THE KEY REPORTER Summer, 1939
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THE KEY "REPORTER THE PHI BETA KAPPA NEWS MAGAZINE VOLUME IV NUMBER 3 This Issue Goes to 85,000 Members SUMMER 1939 true A Stronghold of Freedom We are the one group who can impose upon our colleges standards. We are the judge of whether an institution is a liberal we can grant charters where we we can MARJORIE NICOLSON, $ B K Smith college; will; publicly take away charters from institutions which fail to Dean, Smith College meet the true standard of liberal education. It is for us to set From an address delivered in Ike Symposium on 20lh see page February 4 the standard of the future, for us to determine the content of education" that "complete and generous which alone is liberal he liberal arts college has been and must continue to be education. It is for us to insist that our liberal colleges be the stronghold of the humanities; yet the liberal arts the stronghold of freedom of thought, of freedom of speech, Tcollege today thatthey be themilieu is meeting a crisis in which can develop more serious than at the true liberal any time in its long free from prejudice, history. The chief at from arrogance, tack upon us is from magnanimous, toler those who insist that ant, liberal. It is for education be "prac us to establish the tical." "Of what use true motto of the is a liberal educa true liberal: "Ye tion?" It is a con shall know the truth stant question, and and the truth shall free." one to which we can make you give no answer which satisfies the question ers. I am reminded of the famous Cam bridge toast: "To Charles Evans Hughes, Jr., pure mathematics John H. Finley and and it never be may John Kirkland Clark at anyone." of use to It Phi Beta Kappa's Dinner, is our and our glory February 20, 1939 function to pass on the goodly heritage of the past, to stress learning not for profit but for learning's sake. or But in so doing we meet another opposition that tend The Humanities Absolutism? ency in education which believes in what a shrewd old pro ROSCOE POUND, $ B K Nebraska fessor of mine called "The Doctrine of Interest without Former Dean the Harvard Law Principle." of School In the face of this we are prone to give way, to try From an address delivered in the Symposium on February 20th see page 4 to make our curricula more attractive. We are lowering standards, dropping our requirements for admission and for Historical continuity is involved in civilization. We graduation, yielding to a pressure which we must resist. reshape the institutions of the past to new uses. We Because the secondary schools for economic or other reasons understand new conditions from analogy of old ones. or We reason to drop Latin and Greek, or higher mathematics, science, apply experience of the past. The materials shall we sit quietly by and accede where we should lead, upon which we exercise creative reason were given us by the follow where we should insist? past. Who is to face the issue? We have Phi Beta Kappa a dis Not the least of our heritage is the idea of freedom. The passionate, loyal, devoted body of learned men and women. {Continued on page 5) In This Issue: Get Ready for World Problems by John W. Davis Reviews of Seasoned Timber, Reaching for the Stars, Tree ofLiberty PHI BETA KAPPA in PUBLISHED BY THE UNITED CHAPTERS OF November, February, May and September, at the Rumford Press, Concord, N. H. New N. Y. William A. B Editorial and executive offices, 12 East 44th Street, York, Editor, Shimer, Harvard * K; Assistant Editor, Dorothy E. Blair; Consulting Editor, Frank P. Graves, President of the United Chapters. Adver rates upon tising application. Subscription 20 cents a year, $1.00for five years. Entered as second-class matter at the post office at Con cord, N. H., under Act of March 3, 1879. POSTMASTER: if undeliverable al youi office and addressee's new address Is please rated with postage known, forward, due to cover forwarding charge Undeliverable copies should be sent to: org PHI BETA KAPPA, 1! East 44th Street, New York, N. Y. www.pbk. Forwarding and return postage www.pbk. guaranteed. [2] THE KEY REPORTER Summer, 1939 First $1,500 OBK Award Get Ready for World Problems Alice B. Critchett, summa cum laude graduate of Mount Holyoke College in JOHN W. DAVIS, * B K Washington and Lee 1933 and winner of numerous college Lawyer, Former Ambassador to Great Britain awards and " Tomorrow" scholarships, has been Digest of a radio address delivered on April 14, 1939, in the series, Get Ready for awarded <E> B K's Mary Isabel Sibley in Critchett Fellowship French. Miss It is a saying as trite as it is true and as culture and liberty into which a benev plans to go to true as it is trite that we live in olent God has permitted them to enter! Paris in July to troubled and confusing days, days in Phi Beta Kappa's motto runs: The continue with in which no single brain is powerful love of wisdom is the helmsman of life. tensive research enough to encompass what is going on. It plays its part by encouraging and her study of the There is a great wind sweeping across rewarding the love of wisdom and pro influence of Vol the world, so great that no man knows moting the intellectual freedom neces taire on Anatole whence it comes or whither it is going. sary for its life. For wisdom and freedom France. None but the deaf can fail to hear the are not mere chance acquaintances In 1929 Miss noise of its passing, while to those who they are inseparable companions. We "liberal" Critchett entered have ears to listen its roaring seems to speak of a education and of arts," Mount Holyoke speak the ominous words: "Get ready! the "liberal rarely stopping to in ready!" with a scholar Get What does it mean? Get quire how that adjective crept into the ship for the fresh ready for what? Get ready how? Get educational field. We take it direct from man ranking highest in the college en ready why? the Romans, who called those things "liberal" trance board examinations. In her Men differ in their answers. Some which were befitting to men junior year she was elected to member think it means get ready for universal of free and not of servile birth; and the "liberal" ship in $ B K and obtained a scholarship wars. Get ready to fight for a larger arts, those branches oflearning from the Institute of International Edu place in the sun, get ready to defend the which only free men were permitted to cation for study in France with the rights you have. Is it possible that the pursue. The world has moved since that Delaware Group, returning to this great wind has only this despairing day, but it still remains true that a country with a scholarship medal from message? It is a terrible and bloody liberal education, based on the study of the University of Nancy and a diploma wind, if this is true. the liberal arts and sciences, alone can (Continued on page 6) Some pretend to think the wind has a free the minds of men and keep them milder prophecy to deliver; that it free. Vocational and technical instruc really calls us to get ready for security tion and training in mechanical skill are Taunt for a Scholar and a more abundant life, a life where well enough in their way, but there toil will be less and leisure will be must be a broader education if richness BESS R. DVVORSKY, $ B K Minnesota greater and the needs of the body will be is to be given to the individual life and Shut the spring night out ! within easy reach of every man. No one an intelligent outlook gained on the Let written words console the empty heart, will deny that it is good to be sheltered, problems of a troubled world. It is this Words of the rotted dead, who once were men, clothed, warmed, fed. But those who sort of education of which it has been And lived, and marveled when read the wind in this fashion do not take said that "it teaches men to do the saw the sprout They greening do." occasion remind us that the cattle things not been Of wet black earth and knobby bough. to they have taught to Aye, shut the spring night out standing to their halters in their narrow I would not have you think, when I Too late for now. loving stalls have all of these things. Make no speak of a liberal education, that I am mistake, however, the wind that offers talking only of what can be gathered Shut the spring winds out! this and no more is a false and a de inside college walls. Some of the most Let dead men's songs blow through the dusty heart ceiving wind. genuinely educated persons I have met Dreams of the withered past that once was Is it not more than possible that on my journey through life never young. neither of these interpretations can be stepped inside a college door. There is Lose cloistered thoughts among true? Granted all the present turmoil in nothing new about that. With our pub Your books; allow men's is it not possible that when lic free Nor beating rain nor creeping mist to start minds, libraries, lectures, cheap books, un- Their quick spring madness in the blood and the wind has quieted down men and plentiful magazines, and a free and flout women will continue to live on the self censored press and radio, no one can Your sedentary days; but shut the spring winds same planet upon which were born that has passed him out they say learning by and the eternal verities will still hold unless he wills it so.