 90% . . . are products of the schools of the Middle West or West.”

At Columbia

To the Biological Department of Columbia University, Manhattan, at the opening of the fall term, came a new teacher. Her last name was Rockefeller. Pressmen investigated, wrote stories about her, for it was found that she was Miss Isabel Roockefeller, grandniece of John D. Rockefeller, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Percy A. Rockefeller, of Manhattan.

“Anarchy”

Patrolman Patrick Powers, of Madison, Wis., found a man on his back porch at midnight. The man ran; Patrolman Powers cried, “Halt!”, took a shot in the dark, killed Peter M. Posepny, Wisconsin University undergraduate. A jury acquitted Patrolman Powers of murder. Thereupon, the Daily Cardinal, Wisconsin undergraduate paper, published an editorial allegedly written by one Wesley Dunlap, of Salt Lake City. “We should like to see the police force tremble in its boots at the approach of a student. We should like to see terror thrown into their hearts when the word ‘student’ is mentioned.”

There was trouble. Leaders of nine campus organizations declared the editorial misrepresented student feeling. The Cardinal board went into conclave. The Rev. Pastor Hengell of the university chapel declared that atheism and anarchy were abroad in the university and this was but an outcropping thereof. It was the kind of writing that led to the assassination of President McKinley, thought Pastor Hengell. Said he: “May it not lead some youthful student with a grandiose complex of mock heroics, to assassinate a Madison policeman?”

Millions

George Eastman, Kodak King, distributed his stock holdings in the Eastman concern, retaining only enough to enable him to participate actively in its management. The aggregate worth of these shares ($15,000,000) he divided as follows:

To Rochester University, $8,500,000.

To Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), $4,500,000.

To Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, $2,000,000.

Said Mr. Eastman: “I am now upward of 70. I would like to see the results from this money within my remaining years.”*

*Mr. Eastman’s public benefactions already include $5,000,000 to establish the Eastman School of Music at Rochester University, a total of $11,000,000 to M.I.T., the donation of a complete dental infirmary free to everyone in Rochester (TIME. March 31, Music.)