_The Herr Director and the College Spirit_
"Take us out of New York," the Herr Director said after a wearing day of
sightseeing, "or we will go home on the next steamer. My neck aches from
looking at the sky-scrapers, my nerves are all on edge, and," glancing
at the Frau Directorin who had hugely enjoyed every moment and showed no
sign of weariness, "we must have rest."
I was reluctant to leave New York, because, after all, it holds those
great thrills with which we like to startle our foreign friends. I
feared the change from those daily surprises which thus far I had been
able to give them. Lake Mohonk, the only place outside of New York City
which we had visited, is unique in many ways and its experiences were
not likely to be duplicated; so it was somewhat heavy heartedly that I
started them on a new adventure, praying to Him who "holds the nations
in the hollow of His Hand" to aid me in my praiseworthy endeavors.
I was not very sanguine that my prayer would be answered, for we were
beginning a tour of the Eastern educational institutions, than which
there is nothing more difficult to interpret. This, not only because
they have no counterpart anywhere in Europe, and the line between our
university and college is so indistinct, but because I hoped to reveal
their Spirit, which no mere outsider can comprehend, and which even the
man on the inside finds it difficult to understand.
I drew into the conspiracy dear friends, _alumni_ of the different
institutions, who knew every blade of grass on each respective campus,
over which they walked proudly and reverently. To find one university
tucked away in a village, another defying the grime and noise of a
growing city which crowded upon it; one still retaining its air of
exclusive dignity in spite of its garish surroundings, while a fourth
was nearly swamped by the culture-hungry children of immigrants, yet
remained triumphantly American, was new enough and startling enough to
keep my guests on the heights.
The pleasant walks, shaded by tall, graceful elms, and the presence of
distinguished Americans, acted soothingly upon the Herr Director; while
the gracious attention paid to the ladies convinced the Frau Directorin
that she had reached the feminine paradise. She could not understand,
however, why, when the ladies were permitted to go everywhere, and were
even allowed to gaze at American students in athletic undress, they were
barred from sharing with us the rare privilege of seeing a thousand or
more of them being fed in one of those Gothic dining halls. There,
surely, one might expect nothing worse than medieval piety tempering the
appetite. Probably this tradition of no ladies in the galleries is the
only thing beside the architecture which is left us from that hoary age.
There are certain definite points which the enthusiastic _alumnus_
always tries to impress upon visitors, and one of them is the past, in
which every college glories, and as youth seems to be unpardonable,
history begins when as yet it "was not."
In most of the places we visited, no such historic license was
necessary, for many of them were respectably old, one of them being
contemporaneous with the history of our country, and others belonging to
that eminently respectable period, "before the Revolution."
Some have important battles named after them, and several were
"Washington's headquarters," a distinction freely bestowed upon many
places by that ubiquitous and much beloved "Father of our Country." At
present the most important thing seems to be the buildings; dormitories,
laboratories, libraries and usually most prominent of all, the gymnasium
and the athletic field.
The president of one of the lesser universities, having such a million
dollar plaything, became our _cicerone_, and while he took us hastily
through everything else, lingered fondly there, showing us in detail
the expensive apparatus. With classic pride he stood upon the athletic
field, looking as some Cæsar must have looked when he showed visitors to
Rome his arena, the "largest," and at that time the "costliest in the
world."
It was interesting to find that the buildings which pleased the Herr
Director most were neither new nor Gothic, a fact easily explained by
his dislike for everything which is English. He marvelled that we had
chosen to imitate English college architecture, with its heaviness and
gloom, its hideous gargoyles, its useless, and here meaningless,
cloisters, rather than to continue our fine inheritance, with its
severely classic lines, its wide windows inviting the light, and its
generous, broad doors, so much in harmony with our educational ideals.
Of course no one had an answer ready; yet personally while I do not
"_hasse_" England nor the things which are English, I vastly prefer, let
us say Nassau Hall at Princeton, to anything which that glorious campus
holds, not even excepting the graduate college with its massive and
impressive Cleveland Memorial Tower.
The Herr Director shook his head many a time at the external glory of
our universities and even more at the comfort and luxuries of the
dormitories and fraternity houses. We were the guests of one fraternity
at dinner. About twenty young men were living under one roof, having
chosen each other by some mysterious, selective process, and I was
tempted to think that it was their negative rather than their positive
qualities which drew them together. We were shown the house from cellar
to garret, much to the dismay of the Herr Director who does not like
climbing stairs, but to the joy of the Frau Directorin who, woman-like,
not only loves to peep into closets, and see pretty rooms, but having
discovered the American standard for feminine grace, wanted to lose some
of her "meat" as she expressed it in her quaint English.
Each of these young men occupied a suite of three rooms. The hangings
were heavy and not in the best taste, the chairs all invited to
leisure, and the most conspicuous piece of furniture was a smoking set
with a big brass tobacco bowl in the center; while innumerable pipes
hung from a gaudily painted rack. In keeping with the furniture were the
pictures which were decently vulgar, and of books there were no more
than necessary.
The Herr Director was asked regarding student life in Germany, and he
contrasted their surroundings with his own cold, inhospitable
_Gymnasium_, the relentless examinations, and the freer but responsible
life in his university. He described the rooms of the present Emperor of
Germany when he was a student at the University of Bonn, remarking that
they looked like barracks in comparison with these. "How can you study
in such luxurious rooms?" he asked, and naïvely and frankly came the
answer: "We don't."
On the whole, the Herr Director liked the looks of the boys he saw, and
the Frau Directorin quite fell in love with them. They were so frank,
so clean looking, and what above all amazed them most, so altruistic in
their outlook upon life; they looked so healthy and well groomed and
were so altogether wholesome. But that boys could graduate from colleges
and not have studied--that was beyond their comprehension.
The German student's social standing and his future depend upon his
"exams." There is only one prime thing, and that is study. When the Herr
Director learned the multiplicity of our outside activities which divide
the attention of the students, he knew why they do not study. He was
aghast at the scant reverence paid members of the faculty. When walking
with the president of one of these universities, we met groups of
students who did not salute the head of their institution and barely
made way for him to pass, he grew quite wrathy, and it took the combined
efforts of the president and myself to keep him from telling the young
men what boors they were. I think he discovered later that it was mere
thoughtlessness, and that there is something really fine about the
average American student; that he is usually a gentleman at heart, but
that he has not yet learned to value the grace which comes from that
sacrament of the common life--lifting his hat to his superiors.
When I told him that one of my students came to me one morning in haste,
with "Say, Prof, where is Prexy?" he did not laugh as I expected; but
when I remembered that I did not laugh either, when it happened, I
forgave him his lack of perception.
It is of course true, that the average college professor would rather be
called Jimmy or Jack or some other pet name than to have his academic
degrees pronounced every time a student speaks to him; but there still
remains the fact that the ordinary American youth lacks this sense of
respect for personality, and that an education, even a college
education, does not remedy the defect.
It is a very exciting moment in the life of the undergraduates of at
least one university when they try to discover if the preacher can make
himself heard above their coughs, which is their way of challenging his
message; but it does not help him to believe that he is in the presence
of men who know what reverence means.
I do not deny that the undergraduate honors achievement, but even in
that he lacks proper discrimination. How much education can do to
instill this common and deplorable lack of reverence for personality I
do not know; for it lies far back, too far back to be reached by mere
academic training.
During our tour, the Herr Director had a chance to see one university
come out of its incoherence and inexplicable confusion into unity. He
heard it roar like the "Bulls of Bashan," fling its flaring colors to
the wind, hoot its defiance to the enemy, dance, dervish-like, around
the battle flames; he saw ten thousands of young men suffering the war
fever, and an equal number of young women shrieking in wild delirium; he
saw embankments of automobiles struggling to reach the seat of the
conflict, armies of men trying to storm the ramparts, and newspaper
correspondents mad from haste; while in the center of it all,
twenty-two disguised men struggled for a chalk-line. Unfortunately, no
friendly guide was near us to explain it all, and as I am still an
un-Americanized alien to a football game, its meaning was lost to my
guests.
When two men were carried from the field limp, and seemingly lifeless,
the Frau Directorin promptly fainted. The Herr Director was beside
himself, for there was no way to extricate ourselves from the maddened
mass of humanity; but while he was wildly and vainly calling for water,
she revived, and we stayed to the finish. I wished I had not brought
them, for to appreciate a football game one must be born in America, and
no explanation I offered could convince the Herr Director that we are
not more cruel than the Spaniards, whose opponents in their deadly games
are bulls, not men. The Frau Directorin still sheds tears at the
remembrance of how badly we use our "perfectly nice young men."
The fierceness back of this conflict, the vast amount of money spent
upon properly playing the game, the primary place it occupies in the
imagination of the American youth, its deadening influence upon
scholarship, and all the multitudinous pros and cons, are over-shadowed
by the fact that, as far as the community at large is concerned, it
expects this Roman holiday, and a college or university is considered
good or poor, to the degree that it caters to this desire. One thing I
can say for it: it is thoroughly American, bringing into the lime-light
some of our virtues and most of our faults.
"In Germany," again the Herr Director, "where things are not permitted
to grow merely because they grow elsewhere, it was found that for
military preparedness your sports are of little or no value, especially
if engaged in vicariously; and that teaching men to dig trenches and
serve cannon, to obey implicitly a command and carry it out effectively,
is of more use, not only to the individual's well-being, but also for
the great, collective purpose of national defense."
It seems very strange to me that nearly all foreigners whom I have
helped introduce to our academic life have been so gratified by its
evident democracy, and that their satisfaction was greatest when their
own aristocratic lineage was highest. That a man's career in our
institutions of learning is not made impossible because he does manual
labor to help him through, and that he may do such femininely menial
tasks as waiting on table or washing dishes, while taxing their
credulity, is always unstintingly praised.
I have, however, good reason to believe that while our foreign visitors
find the democracy of our colleges interesting and praiseworthy, we are
losing the thing itself to a large degree, and my conscience has not
always been at ease when I finished a panegyric on college democracy. In
fact what I fear is its defeat just there, where it is most needed,
where we are supposed to train the leaders who, whether they become
leaders or not, are the men who will give tone to our national life and
will control its expression.
In travelling from one of the universities to the other, we came upon a
group of college men in the train. The Herr Director recognized them at
once, whether instinctively or because he had discovered the type, I do
not know. I knew them because of the fit of their garments, or the lack
of it, and by the fact that they smoked cigarettes incessantly.
The Herr Director, as a distinguished foreigner, had no difficulty in
opening a conversation with them, and I think he got much illuminating
amusement out of them. They had just finished their semester "exams,"
and one of them said that the question upon which he flunked was a
comparison between the two English authors, Dickens and DeQuincy. Though
he did not know the difference between these two, he showed his classic
training by differentiating between a Rameses II and an Egyptian Deity
cigarette merely by the color of the smoke.
I was not drawn into the conversation until the Herr Director needed me
to interpret some campus English. One of the lads undertook to inform us
regarding the social life of his university and more especially the
fraternities, with particular emphasis upon his own, which excluded not
only certain well-defined races, but also put a ban upon certain
classes. "We don't admit anybody into our fraternity whose people are
not somebody in their communities."