THE COURIER
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OBSERVATIONS
BY SARAH B. HARRIS
The Torii k Small
Students are easily excited. They
are easily Incited by an astute profes
sor into active hostility against the
president of the institution in which
they are undergraduates. If the pro
fessor chances to be a master of the
department f knowledge he is em
ployed to lecture upon, the very nature
of the relations between teacher and
pupil converts the undergraduates into
disciples and warm advocates of any
theory the professor chooses to es
pouse. There are men born to the knowl
edge of relationships. If they are pro
fessors in a university or superintend
ents of any department of a great
business, they keep the idea of the
whole before them. There are other
men who magnify their own import
ance and the importance of the depart
ment they chance to be engaged in su
perintending. Such men admit the gen
eral fact that the part is smaller than
the whole, but when they look at the
department of business or education
which they superintend, they see It
larger than the whole. They therefore
ask or demand a larger appropriation
for their departments than the inter
ests of the whole Justify. This Is the
trouble the president of Columbia Is
having with Professor Woodberry.
Students have small personal ex
perience with the president of the col
lege they attend. They are "agin the
government," whatever it Is, and It re
quires only a hint from a professor
who claims to be persecuted by the
college president to Incite them to re
prisals In the shape of pre-Adamlte
jokes and cartoons of the president in
the college funny papers and derisive
hoots and yells directed at him per
sonally If the students are under cover
of a crowd or in any other way safely
ambushed from Identification and con-
sequent expulsion.
The professor has" the point of van
tage. The, shrewd teacher ingratiates
himself with his pupils. The tyro who
is learning the technique of any sub
ject looks upon a virtuoso with awe
and worship. If the virtuoso is at the
same time his teacher and does some
thing the youngster has tried to do and
failed, does it with faultless precision,
taste, reserve power and with the aid
of his virtuoso's birth-gift of genius,
the youngster is enslaved. He Is bound
to serve the master, by an oath more
Irrevocable than the oath of feudalism.
The youngster knows a little, the
teacher knows a great deal more, but
the youngster knows Just enough to
worship proficiency and talent in that
particular branch wklch be has elected.
The Jester," the! Columbia univer
sity funny paper, contains a number of
editorials criticising President Butler
for not allowing Professor Woodberry
what share of the college funds he
thinks proper for the maintenance
and development of his department of
comparative literature. To be sur the
students, who are the authors of the
editorials, know nothing about the com
parative value and cost of the different
departments or of the necessity of ap
portioning the funds equitably mad In
accordance with some standard ef
equality among them. They know oaly
that their professor of comparative lit
erature has been refused by the ad
ministration the sum which, be con
siders necessary to relieve him from
the drudgery of too severe labor la his
department.
George Henry Danton, of the senior
class, has been suspended by Presi
dent Butler for writing and publishing
In the "Moraingside" an abusive article
criticising the president for his action
la the Woodberry matter. This typical
uadergradaate effusion appeared In
"The Jm ler -after Danton had been
sJMaesded'aad reinstated In coase
ojueace ef his apology to the president:
"President Butler should remember
that an attempt to gag the press is
usually looked upon as a confession of
wrong-doing. We do not want to be
expelled, and consequently shall not
say all we think; but we will' say
that, having branded the student and
alumni petitions as a "newspaper agi
tation," and. finding now that such was
not the cose. President Butler ought
at least to acknowledge to those whom
his expression has wronged, that it
was Ill-chosen.
Nothing satisfactory can be found in
President Butler's laying down of the
law In the Woodberry matter. He has
shown an absolute Inability or unwill
ingness to really answer the student
and alumni petitions.
But President Butler was not satis
fied with avoiding an answer to the pe
titions; his letter also gave a very false
impression of them. He stated that
"the university authorities have been
at a loss to understand the meaning
or purpose of the agitation" which, if
true, convicts those authorities of in
excusable negligence. He characterized
the whole affair as a "newspaper agi
tation." He tried to make out that the
petitions were unrepresentative
whereas they were adopted by a stu
dent mass meeting and signed by near
ly every representative alumnus that
ever had Prof. Woodberry."
Nebraska students "who have had
Professor Woodberry" remember him
as the master of an exquisite English
style. They thought then be would
sometime contribute prose and poetry
of permanent value to English litera
ture. Excepting the life of Edgar Allen
Poe and a sonnet, "America," his early
promise is unfulfilled. And they con
clude that his cherished inability to get
along with associates or with a super
ior has Involved him In trouble with
the president of Columbia where he
has been employed for several years.
President Nicholas Murray Butler Is
a man of action, of scrupulous probity,
and he Is still controlled by a fine sense
of his obligations as the president of
Columbia to the Interests of the whole
college. He can not be hypnotized by
a man who resents and frequently re
jects the obligations of duty and the
dally performance of services for
which he Is employed by the corpora
tion of Columbia. The Ideals and the
performance of the two men differ es
sentially, and It is written that the
stronger type, the man who material
izes his dreams nor leaves them shaped
only in pretty words, will conquer the
Indolent egotist who dreams fine
dreams and dreaming leaves the place
he might have filled in the world and
In literature vacant.
President Butler's ideals and piac
tlcal plans are expressed In the account
of aa address he once delivered to a
graduating class. The class and the
commencement audience expected him
to make the usual emphatic appeal to
travelers who have just started on a
perilous up-hill ascent of a mountain
to the toy of which only a few have
ever climbed. Instead he astonished
then by -asking each one in turn what
he meaat by the term "educated man."
The answers were varied, but in sub
stance all agreed that an educated man
or woman Is one who knows certain
foreign languages, sciences, or who
possesses certain enumerated accom
plishments. When they were through
with the definitions Dr. Butler said:
-Not at alL I see you would not rec
ognize an educated man if you saw
him. I. will point out to you the points
by which you may know him. They
are five; and the first is ability to use
one's mother tongue not somebody
else's mother tongue with correctness
and precision. The second those re
fined and gentle manners which are
hut the expression of fixed habits ef
thought and action. The power and
habit of reflection constitutes the
third mark an uneducated man never
reflects. As the fourth, I will name
the power of growth, lacking which
one has not been educated, but stunt-
ed. And lastly, efficiency, or the power
to do."
If this age means anything at ail. It
is action. If there are benefactors of
the nineteenth and of the twentieth
centuries, they are the men and wom
en who have done something with
their blrtb-glfts, who have thought
and done, not those who have dreamed
and thought and dt earned again. We
may be over-material, but we are not
"futile. For that we are not futile and
Indolent, future generations will count
us blessed among the men and women
of all time.
As we climb the hill, which has a
grave at the top or on its slopes, where
ever we chance to fall, how the
view changes! We see men and views
from above where once we looEed up at
them. That which from below was a
noble structure, from above is mal
formed; it lacks symmetry and is ap
parently of little use to those who are
climbing the same steeps we have sur
mounted. "Placed on'JFUc"
Senators Dietrich and Millard sent a
letter to the convention. Judging from
the smooth composition, and because
in the signature Senator Millard's
name followed that of Senator Diet
rich's, I conclude that the xormer sen
ator wrote the letter, ine convention
was astute and worldly wise. In poll
tics, in political utterances of all kinds
from men who are. not pre-eminently
distinguished for their frankness and
directness, there are conventional
phrases -and forms that mean nothing
to the initiated. By this time the two
senators have learned that the con
vention realized that "actions speak
louder than words," and that the con
ventional forms of praise they applied
to the Cuban policy of President
Roosevelt were accepted by the con
vention in the decorative spirit la
which they were written. Senators ,
Millard and Dietrich are opposed to
any bill reducing the import tax on
sugar, however Inconsiderable the re
duction. They are known as the "in
surgent senators." Senator Dietrich is
one of the most prominent members
or the minority in tne senate wnkh
has formed a conspiracy against the
president.
Mr. George Harvey, in Harper's
Weekly, speaking of the conspiracy
says: "The combination Is one 01 sel
fish interests, partly beet sugar, partly
personal, partly a union of machine
politicians who are not getting as much
of the federal patronage as they con
sider to be their due. It is a combina
tion against the fair name of the coun
try and its government, and is hostile
to the general welfare. If the country
realized the true character of this
conspiracy against righteousness, the
protest evoked by it and its members
would be not only noisy, but success
ful. The daring and impudence of the
senators who are proclaiming their in
tention to defeat any bill for the re
lief of Cuba, or to pass a rebate bill,
which is notoriously unconstitutional,
or the Dietrich bill, which would In
crease the price of sugar to the con
sumer, pass understanding . . . These
insurgent senators are opposing not
only the president, but the rank and
file of their party."
Yet the letter sent to the Nebraska
state convention was peppered with
decorations like the following: "The
Invaluable assistance or President
Roosevelt." "We have at all times been
heartily in accord with the attitude of
President Roosevelt on that subject."
(Reciprocal trade arrangements with
the republic of Cuba.) "The praise
worthy and commendable administra
tion of our distinguished President,
etc
The communication was read to the
convention and an ingenuous member
from Douglas county moved that it be
placed on file and that it be replied to
by the secretary with the expression
that the senators might soon be home
to participate In the campaign. Mr.
Ehrhardt of Stanton moved to strike
out all after the words': ''placed on
file," and his motion was vociferously
carried.
There Is no ambiguity about the
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