a
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COMMENTS ON PRES. HADLEY.
ne
[Continued from 4o4th page.]
him graduated and in which he had
taught many yeares. It would be difh-
cult to find a man more completely the
son of an institution than President
Hadley is a son of Yale. It is not often
that a member of a faculty is the choice
of the trustees for the presidency, but
in this instance it seems to have been
the unanimous and hearty choice of the
trustees, of the Faculty, of the almuni,
and of the undergraduates. All this
results from no special sentiment, but
from a general conviction that he is
eminently fit for the place.
More than a Scholar.
[Railroad Gazette.]
The new President of Yale University
has written a book on railroads which
is a classic. Few men have stated so
many essential facts in so few words
and yet so clearly as has President Had-
ley in his “Railroad Transportation.”
* * * He is a scholar, but he is a
good deal more thar a scholar. He
has the constructive temperament, and
he comes to-his new work at an age
when that temperament is still strong
and active. Criticism and repression
are to him merely incidental—not. the
real end of human effort. His tempera-
ment would lead him to stimulate and
use the forces around him. This is
illustrated by a few words quoted re-
cently from a magazine article which he
wrote five years ago, speaking of the
place of athletics in college: “If there
is danger of distorting the sense of
proportion among the students it is to
be remedied not by less encouragement
to athletics, but by more encourage-
ment to study.
Called Conservative,
[New York Tribune.}
It is said, not unnaturally but rather
carelessly, that Professor Hadley’s elec-
tion marks a wide departure from the
old order of things. In reality it is
essentially conservative. The new Presi-
dent was born and reared in the atmos-
phere of Yale. No one of its graduates
has ever been more completely identified
with the University by inheritance, sym-
pathy and association. He.is the em-
bodiment of its traditions, its teachings
and its living spirit. In a sense, every
change of administration is experimental,
and this succession to a great post in the
educational world must inevitably be re-
garded with an interest not wholly free
from anxiety. But Professor Hadley
has an ample title to the confidence of
those to whom the welfare and the
honor of Yale are most dear. The Uni-
versity will be expected to make great
and perhaps rapid progress under his
supervision, but the development will
be along established lines, and the con-
tinuity of purposes and, in the main,
of processes, will be preserved.
Filis the Measure,
[E. S. Martin in Harper’s Weekly.)
The elevation of Professor Hadley to
the Presidency of Yale seems to meet
with general approval. We all like to
see such a prize in the teaching profes-
sion go to a professional teacher. Be-
sides that, no other candidate was talked
about in public whose qualifications
seem quite as comprehensive as those
of Professor Hadley. Heisa Yale pro-
fessor, the son of a Yale professor,
born in New Haven, in a blue house—
Yale of Yale, bred in the bone, and
blown in the glass. There couldn’t be
a Yaler man, as every person will admit
who ever sorrowed over the elder Had-
ley’s Greek grammar, He is forty-three
years old—a very proper age. He has
written a book about railroad law
which enables him to qualify as enough
of a business man to be a college Presi-
dent. He has served with credit as a
' labor commissioner in Connecticut, so
he must know something about the
conditions of life outside of the Yale
Campus. He is liked and esteemed in
the University and out of it, and is very
generally credited with Possessing a
mind of the requisite fibre to enable
him to fill a distinoyis ! :
distinction. = shed place with
z oe
The Position of the College
7 President.
[Boston Transcript.]
The place of a successful college presi-
dent, however, can be no_ sinecure.
Hardly a position can be imagined in
which more manly tact and _ broad
diplomacy are. required. There are
various interests, some of them at times
conflicting, to be reckoned with and
adjusted. There is the Faculty’ to be-
gin with. That ‘should be composed,
without exception, of men, or women,
who are not only learned but reasonable ;
but it is not always. College professors
have their foibles and their faults, and
they are frequently capable of generating
friction and creating divisions. These
have to be prevented or reconciled.
Then comes the great student body
which requires even more skilful hand-
ling than the instructors. Next are the
trustees, who are usually men with well
defined and tenacious opinions, and last
the alumni, who assume that they have
at least the right to find fault with
everything occurring at their alma mater,
for which they cannot see a reason.
It is hardly more difficult for the
President of the United States to steer
his course successfully through the
coordinate branches of government than
for the college president to keep such
a guiding hand upon all the movements
of his institution that clashing and colli-
sion shall be avoided. His diplomacy
must even lead to financial results of
greater or less importance, else he will
be accused of weakness in a leading
point. Whether the new men of the
present year can meet all these demands
upon them remains to be seen, but the ©
prospect is certainly hopeful.
Wniversity and Nation.
[Marrion Wilcox in Harper’s Weekly.]
At no other time in the century of
our national history or in the two cen-
turies of Yale’s history has there been
a more imperative demand for a full
recognition of the vital connection
which exists between university and
nation; for it is now plainly the duty
of those in authority at our institutions
of learning to realize that, quite beyond
the local questions of university govern-
ment and (for example) Bi-centennial
financial schemes, or the relations which
the university sustains to the City of
New Haven and the State of Connecti-
cut, is the question of questions, which
is the problem of the United States,
with all its cities and all its new posses-
sions: What is the meaning of the new
- expansive force in our national life,
and which way lies the right?—not
“which way lies the game?”? * * *
At this critical moment Yale has
chosen as her President a man whose
unquestioned intellectual power is not
of the narrowly academic order, whose
studies in history and political science
have given him breadth of view and
independence of judgment, and whose
methods of instruction are designed to
cultivate the same qualities in his stu-
dents—to stimulate original research
on their part, in the belief that this is
the only road to opinions which may
be used as well as held. Among his
friends who have known much of his
life, which has included some difficult
conquests together with many brilliant
and apparently easy successes, Mr. Had-
ley is frankly admired as a man of high
courage, as well as high character: to
his friends, then, to the undergraduates,
and to recent graduates who came under
his instruction during the college
course, his selection as Yale’s chief
executive when the importance of that
office has become most important, seems
especially fortunate: and it is safe to
say that the whole body of graduates
will join in congratulating both the
University and its new leader upon the
present splendid opportunity.
Mr. Chamberlain’s View.
[From a letter to the Springfield Republican by Ex-
Goy. Daniel H. Chamberlain, ’62.]
Permit me, to express my
strong sense of the praise and honor
we owe to the clerical members of the
. present Yale Corporation in this mat-
ter of the choice of a new President.
Esprit de corps is so strong with men
generally, there was so. much that
might be plausibly urged in favor of
the policy of “letting well enough
ooeeee
5 ALUMNI WEEKLY
405
alone,’ so much, too, to be said in
favor of the legal right, and even the
legal duty, to choose a clergyman, that
I for one feel unbounded respect in this
case, for men who put aside, as I must
imagine the clerical members of the
Corporation did here, all thought or
consideration, except what was best
now, in 1899 and for the coming quar-
ter-century, for our beloved and great
university.
censure of these men on other occa-
sions and in other regards, | am the
more ready and happy to speak now in
grateful praise. :
I have chosen of late to be a per-
fectly free critic of Yale, trying to look
at her and her Faculty and Corporation
objectively. For this a full quiver of
shafts have been sent at me by those
especially who profess to think—l
doubt if they really do think so, if they
even stop to think about it—that one’
ought not to publicly assail or freely
criticse one’s alma mater. For myself I
spurn such counsel, and I repudiate
such a rule. The only question in any
given case is: Are the censures or criti-
cisms just and well-founded? If they
are, and if the censurable conduct or
policy is persisted in, it is the duty
of the loyal son and graduate to resort
to public censure, to “cry aloud, spare
not, lift up his voice like a trumpet,”
in criticism, censure, rebuke and de-
nunciation. Whenever I hear, as I have
heard more than once, that public criti-
cisms are ill received at Yale, and will
result only in postponing desired and
needed reforms there, my indignation
is redoubled and I ask what standard
of duty or of fiduciary fidelity have
those who say this or who act from
such motives, and I am apt to query:
Is the servant above his master? Plain
speaking is as safe, as ‘useful, as im-
perative a rule and practice as I have
ever learned.
<> La»
a oe’
Providence University Club.
The University Club of Providence
has been formally organized, and the
following officers were elected: Presi-
dent, Stephen O. Edwards; Vice-Presi-
dent, Gov. Elisha Dyer; Secretary, S.
Minot Pitman; Treasurer, Henry T.
Grant, Jr.; Board of Governors, Col.
If I have felt and spoken
R. H. I. Goddard, Prof. E. B. Delabarre.
Lorin M. Cook, Walter R. Callender, ’94°
Walter L. Munroe, John P. Farnsworth,
James B. Sullivan, Henry B. Gardner,
Frank K. Potter, Edward G. Buckland,
89 L.S., George H. Webb and Frank
L. fay |
The Illustrations.
Several of the half-tones in illustra-
tion of the London games are, as indi-
cated in the lines under the plates, from
the great collection of illustrations made
by the British Mutoscope and Biograph
Company Ltd., which is the English
connection of the American Mutoscope
and Biograph Company. The Company
very courteously allowed the correspon-
dent of the WEEKLY to select several of
the views. These moving pictures,
taken by this company, form a perma-
nent record of the contest and will be
shown in the biograph the coming sea-
son in the theaters in all parts of
America. 3
THE PHOENIX
3X20
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both investment and insurance.
Write to us about it.
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LIFE INSURANCE Co.
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