Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Y n S R E w N U E H T F O S R E m F F O

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HARVARD NINE'lVlilZi' rllHlRTY-FOUR CLASS ALBUM The new buildings for the three brand-new tthouscsh paid for by the Harkncss millions adorn the rchrlront and are handsome, gracious and spacious. Justly they may be pointed out to Visitors who look around for Mr. Lowelhs monument. But it will not do to forget that Mr. Lowell did not in this matter put the cart before the horse. The educa- tional rearrangement came first, the buildings afterward. The bricks and mortar 0f the houses represent merely the last step in the carrying out of a program for putting order in the place of chaos, more purposeful life into a round of aca- demic existence which had drifted far;Mr. Lowell felt? toward perilous futility. What was aimed at, in addition to provision olia smoother- working machine for the normal process of college life was in a phrase of Mr. Lowell,s own, increase of the itintclleetual voltageh of the college as a basis of the university, and of the university as the projection of the college. Ifmore work is not done now at Harvard than used to be done, at least more work is done with direction, purpose, clear objective. In- tellectual interests are more effectually stimulated. Mr. Lowell is convinced of it. So are many others. The impression produced by this man who has done so much, is of a strong man in whose sureness of strength lies his ease, simplicity, complete liberation from affectation. But lurking within that sim- plicity is a shrewdness so armed with tact that it may well carry a Jesuitieal or Machiavellian suggestion. His cunning, somebody said, dif- fers from low cunning prin- cipally in the application of the first to high purposes and the second to low purposes. Mr. Lowell uses ingenuity. An important function of the heads of all colleges in the era of swift ascending fortunes-and costs-which has just left us floundering about in the cloud of dust kicked up by its abrupt departure was to get money for the good works in their charge. Mr. Lowell,s Yankee shrewdness, along with his handy way with opportunity has been a Harvard asset translated into no small part of that $100,000,000 added President and NIrs. Lowell walking to a football game endowment accumulated in his time. He is a good New Englandcr, born in Boston. And Boston has never been ashamed to make good works pay. He does not, with dramatic gesture, citakc his standfl nor lead forlorn hopes. But neither is he swayed by popular clamor. Harvard did not throw out the German language or her German professors in the furor anti-Teutonicus of war that bred hymns ofhatc. Nor did Mr. Lowell shirk serving on the commission which reviewed and approved the evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti in the face of a shrill tumult 01' international radicals to whom Harvard seemed to have abjured her birthright and become ally of the crucifiers of liberty. The radicals probably did not remember what the same stiffnecked individual did when the fever of the Red Peril had got the country in its grip and powerful alumni brought all their weight to bear to in- duce the president of Harvard to get rid of certain members of his faculty of a shade much deeper than pink. Mr. Lowell held a court in the big faculty room, with portraits of all the Harvard presidents, and heard both sides from the bench. Having heard both sides he gave no formal opinion. But the deeper-than-pink profes- sors stayed where they were. Mr. Lowell was not Dr. Eliotls choice for succession to the steersman,s function. We have seen that not everybody at Harvard or in Boston really liked him as an unobtrusive but effectual autocrat of the university so conveniently sit- uated across the river in Cam- bridge. But there is no doubt in anybodyis mind that it will take a good man to fill the place which his resgination leaves open. And there is a strong suspicion that he has picked his own man to carry on the program which is the Lowell program and needs, per- haps, half a dozen more years to carry to full completion; though, as has been said on eminent authority, it is already far enough along to make it fairly sure that nobody will turn the Lowell houses into shops.

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HARVARD NlNli'l'liliN 'IVIIIR'lY-POLVR CLASS ALBUM The Corporation THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY AND 1 K, GRENVILLE QLAXRK, A.B.. LL,B CHARLES PELHABI CURTIS, JIL. A.B . , ROBERT HUMANS, A.B.. LL.B 1 cllow Fellow Fellow FRANCIS WELLES HUNNEWELL. A,B,, LL.B,, A.Rl. XVILLIAM LAWRENCE, A,B., D.D.. LL.D,. D.C.L. ROGER IRVING LEE, A.B.. M.D. SecrcLary to the Corporulion Fornmr Fellow bellow JOHN VlLHIiR LOXVES, xii, THOMAS NELSON PERKINS, A li.,LL,B.. LLD. HENRY LEE SHATTUCK, Ali. LLD. Deputy Tlcasurer Fellow Treasurer