Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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and Wlilasaphy one of them stopped its work and in many the difficult times furnished an incentive for reappraisals of the soundness of their methods and aims. The students, in spite of the new burdens they had to shoulder and in spite of what often looked like ofhcial indifference, persisted in their loyalty to the humanities. Men carrying full war service programs, strug- gling with unfamiliar subjects, and working at top speed to fit themselves for military usefulness, somehow found time to include in their over-filled schedules courses in literature, philosophy, and music. Some of them completed their training for commissions in technical branches of the Army or Navy and still managed to finish the work for honors in humane fields of Concentration. For many it seemed as though they were being given their last chance. Ahead was war, chaos, perhaps death. It was now or never if they were EO get what they wanted in college, and for many of them what they wanted most was to be found only in the humanities. They saw more clearly than some of their elders that winning the war meant little or nothing unless they knew how to make the most of eventual peace. The writer of Harvard Today in the 1943 Album saw the point and stated it excellently. He ended his summary of the Harvard which the Classes of Philosopher Ralph Barton Perry, an expert on the theory. of values, carried on the tradition of Royce, Santayana, and William james, He retired in 1946. One of the first to recognize the Nazi menace, his latest book is One World in the Making. By Kenneth B. Murdock, Professor of English 1943 and 1944 had known, by characterizing 1939 as a year of fear, 1941 as one of challenge, and 1942 as one dedicated to intellectual action, and he declared that the power of thingy must no longer masquerade as the power of ic!ea.r, that ideas are . . . necessary to create and protect democracy, and that students can not fight or live without faiths. They could not fight or live with the old faiths and so must live with new ones produced and remodeled from the old. There were many, like the transplanted professor in uniform, who would have dismissed this, either cynically or with regret as for a dream too fair to grasp. With a war to fight, guns and machines, mathematics and electronics, tech- nical skills and physical prowess, were plainly useful and necessary, how could as good a case be made for literature, painting or music? Ideas, perhaps, were wanted, but only of the sort which in laboratories, drafting rooms, and staff head- quarters, produced stronger explosives, more accurate range- finders, or more deadly strategic devices. There were many who foresaw the giving up of the humr nities in colleges and everywhere else except as an ornamentation of life and a way of escape from important affairs, innocent no doubt but tolerable only as amusement after serious work was done. One of the youngest men ever to hold the coveted Boylston Chair of Rhetoric and Oratory, Theodore Spencer died unex- pectedly in january, 1949. He was a well-known poet and Shakespearean scholar. 139 l

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...4-nl i l i K i i ii I. A. Richards invented Basic English, was the founder of the school of New Criticism. ,4 rfs, letters Hlhe Dark Visions of those who reed Antici- patory Funeral Services over the Humanities Have Been Dispelledf' In 1942, a Harvard professor, famous for his scholarly achievements in a branch of the humanities, found himself in an army uniform and stationed near one of the foreign theatres of war. The abrupt change from classroom and library to a military office, the reports of combat, and the daily contact with the material implementation of war, were so upsetting that he wrote solemnly to a colleague that the day of such scholarship as his was over and that after the war students and teachers of the humanities would be barely tolerated in universities, if indeed they could hope even for that. Ab- sorbed by his new environment he looked back on Harvard as a remote backwater, and on his previous career as one which had outlived its usefulness. He was not alone in his pessimism. Others at home and abroad doubted whether the liberal arts at Harvard could survive the world struggle. The University was formally committed to a whole-hearted effort to win the war, and all its resources were turned to that end. Naturally it looked as if routine military training or the study of scientific techniques were in the ascendant. Most of the official pronouncements of the Harvard authorities either said nothing about the study of the humanities during the war, or stressed the importance of other work so heavily as to give the impression that the University was neglecting everything but its drill grounds, barracks, laboratories, and workshops. It was easy for dis- ciples of the humanities to lose heart. The leaders of some other colleges were no less firm in dedicating their institutions to war service but spoke out plainly for the continued study of the liberal arts as a necessary part of that service. When official Harvard was for the most part silent on this point, there were plenty of gloomy prophets who made invidious comparisons and asserted that the University had renounced its tradition by adopting a sterile and limited concept of its duty in the crisis and for the future. War, Chaos, Perhaps Death Those who were actually at Harvard during the war years had plenty of evidence that such dark forebodings were false. Although enrollments in courses in the humanities fell off as the pressure of war programs forced students into other fields, and although most liberal arts departments were under- staffed because many of their teachers were in war service, no i381

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Xrisiwiitta- l'l'uf4-ssor of Pliilnsnpli HEN RY DAVID AIKEN STUART ATKINS .fXH:4o1:iiiLi: l'rofi-me-ior of Gl!llllUll RALPH BEATLEY sr-ioviztte l,l'llf4'NHUl' of liiluifittiun HERBERT BLOCH Xssoc. Prof. uf Gm-iflc mul Littin JAMES M. CARPENTER Asisistnnt l'l'oft-Hrmr uf lfiue Arts Y l AMADO ALON SO 'roff-ssor of llnlniuwiv liungungvs und Liturixturc EDWARD BALLAN Tl N E Anson. Prof. of Music, l'linL'ritus WILLIAM BERRIEN 'rofi-sr-mr of R0lllll.lll'l5 l.ullgiiiu.tt'H unil Iiiteiuuirae JOHN BUSH Professor of English ALFRED K. CHIU lmctiurur on Cliilwsn Lungungc und Literature The Real Prophets How wrong such prophets were was proved not only by the continued activity of students and teachers during the war but in the continued development of the humanities in the more recent period of pseudo-peace. The years from 1942 to 1948 have seen Harvard scholars contributing their full share in all branches of the liberal arts. There have been books like Professor jaeger's monumental Paicleiu, already a classic, or like Professor Rollins's variorum edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Theodore Spencer and Theodore Morrison proved the vitality of the muses even in times of catastrophe, and each published a volume of poetry. Professor Ralph Barton Perry wrote tirelessly and demonstrated brilliantly the part which a philosopher can play in arousing a nation to an understanding of the application of philosophical ideas in the building of sound morale and the furthering of rational and effective action in war. Professor Piston won new successes as a composer. The University administration helped vastly by continuing to make promotions and new appointments and the departments employed visiting lecturers, such as Aaron Copland in music, Irwin Edman in philosophy, and Granville Barker in literature, to fill temporarily some of the gaps left by Harvard scholars who were absent in government service. Nor did the curriculum remain static. New courses were offered, and new departmental programs set up. In the German Department, instruction in Swedish language and literature was revived, very inadequately to be sure, but pre- sumably with good auguries for the future. The English De- partment overhauled its program of study for the Ph.D., a measure affecting immediately only graduate students, but Composer Walter Piston, winner of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony, goes over a passage with Dr. Archibald Davison, an authority on choral music. 4401