Goslings." Indiscriminate and venomous as is his onslaught, his documentation is formidable. Determined to find or make a smudge, he exposes some dangerous fire and more unsavory smoke in the seats of learning. Dr. Kirkpatrick contributes a realistic phrase: "Control has left the campus and settled in the sky-scraper." The "key" man for many a university, who "carries under his hat" the "power of direction"-plant and output, budget and sales-force-is to be sought in the mahoganized fastness of some cosmopolitan conning-tower of financial strength. Doubtless a personalized capitalistic control can invade more disastrously, confuse and distort academic decisions and purposes more thoroughly than any other brand of externalism. In education it is more vital that a private autocrat shall be alike a benevolent and a wise one; and when employed in an alien sphere, both virtues are precarious as well as otherwise limited. 23 There is a further phase of capitalistic support that invites the suspicion of capital, even when wearing the cloak of philanthropy, with its heart plainly on its sleeve. This situation Mr. Hans Zinnser considers in his article "The Perils of Magnanimity-a Problem in American Education." He questions whether a philanthropic corporation founded to advance medical and general education, "however benevolent its autocracy" does not constitute "a power superimposed"-a new brand of externalism-upon the institution which must retain "the normal When so soberly and sympathetically put, the question is arresting. Unlike Mr. Sinclair who sees insidious intrigue in all moneyed advances, Mr. Zinnser recognizes that propagandists of this day do not offer the Bible of Samaritanism with the Sword of Plutocracy. Such gifts have been carefully considered, and once offered are without strings. None the less, one State University has declined such corporate gifts, albeit by a narrow margin of its board-the president, the faculty, the alumni, the press pretty generally dissenting. In this circumspect day, it is proper to look a gift-horse in the mouth, indeed, to examine his entire anatomy; nor does the stale charge of "tainted money" explain the action, nor so explicit a fear as muzzling professors and tethering universities. Yet it is an expression of a similarly troubled hesitation, a commendable if misapplied suspicion of externalism. It seems but fair to offset this instance in one camp with a parallel action in the other. The Amherst incident will serve. An educational experiment that aroused both enthusiastic support and opposition in the faculty, was in fact terminated by an external vote. Assuming that both decisions were wise, they would have been wiser if reached through an academic authority. Without too closely implying a parable of motes and beams, when Amherst looks at Wisconsin and Wisconsin looks back, and each rejoices in the freedom from what oppresses the other, may not an impartial observer see in both incidents the undesirability of either externalism? guidance of educational progress." The autocratic externalism of cap ital has as its opposite the democratic externalism of politics. The ways of politics, like those of the "heathen Chinee," are "peculiar," but being likewise familiar, one need not "rise to explain." Proverbially, politics makes strange bedfellows. Political externalism has a different complexion; the love of power however is a common root in both aspects of these all too human products of human nature. The control motive is fairly undisguised alike in politics and finance. What is "peculiar" is the redeeming sense of the impropriety of political influence in education, proving a right-mindedness by the indirect route of a defense or a pretense that the State University is not in politics. But like the captains of industry and finance, who send their sons to the halls of learning where highbrows congregate, in the hope that they will not be affected by the ideas there prevalent, the State sends the university to the halls of legislature with confidence that it will escape the political-mindedness there assembled. A State University is inevitably in politics. The only way out—as applies also to meeting the conditions created by the admission of women to political rightsis so to elevate politics as to provide a proper forum for a university or a woman to address. While still uneasy as to the fate of a university in this typically democratic entourage, one must record with reserved appreciation, the truly amazing support which universities have there received the reservation for the needless obstacles SO commonly encountered, often creditably over ences, each of the two brands of externalism strongly suspects the affiliations of the other. The special. disqualification of political control is that the needs of the university must be made convincing to so many whose lives offer no direct contact with the value of learning, must meet the widespread insensibility to such values. There is thus injected into the attitudes of the two externalisms an unfortunate class-animus the alternative of dominance by Main Street or by Wall Street-the tradition of Independence Square having been lost. Whether the political or the capitalistic brand of externalism is the worse would make an exciting debate, with presumably only an "academic" decision, since both are likely to prevail for some time. The more practical consideration is: Which seems more favorably disposed to a gradual abdication through tolerant concession? The private board of trustees may readily reflect that they are spending the university's, not their own money; so why should not the university have a decisive say-so? While they may believe that a watchful eye is a proper vigilance, they can hardly conclude that they are the university. To attain this attitude, the more diffuse sentiment of a State University, as represented in a politically elected or appointed Board of Regents, would have to attain the liberal view that a State University is but the State's contribution to the higher education; that once established and maintained, its direction belongs to the expert. Upon this issue the polls are open. In a longer-range vista, sumAs is true of all sectarian differ- moning such optimism as may re come. main, those who have faith that the emergent evolution of democracy has an upward trend, may believe or hope that both public and private enlightenment will move amicably to the same realization. If this is to occur, we must take our scholarship more seriously. We cannot expose it to the uncertain climate of the pragmatic American temper, drifting rather than steering by the compass of what works, in disregard of how well, or with what friction and lost motion; which in turn invites the policy of what pays, and the intrusion of who pays for it. A belated realization of the gross miscarriage will apply a cultural cost-accounting to the survey of our educational operations. The concentration of the moment must be toward bringing to its rightful solution the critical issue of control. Externalism in academic affairs is doomed because it speaks with authority and not with understanding, and in a foreign tongue besides. A colonial policy is untenable. University or nation cannot flourish half slave and half free. The only way to emancipate the professor and save the universities is to make the academic career a worthy, authoritative profession. To that profession must be restored the directive control of the institutions of learning. FOR A HERMIT-THRUSH ANNE BLACKWELL PAYNE Elusive tenant of the trees, You lift behind your walls of jade A song of sorrow or delight. I cannot tell with certainty What quickens you, nor guess the urge For such concise, and lucid sounds— Be they a pæan or a dirge. For fluttering lovers in the spring; Small, hungry ones that wait for you; For empty nest, or faltering wings, The same melodious notes must do. I have a hundred thousand words H EARTY discourse does not love a fast-day; good talk likes to get its legs under the laden board. Wine of song, bread of life, roast beef of literature-how pat these well-nourished figures fall under the general head of TABLE TALK. At its best, table talk has been the best talk in the world. The idealizations of poets and the policies of empires are crumbs that have fallen from the world's greatest tables. It goes without saying that no mere Trimalchian chatter, accompanied by heavy feeding, can pose as genuine table talk. But when the cloth has been lifted and the walnuts are cracking, then the wit is likelier to sparkle, the idea leap, and the epigram flash into immortality. At such times we look upon the world and find that it is fair indeed. And we see too, that it is sad and strange-darkly insoluble for the most part, like ourselves and our neighbor munching his raisins beside us. It is a spacious hour; a good hour for expansive conversation. Once a month then, in TABLE TALK we shall discourse ad lib (this being the traditional privilege of table talkers) of the world and its tragicomical denizens. Surveying the events of American life we hope to analyze and interpret them, commenting with sympathy rather than pity, with humor in place of its crueler brother, wit. You will find us variously engaged: now plunging the lancet where its bright edge is most needed; now wagging our head more in sorrow than in anger; now heaving a gouty editorial boot at some chronic offender. . . . For the Table Talker is a choleric, sanguine, heavy-fisted old fellow whose chief fault is garrulity, and whose chief virtue is an insatiable appetite for life. B 22 ECAUSE his family would not turn off the radio while he was shaving, a St. Louis tailor committed suicide by gashing his throat with a razor. Which lands us back at the famous ritual of father's Sunday morning shave. How tenderly the water was coddled to just the right temperature; how solemnly the razor was stropped until a trial hair was split! Then came the unctuous lather, and the patient rubbing-in with the fingers. While the paternal chin was actually being scraped, the kitchen was holy ground; no one could enter the room, and the doors must not be jiggled. The shaver himself took a flat-footed stance, bent his elbow professionally, and mowed down the first stubborn swath. If the shave was a failure, the day was ruined. Most men will understand the passing misery of the poor St. Louis tailor, to whom the luxury of a peaceful shave was not permitted. Yet he might well say, "Weep not for me, but for yourselves and children. The delight of quiet talk and the intimate silences of your home are forever blasted by the droning of Station XYZ and the iron-tipped banjos of the Royal Drug Company's Darktown Troubadours." Ah, Loud Speaker! How many shaves have been ruined by your bellowings. And how many unspoken nuances of life have curled up and died under the incessant gunnery of your tongue! 22 HE creative energy that Greece poured into her temples, the Taffectionate detail of the Flemish masters, and the epic fidelity of the Nibelungs have combined in America to make the automobile. No longer is it merely a mode of transportation; it has become the acknowledged symbol of our civilization, the focus of our imaginative life. Even those who wish it were otherwise cannot deny that the keen, beautiful fact of the automobile cuts deeper into their esthetic core than most contemporary art. The price war of the automobile Titans, vigorously prosecuted along steel-drawn battle lines, is claiming the best creative energy of the age. Few modern lyrics seem important beside a 115horsepower motor, humming at top speed without spilling a drop from the full glass of water placed on its cylinder-head. Few representations of life-in-action are as exhilarating or colorful as an arrowy roadster taking a cañon grade in high. Immediacy and power have always been the most desired qualities of any art— and in the automobile we have the apotheosis of both. If our fine arts are suffering from pernicious anemia—as obviously they are-it is probably because the white corpuscles of orginality and power are all battling for supremacy in the automotive industry. 22 HEOLOGY, wedded to architecture, used to bring forth catheTdrals. But the modern offspring of this interesting couple is a sky-scraper. The Congregational Church of Manhattan interprets anew the rôle of religion by erecting a three million dollar social center and apartment-hotel on Broadway. Nave and clearstory, being no part of Congregational architecture, are not indicated in the blue-prints. Instead, the plans specify an auditorium for worship, a gymnasium, a moving-picture theater, and six hundred rooms for transients. Concessions are being made to traditional church usage, however, by giving the door a distinctively ecclesiastical design. Formerly, religion concerned itself solely with the spiritual order and strove mightily with spire and ritual to float mankind over the prisoning dikes of the flesh, into the tranquil realm of the spirit. Lourdes and Mont-Saint-Michel are perennial expressions of that spiritual order—an order not affected by fleshly vicissitudes or the erosion of centuries. But of late, certain American churches have |