University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

Page 26 text:

The Home of the University HE University of California will not rest satisfied with the intel- lectual leadership of the State nor of the West. Her aim (a worthy one for any institution of the kind) is to become the ideal University of America, and past and present history suggest that such aim will not go very far wide of the mark. In seeking this ideal, California has one advantage which is hound to become of more importance year by year. She enjoys an unrivalled, a matchless. and, indeed, an ideal position. The untravelled Californian finds some difficulty in justly appreciating the advantages enjoyed by the State. The Hay of San Fran- cisco can hardly appear to him as the Queen of Hays. Its environment can with difficulty be thought of as unexcelled. The good things are too close. How does San Francisco Bay, however, compare with the first ports of the world? Nagasaki Harbor, for instance, is picturesque enough, but wants room; Port Jackson, Australia, is roomy enough, but too often as rough as Lake Superior; Hombay is a fine harbor for four months of the year only; Derwent Harbor, Tas- mania, though land-locked and banked with magnificent scenery, is entirely outside of the world ' s traffic; Southampton, with fine anchorage, is merely an artificial roadstead with no scenery, and so on with Cork Harbor, Table Bay, or Wellington Harbor, New Zealand. Climate, room, anchorage, environment, commercial position, and beauty make San Francisco Bay the premier bay of the world. There is, perhaps, only one piece of water that can compare with it, the Bay of Naples. This is the evidence of travelers (the President of Oberlin, for instance), and those who have seen some of these places will not find it difficult to concur in the above judgment. Land-locked to east and west and north, with a twelve- mile stretch toward the San Joaquin Valley, environed, for the most part, by tilted plains, sloping gently from its beaches, spaced with picturesque islands, yet roomy and deep enough for all the navies of the world, a depot for the world ' s traffic, protected from the Northers by the Contra Costa Range, and as calm as an inland lake with advantages such as these, it is in no spirit of rhetoric our bay is named the Queen of Bays. Sometimes, indeed, a heavy blanket of fog blinds its beauty, and, occasionally, its miniature waves are lashed to a white passion, but, oftenest, its waters lie still, shimmering in the silver light of day or in the golden gleam of the afternoon. When the sun is setting out there in the West, it is a royal feast for the eye to trace that red ribbon of sunset from the bay on through the Golden Gate, and, far out there, to where the Farallones lie veiled in purple mist. It is not difficult, at such a time, to travel in imagination into the future and see the world ' s traffic borne across the blue Pacific, along the coast from Alaska and the tropics, and through an inter-ocean canal to and from the Bay of San Francisco, Where great ships ride and rally, And the world walks up and down-- the sea of lights for streaming When the thousand flags are furled, When the gleaming bay lies dreaming, As it duplicates the world.

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Progress HE year 1903 finds California well among the first universities of the country. Such is the record of a little more than a quarter of a century. It would seem ill-advised to enter into a wordy discussion of California ' s relative standing, for such would involve comparisions of a kind generally unsatisfactory. Better that the facts speak for themselves. To say, however. that no other university in America has made a greater relative progress, would be well within the mark. l!y progress, however, something more is meant than the fact that California ranks second among American universities in the number of undergraduates, and fifth in total number of students, or that her standards are unexcelled by those of the leading Eastern universities. Progress, as applied to a university, has a more significant meaning. It implies advance toward the standing of a world university advance toward the l. ' nirt-rsily Idea, and if such infers an impartial reception and scrutiny of all views, then California may certainly lay claims to considerable advance. An expansion of the College of Commerce and Department of Oriental languages, the founding of a Department of Antropology and Chair in Russian, wider relations with the Orient, and the practical work of Professors Moses and Plehn in the Philippines, indicate the line of advance. While much of the University ' s growth has extended in this direction, the needs of the State have not been forgotten. Irrigation and Dairying have been added to the older departments of Mining and Agriculture, while the latter two have been further expanded. Much has been done, besides, towards regulating the .State school system. In all of this development, the Alumni are beginning to play an important part. California ' s graduates are doing world work. There is more than a local demand for her students. Many hold positions in the Philippines, Japan, China. iuam. Hawaii, Alaska, .South America. South Africa. Australia and elsewhere. The power of the Alumni must increase with each succeeding year. California ' s progress will receive fresh impetus. What has been taken from the University will be returned manifold. Another indication of growth may be found in the fact that there is an increasing influx of students from all pans of the world. China and Japan, (ler- many and England are sending their quotas; and while climate and no tuition fees may have something to do with this, the fact remains that California is building up a reputation beyond the seas. The year 1903 finds California better equipped for the future. Untrammelled by outworn precept of outworn land. entrenched in the love of the State, strong in the loyalty of the Alumni, and blessed with open-hearted, and open-handed friends, she is pluming her wings for higher flight.

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This is the piece of water that one for three hundred days of the college, but for many a long A legend tells us that of worthy memory at 1 Eureka! At the ha Joaquin Valley : to the three-mile stretch of t line of the ocean abov hills of San Francisco was the prospect that from the lips of Henry rant the word. Eu It is true that, one awhile, the bay fogs to Berkeley, but then only vi ' sun-gilt fringes. nce awhile, the Northers sweep around the flank of the Contra Costa Range, but the cold is never great enough to kill a heliotrope. But we are told that Berkeley has no charm of antiquity no classic shades as though age conferred more than natural beauty. We are satisfied. Oxford may have her lime- tree avenue, where her students walk and Yale may have her elms, beautiful and bare, planted with as much pre- the from the University windows Ijat is not only with us at ch for a university site, a pioneer ' s Hock, and immediately cried, -tbe left, a -vista-of- tbe San of Sausalito, and, in front, la sh of sunlit bay, with the blue j would cision as the row along the Champs change those hand-built antiquities for Cordill The 1 ' acific is tradition enough for us. We are Purple misted sky. and breath with the violet-dotted hills to right and left, wHItJfe canyons of Old Moun- tain. with our little streams flowing through perfejbjl alamedas of oak and laurel of willow and bay with our winter of roses, with vur matchless springtime, when myriads of wind-tossed blossoms, blown from orchards and poppy fields, tremble - the canyon gulches.