THE HESPERIAN
for if Pnlladian traditions have hold, as they
undoubtedly have, even your undergraduates
many of them feel that some of the most
character strengthening experiences of their
college life have come to them through col
lege politics.
Some of the reasons which made the
society invaluable to those of an earlier gen
eration have passed away with the introduc
tion of thesis and report and library work in
all the classes. But in at least three respects
the society serves you as the classes never
can: (1) It gives you opportunities for free
and attractive but not expensive social life
and training. (2) It gives you long and re
peated practice before public audiences.
(Lot me say, that one of the most val
uable things under point two is that it
gives you repeated opportunities to make
fools of yourselves. 1 know from personal
experience that there are few things in life
that give as much concentrated discipline as
for a man to say in public something that he
thinks is smart, and then to have the shud
dering conviction go through him that it did
not "take." It is well to have this experi
ence come to one while ho is still young).
(3) Tho society gives you weekly practice in
the art of associated action, that is in prac
tical politics. You learn tho possibilities
and the limitations of deliberative assemblies;
you learn how awkward such bodies are, aud
how to help in the work of making them
more eilicient. It is tho best training for
citizenship that there is.
Some of tho chief lessons that one learns
from political experience in an open literary
society can be easily stated, as for instance
that bad institutions help to make bud men,
and that tho two react upon ouch other. 1
recall uu early experience in tho mutter of
proxies. Our rules had not been made with
sinister intent, but they woro defective and
mischievous. Some of the earliest election
that I witnessed in tho Palladian were won by
absentees or tho proxies that were voted in
their name. Their dues were paid and in
some cases their proxies forged by friends or
others who easily assumed that the absent
persons would bo willing could they know the
facts. It was one of tho best preparatory
schools for political crime I ever saw, and it
was equally good practice in political reform
when we girded up our loins and abolished
proxies. If all tho machinery of voting had
not been brought to pretty satisfactory
shape tho fight which resulted in tho adop
tion of tho anti-fraternity amendments could
never have gone off in tho business-like way
it did. Tho two factions watched each
other like lynxes, but our machinery was
good enough so that there was no opportu
nity for either side to do underhand work.
Another thing that college politics teaches
is tho political futility of speech-making
unless backed by good organization and con
stant personal effort. Senator Quay does
not have a livelier appreciation of this truth
than some of us acquired in our college days.
In the battle royal just referred to our side
caucussed every day, and the entire caucuss
soon knew tho roll of tho society by heart,
just how each member would vote and
whether or not there was a conceivable
chance to change his viows. Tho slates
were worked for political purposes, there
being two of course, one borb and one
frat. I remember to have taken a young
lady with tho purposo of insuring past all
doubt her neutrality, that being tho policy
which sho had announced for herself, and
being as favorable a decision as our side
could look for from her. Do not misunder
stand mo to say that organization and per
sonal effort is everything in politics. With
an honest constituency, or a constituency
that can be educated into honesty, the
csseutial element of continued success is the
justice of the cause, but no cause is so good
us to do its own fighting. Tho reasonable
ness of tho argnmonts pro and con was I
behove the determining factor in tho anti
fraternity tight, but I am perfectly sure that
our speech-making on tho final evening did
not change a single voto.
There is no doubt that in the hopeful
movements which we have seen of lato for
civil service reform, for ballot reform, for'