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YALE: ALUMNI
WEEKLY
YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY
SUBSCRIPTION, - $3.00 PER YEAR.
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PAYABLE IN ADVANCE.
Single copies, ten cents each. For rates for papers
in quantity, address the office. All orders for papers
should be paid for in advance.
Checks, drafts and orders should be made payable to
the Yale Alumni Weekly.
All correspondence should be addressed,—
Yale Alumni Weekly, New Haven, Conn.
The office is at Room 6, White Hall.
ADVISORY BOARD.
H. C. Roprnson, 58. J. R. SHEFFIELD, ’87.
W. W. Sxippy, 65S. J. A. HARTWELL, °89 S.
C. P. LINDSLEY, 5 S. L. S. WELCH, ’89.
W. Camp, ’89. E. VAN INGEN, 915.
W.G. DaaeetTtT, ’80. P. Jar, °92.
EDITOR.
Lewis S. WELOH, ’89.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR.
WALTER Camp, ’80.
ASSISTANT EDITOR.
E. J. THOMPSON, Sp.
NEWS EDITOR.
FreED. M. DavriEs, ’99.
ASSISTANT.
PRESTON KuUMLER, 1900.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT ASSISTANTS.
O. M. CLARK, ’98. BURNETT GOODWIN, ’99 S.
Entered as second class matter at New Haven P. 0.
NEW HAVEN, CONN., DEC. 22, 1898.
All material for the WEEKLY, which 1s
not of the character of late news, should,
be received not later than Friday morning,
for the issue of the following week. Artt-
cles of a general nature can always be pre-
pared so as to be received by that time,
and alumni notes should all be in the of fice
at that time.
In the case of record of late news, tt 1s
possible to handle a limited amount of very
important matter as late as Monday after-
noon, but its use can not be guaranteed by
that time.
-
THE NEXT ISSUE.
The next issue of the WEEKLY will be
on January 5, 1899.
EDWARD GAY MASON,
It is not possible, with the sad news
coming so late, to try to say, in this
issue of the WEEKLY, what the loss to
Yale has been in the death of Edward
Gay Mason, of the Class of Sixty, and
of the Corporation of the University.
Mr. Mason’s interest in Yale drew
him early into her service in his own
city and section of the country. By his
election by the Alumni to the Corpora-
tion in 1891, he was made a sharer of
the responsibility for her highest in-
terests. He did not take this office
lightly or esteem it but an _ honor.
None was more regular at Corporation
meetings than he; none more vigor-
ously or intelligently applied himself
to the problems of Yale government.
He was a student and of broad, intel-
lectual sympathies. He was on the
side of progress and resourceful in sug-
gestion for the advancement. of the
University’s interests. He was far-see-
ing, and did not shrink from meeting
the future’s demands. He was not
destructive, but clung with reverence
to the good things of the former times.
Particularly did he prize all the memo-
rials of Yale’s storied past, and used
his influence to retain them. Differing
not infrequently with some of his col-
leagues on matters of policy and stand-
ing strongly for his own convictions,
he bore himself with such courtesy as
never to estrange. The charm of his
manner, which made him friends so
quickly and so universally, rested on
the native parts of the gentleman,
which could not leave him. It is a
sobering thought that such an one
has gone from the councils of Yale
when the University comes to the great
crisis of choice. It is not strange that
men began to talk of Mr. Mason him-
self, as one who might well be trusted
to lead into the tremendous possibilities
of the future.
As for the man himself, it may be
easier after some days to write. It is
unspeakably hard for the brotherhood
of Yale to let him go.
RDNA i PEAS,
“% NARROWNESS AT YALE.?’?
_ The leader in the November Lit.
would have received earlier considera-
tion in the columns of the WEEKLY, but
for two reasons. ‘The first was the
natural unwillingness to consider an ar-
ticle made up principally of general
charges. The second was the pressure
of other matter, which seemed at the
time more important for insertion in
the columns of this paper. This article
is taken up now because it has been
given so much publicity outside of Yale,
by those who have been over eager to
use it as a means of attack upon the
University.
The article in question was entitled,
“Narrowness at Yale.” Its main points
can be indicated, without a repetition of
the entire essay, which, for this number
is impossible. This article we have re-
ferred to as a leader. By this is meant
that it was the first article in the maga-
zine and was written by a member of
the Board. This follows the immemo-
rial custom in the make-up of the Lit.
The fact should, however, be kept in
mind, that the leader, in so far as it
is an expression of opinion, is the opin-
ion of the man who writes it. It has
never been the custom of the Lit., ac-
cording to our best knowledge, to as-
sume the responsibility for what its
leader may contain. In this case, Mr.
Benjamin B. Moore of the Class of
Ninety-Nine, signed the article and
takes the responsibility for it.
The article charges with narrowness
the undergraduate body of Yale, its
Faculty and its Corporation. It ad-
mits at the opening, the largeness of the
indictment and concedes, at the same
time, the “strength, virility, unquestion-
able power, and many other fine quali-
ties” of the general Yale character.
The charge, as to the undergraduate,
rests upon the statement of the writer
that the average undergraduate is with-
out broad sympathies or general interest
in the different sides of University life;
that the athlete or the student, deeply
interested in athletics, is little interested
in any other side of college, life; that
the hard student is generally a grind,
equally insensible with the athlete to
the interests of the college outside of his
own particular work; that a man in
literary work, like contributing to the
Yale Literary Magazine, is bound up in
his own aspirations and efforts.
_ As to the narrow interest in athletics,
the article says that the great virtues
or athletic sports, and the value of in-
terest in them, do not constitute ‘an
excuse for man being crude and unread,
and wholly without cultivation. Be-
cause a man likes to see a football
game; perhaps likes it better than any-
thing else, he need not be entirely
ignorant of all other subjects.”
“This lack of breadth creeps even into
the religious side of the college.’ The
special point made, in connection with
the voluntary religious work of Yale
is, that the many good men, who
go into it “in all sincerity and with the
highest motives,” often become very
narrow, and confine their energies and
interests to the four walls of Dwight
Hall.
The writer fits also his general ac-.
cusation to the Sophomore societies.
Their members are so narrowed, he
says, by their attachment to them, that
they form their cliques and try to use
society affiliations for political advance-
ment. He would not destroy them, but
make them broad.
The cause of this fault in the under-
graduate body of Yale, he assigns to
three traits: laziness, indifference and
the fear of being ‘“‘queered.” As to the
third point, he says: “What is needed
is a greater degree of individuality; less
submerged personality and a strong
diminution of that dead conservatism
and mere brute public opinion, which
stifles and oppresses Yale life.”
When it comes to the Faculty, the
writer says that there are too many
men on the Yale staff who are entirely
confined to their own speciality; who do
not seem to admit any basis for culture
or general education outside of their
own line. “Culture is a thing,” he says,
“of which the average Yale undergrad-
uate knows little and cares less, but the
lack of it in some of his professors is
what gives them in his eyes their small
and grotesque apeparance. Such men,
before assuming their positions, need
broadening and a keen realization of
the fact that no subject, much less the
mere pedantic side of it, is of any value
for its own sake; and they also need to
learn the meaning of a word strange to
American and especially to New Eng-
land ears,—culture; for the Faculty of
Yale ought to be conspicuously at the
head of a movement towards greater
breadth among undergraduates retarded
and repressed by the opposing influence:
of certain professors.”
Turning his attention to the Cor-
poration, this Lit, editor says: ‘“Sec-
tarianism is a thing that should have no
part in the control of one of the coun-
try’s great institutions of learning;—
no university ought to be ruled in the
interest of a religious body. But the
ministers of one sect, notorious for the
restriction of its ideas, have almost a
predominant voice in governing Yale,
governing it from a sectarian stand-
point, as if in bygone Puritan times,
narrowly and short-sightedly, not see-
ing that, if the Yale which they rule is
to be in fact as in name a university,
that is, a center of the country’s cul-
ture, she must break with the dead past
and with the Puritan narrowness of
New England, and must cast-off all
traces of sectarianism, taking on a
hitherto unknown breadth of view and >
policy—a breadth that means advance-
ment and the highest culture.”
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This resume gives so much of the ar-
ticle, and such a number of its charac-
teristic passages, that it is unnecessary
to discuss it at length. As we read it
over, it is hard to realize that one so
intelligent as its author could have
perpetrated such stuff as some of its
passages. We feel almost like apologi-
zing for reprinting such a paragraph as
that about New England culture. Such
passages do rather more than answer
themselves.
But one or two observations may be
pertinent. The first is a personal one.
However this article reads (and the pas-
sages we have selected give a fair idea
of it), we know that the spirit of its
writer was as far removed from the
spirit of its reception in many quarters
outside of the College as it possibly
could be. A knowledge of the writer
and a frank talk with him concerning
the article, allows us to emphasize this
point very strongely. This Lit. editor
is one of the strong and earnest men of
his class. He is as far removed from
being out with his College, or soured
by circumstances, as any Yale man can
be. He is rather unusually ready to
recognize the strong points of Yale, and
it is to a degree his great appreciation
of them that has led to such strong
statemen about those points in the Uni-
versity life and government which, as
he sees them, do not consist with the
general character of the University
which he greatly admires. We ven-
ture the opinion that the writer of this
article may be properly calle an ideal-
ist, who has seen so much in Yale to
keep him an idealist as to make him
especially sensitive to that which he
feels is out of key with the real Yale
character. The article, as we construe
it, is a case of very rigid self-examina-
tion by an extremely sensitive and con-
scientious Yale man. He wrote it, as
we believe, in the hope that a few would
apprecidte what he meant and would
respond with such effort as an indivi-
dual may give to remove these blem-
ishes. It was a little talk in the family
which he though he was giving. An
unfriendly outside world listened and
said it was a bad row and so treated it.
But as to the actual statements of the
article, taken as the average reader
would take them, there is no other com-
ment possible in our mind than that
they are at least misleading, and that the
criticisms, wherever they do touch on
fact, are at best exaggerated. Further-
more, except in a few points, the ar-
raignment is so general that one hardly
cares to notice it. It is one thing to
say that an institution has this or that
failing or vice. It is another to point
to the actual evidence of it. In the lat-
ter case, there is something to work on,
and, if the criticism go so far as to sug-
gest the line of work itself, then it is
a most welcome contribution, no matter
what its conclusions be. Any construc-
tive criticism is, in itself,.an evidence
of- good will, and, by its direction of
thoughtful attention to the institution,
does good.
The Lit. leader says Yale is not what
it ought to be, and stops there. Well,
Yale unquestionably is not all she ought
to be. But we categorically deny the
different allegations of the article in
question. It is not true to call Yale
narrow. It is not true to say that the
[Continued on 113th page.|
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