Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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18 HARVARD NINIZTEEN THIRTY-FOUR CLASS ALBUM might fancy, even for the modern empirical-minded youth. Harvard, Conant holds, having no right to waste excep- tional advantages, tlshoulcl endeavor to draw to its staff the ablest investigators and teachers lemphatically he wants no division between the twoi in the worldjl and should ttpro- Vide every opportunity for the ambitious, brilliant young scholar to come to Harvardll- alike for the scholars own benefit and Harx'ardls credit. Though, basically, it remains a New Eng- land college, or a college largely recruited from a now widely scat- tered ltHarvard community? based on New England origins or traditional associations, ttHarvard, as a truly national university, should even more in the future than in the past attract to its student body the most promising young men throughout the whole na- tion? This does not assume that Har- vard is so superior that she is en- titled to hog all the best. Rather, as a member of the big league of uni- versities, the team from Cambridge 0n the Charles must enter into the keen competition for the best team, made up of the best men, which Conant conceives to be the ideal healthy condition of a big league of universities, as ofa big league of baseball players. It was this condi- tion which existed in the German universities during the three-quarters of a century when German scholarship won such prodigious prestige throughout the world. Essential in Conantis view is this: tlThat any man with re- markable talents may get his education at Harvard, whether he be rich or penniless, whether he come from Boston or San Francisco? In such cases distance and penury should be eliminated as factors of exclusion. Adequate scholarships should be provided to make this possible. As we have seen, the process of extending the provision of scholarships in this direction has begun. Thus the picked crew of the engine of instruction is a prime concern of the new administration. But hardly less in the mind of the head of that administration bulks the tteom- munity of scholars and students, as a social body. iiMore souls are saved around the dinner table than through coursesf is a saying that sums up this side of Con- ant,s educational program. In his address to his first class of freshmen, he said: tiAll through your four years you will have the privilege of dining with a group of your friends, and, of course, will be thrown into a variety of human relationships by your mere presence in an active student body. With a little discrimination on your part you can hardly fail to have a group of friends who are interested in almost the whole range of human activities. By talking with them and under- standing their hobbies you will lay the basis for a truly liberal education. One can afford to be something of a specialist, even in ones undergraduate days, provided one has, as friends and companions, those who are interested in entirely different thingsf, This is a leaftorn from Conantls own book oflife. He began being a specialist in chemistry in the Roxbury Latin School On the steps of University Hall which prepared him for Harvard. But neither at school nor at college were his friends picked only or mainly from the laboratory. When the choice for president of Harvard fell upon a man who had made his reputation in a scientific laboratory, his fellow-workers cried out that it was a shame to make a mere executive of a chemist who had made important cliseoveriesu discoveries, too, in that borderland between chemistry and the mystery of lile where lies the most adven- turous hope, perhaps, of the further significant advance ofhuman know- ledge. Conant had been working on the green coloring matter of plants, called chlorophyll and the hemo- globin in the blood. What he achieved tin his own modest wordsi included the lielueidationi, 0f the probable nature of the second, and the ttpartial elueidationli of the structure of the first. It is not a sub- ject that we can even partially elucidate. As a boy, in Dorchester, Mass, where he was born, Jim, or Bryant Conant, as he was variously tagged by his familiars, had rigged up a lab- oratory for himself in his fathers house, that father, James Scott Conant, being an inventive wood- engraver who went on to photo- engraving and made for a time a considerable success of the busi- ness, after serving both in the army and in the navy during the Civil War. The son was tthey sayi a bad speller but sufli- eiently diligent in diversified studies to get into Harvard be- fore he was 18, and, with chemistry for stroke oar, to arrive at his degree with high honors three years later. After a summer spent in the laboratories of the Midvale Steel Company in Philadelphia, he was back at Cambridge to take his Ph.D. in 1916. Hard on that came his war service. As part of the task of beating the Germans, our army was trying to better the German chemistsa lethal inventions. Actu- ally it was the mild-mannered man with the blue eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles, now president of Harvard, who, while on military duty as lieutenant and then as captain in Washington, worked out a method for the production of the gas, more powerful than mustard gas, that came to be called ttlewisite? As Major Conant, he was sent to a commandeered motor-ear plant at Willougby, Ohio, where, with a score of other oHicers and some 500 men, his concern was the quantity production oflewisite. As extreme precaution toward guarding a prime military secret, he and his companions found themselves confined for the duration of the war within the high wire fence which en- closed the plant, It was called lithe Mousetrapfl The armis- tice found the gas-making going on full speed ahead tthough no shipment had yet been made overseasi and Conant very much on the job as technical expert in charge. His executive ability, his technique of handling men, were each tried, proved and tempered in the Mousetrap. There, too, his happy gift for the unhurried, efficient dispatch of business was con- siderably cultivated and perfected. From the Mousetrap he went back to Harvard and his chemical oceupations,bec0ming full professor in 1927 and head of his department in 1931.

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HARVARD NINETEEN THIRTY-FOUR CLASS ALBUM 17 most religious intensity. Since the advancement and perpetu- ation of learning are things so linked together that they are inseparable; since the whole structure of civilization depends on the cultivation of knowledgemwhieh has created eiyi- lization and enabled it to progress; since, also, the institutions of higher learning are the trustees in whose hands lies the future of human knowledge, a heavy responsibility to the nation and the race rests upon our universities, rests more heavily, perhaps, upon the privately endowed universities, equipped with costly facilities for study and research, often unmatched anywhere else. Conantis official utterances since he assumed office have emphasized this responsibility especially in regard to Har- vard. But his doctrine, in general, holds that, in order to achieve their appointed destiny, the universities must accept responsibility for the fullest use of the opportunity which is theirs toward saying the substance of democracy. This is the more important in the face of the present eclipse of an old simple faith in democracye-a faith so strong that the mere word was one to conjure with. That faith held rule of, by and for the people a sovereign panacea for sick civilization. If Conant, like other practical men of our time, is no believer in panaceas, he does, never- theless, stand firmly for the maintenance of the ultimate basis of democracy in the intellectual worldi-prime agent and custodian of Civilization. There must be equal access to the educational ladder as a means of climbing to the top. At the same time, since the educational ladder is rightly designed to lead to the top only those who really do advance and per- petuate knowledge, there must also be effective, and there- fore more or less merciless, elimination of the unfit as the process of mounting the rungs proves them so. Here Conant resembles all the thoroughgoing idealists in the hard-boiled act of making their dreams come true. The changes in things as they are which that act involves may, and often do, require a degree of ruthlessness in the removal of Cherished clutterv-institutions, practices, and even amiable individuals entrenched in the clutter. No official massacres or wholesale deeapitations are plan- ned for Harvard. That is certain, Suaviter in modo is Con- antis way. Though an idealist, he is a considerate and very human person. But Harvard also has its cherished clutter. What Conant is going to do with the clutter can only, for the present, be guessed at. He has been on thejob less than a twelvemonth. But he has already stopped the seven oieloek morning bell, which was a venerable and sacrosanet institutioneand anachronismwein Harvard Yard. And those new freshman fellowshipswa draught of selected fresh blood from the Middle Westi-are earnest of his intention to carry out the policy of more widely distributed opportunity to get into Harvard twhich does not mean that Harvard will take in more men; quality not quan- tity is what is desiredl and a stricter rule of the survival of the fittest among those admitted to the university,s privileges. At the same time, the large body of men in the college who seek only a liberal education will not be too much discouraged. Conant by no means underrates the value of this basic ele- ment toward the continued usefulness ofHarvard. Though it is likely that his modesty would Charge it to haste under pressure of multiple tasks within strict time lim- its, it seems a fair index of the new presidenUs simplicity, in the best sense of the wordiesinee he is using the economy of a scientific mind in stating accurately conclusions arrived at by factual analysis r-that in all his public and semi-public expressions certain things are set forth in words almost identical. One of these things is his idea of what a university is and what it is for. The essence ofthe idea goes back to the medie- val pattern. A university is a community of scholars and stu- dents. A university exists, in the exact words used by the founders ofHarvard 300 years ago, llto advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity? But gledueation and theology were by Harvardls founders conceived as inseparable. Today learning has become secular? Wherefore, llthe universities are now the residuary legatees of many of the spiritual values which used to be guarded by the churches? These spiritual values are so fundamental that, unless the elaborate ma- chinery of modern edu- cation is informed by them, they labor in vain that build libraries, laboratories, museums, gymnasiums, lecture halls, and all the houses with which the House Plan has dotted the low banks of the Charles River at Cambridge. Here is Conantis creed in his own words com- pacted into a nutshell: tilt is only by advancing learning that it is possible to perpetuate learning. When knowledge ceases to expand and develop it becomes devitalized and degraded. It is not sufheient to train investigators and scholars, no matter how brilliant they may be; a large body of influential citizens must have a passionate interest in the growth of human knowledge. It is our ambition to inspire the undergraduates of Harvard College with an enthusiasm for creative scholar- ship and a respect for the accumulated treasures of the past. A zest for intellectual adventure must be characteristic of every university. The teachers must be scholars who are extending the frontiers of knowledge in every direction? The compelling reason is that Clable young men enlist only in an enterprise to which they are persuaded they, too, may contribute creative work? If there is no such challenge in the intellectual field tended by the universities the young men will find the challenge elsewhere. The hold on youth is thus broken and the community at large loses interest. After all, of what permanent value is a community of scholars and students which fails to keep alive a llhigh regard for the achievements of the human mind? -the thing upon which the structure of civilization is built r-and which does not, therefore, llnurture true reverence for learning in the com- munityW, Of this community the loyal body of seholastically undis- tinguished alumnirwhat the English call llpassmeniiwis an influential part. It is these men who furnish universities not only their endowment but a powerful backing of which pride in the universities, achievements is the mainstay. Characterize as platitudes, if you have a mind, the quota- tations above. They are not platitudes to Conant. They rep- resent the practical religion or philosophyn-name it how you will 7-which is the inspiration and the guide to action ofa man brought up in a laboratory who confesses that he is part- ly armed for the conflict with life by Marcus Aurelius and Montaigne. These are moralists pragmatic enough, one Latest picture of President Conant

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HARVARD NINETEEN THIRTY-FOUR CLASS ALBUM 19 It is an arresting fact that the man who sits in the presi- dentls chair of the university, which is interwoven with all the traditions of culture in Massachusetts and New EnglandJ has no direct ancestor among Harvard graduates or, for that matter, among the graduates of any collegea-so far as the record has been uncovered. This notwithstanding that the Conant family, which has been seated in New England for 300 years, has furnished in collateral lines seventeen Harvard graduates within that period. In May, 1636, the name of the ancestor of them all, Roger Conant, who had come from English Devonshire thirteen years before, appears in connection with a plan to devote to the use of a college for the Colony of Massachusetts Bay a large tract ofland at Salem, a town of which this Roger was the rightful founder. Not Salem which history has linked with trials for witchcraft, but Cambridge, close to upstart Boston, got the college. But the record of Roger Conantls activity precedes by some months the official act which created the institution that we now know as Harvard. And thus his name leads all the rest that the written word preserves of the pro- moters of the seat ofleaming over which his six-times great- grandson rules. Roger, though a member of the Worshipful Company of Salterers ofLondon towneMassachusetts was deep in the salt fish business in those days-ehad his academic background, too. His nephew, John Conant, was Rector of Exeter Col- lege, Oxford, and Vice Chancellor of the university. James Bryant Conantls ancestral lines also lead back to Governor Bradford and John Alden of the Plymouth Colony. Of such sound New England stock is the man who has in his hands the destiny of New Englandis oldest college, which many also count Amerieals most distinguished universitye- at least when there are no Yale, Columbia, Princeton or Virginia men within hearing.