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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



suits to his peers, but should also be 

 free to involve a university in partisan 

 conflicts. At Stanford the question is 

 complicated by the fact that Mrs. Stan- 

 ford has so recently given to the uni- 

 versity the vast fortune — twenty-seven 

 million dollars — collected by the late 

 Senator Stanford. Professor Ross's 

 teachings being repeated to her, perhaps 

 in a distorted form, she is reported to 

 have said: 'He calls my husband a 

 thief.' Now, it is evident that a uni- 

 versity cannot be a proprietary insti- 

 tution, controlled by a rich man or a 

 group of rich men, who dictate the 

 teachings of the professors. But it is 

 equally true that the university pro- 

 fessor must work in harmony with cer- 

 tain well-defined traditions. When 

 people unite to accomplish any end, 

 each must sacrifice something of his 

 own freedom. When Mr. Gladstone ap- 

 peared to be suddenly converted to the 

 advocacy of Irish home rule, his op- 

 ponents read his thousands of speeches 

 to convict him of inconsistency. Noth- 

 ing was found in favor of home rule, 

 but neither was there found anything 

 against it. For thirty years, apparent- 

 ly, Mr. Gladstone had been considering 

 the subject, but had been careful not 

 to give rise to dissensions in the Liberal 

 party until he was prepared to make 

 home rule the issue. This is simply an 

 illustration of the fact that the more 

 responsible the position of a man, the 

 more careful must he be in giving ex- 

 pression to views which the man with- 

 out authority may proclaim on the 

 street corners. When Professor Ross 

 says that teachers are unproductive la- 

 borers retained by the idle enjoyers of 

 a parasitic organization to intimidate, 

 beguile and cajole the exploited ma- 

 jority, it seems evident that this is no 

 longer academic freedom of speech, but 

 simply a statement of unfitness for an 

 academic position. 



While the troubles at Stanford 

 University are being widely discussed 

 in the United States, English men of 

 science are disturbed by the dismissal 



of a number of professors from the 

 Royal Engineering College at Coopers 

 Hill. This institution trains engineers 

 for the Civil Service in India, and is 

 under the control of the India Office. 

 The president is an army officer who 

 does not take part in the teaching, and 

 is supposed to act under the direction 

 of a board of visitors. The teaching 

 staff, it appears, has no control of the 

 curriculum or of the general conduct of 

 the college. Under these circum- 

 stances, an unsatisfactory state of af- 

 fairs was reported by a board of en- 

 quiry and more than half the teaching 

 staff was somewhat curtly dismissed. 

 Their request for an enquiry having 

 been refused by the Secretary of State 

 for India, a number of leading men of 

 science united in a memorial asking 

 for such an enquiry, and a deputation 

 waited upon Lord George Hamilton to 

 urge it. This deputation, which in- 

 cluded Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister, Lord 

 Rayleigh and other leading men of 

 science, called attention to the fact that 

 the college was self-supporting and that 

 there was no need, on the score of econ- 

 omy, for such sweeping dismissals, 

 whereas the abolition of professorships 

 of physics and chemistry would greatly 

 weaken the scientific standing of the 

 college and the training it could give to 

 students of engineering. Lord George 

 Hamilton's reply does not appear to 

 have satisfied the deputation or the Eng- 

 lish scientific press, and the matter has 

 been called up in Parliament. 



The second annual meeting of the 

 Association of Universities was held at 

 Chicago on February 26, 27 and 28. 

 This association is composed of four- 

 teen leading American universities and 

 holds an annual meeting for the discus- 

 sion of problems of common interest, it 

 being expected that the president of 

 each university, or his representative 

 will be in attendance. All the univer- 

 sities were represented at the Chicago 

 meeting. Reporters and the general 

 public are excluded from the sessions, 

 and there is consequently opportunity 



