THE ADMINISTRATIVE PERIL IN EDUCATION 503 



majcste, to accept the president as his representative. The president 

 is thus strongly tempted to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. 

 With the right of promotion and dismissal comes the right of life and 

 death; to exercise it is to incur the presumption of v/3/hs — to the un- 

 spoiled Hellenic conscience the sin beyond pardon. The practical re- 

 sult is too familiar. " The president may assume superhuman re- 

 sponsibility, but he is after all human in his limitations. He may 

 regard common-sense as agreement with him, common loyalty as sub- 

 servience to him, respect for the opinion of mankind as deference to 

 that small portion of mankind which has money to give " (The Pop- 

 ular Science Monthly: editorial). Transferred from the personal 

 to the corporate relation, the breach in educational policy is coming to 

 be more and more between the professors fundamentally interested in 

 the ends of education and the president and deans dominated in their 

 educational interests by an administrative temper or habit of mind. 

 " The millionaire and the college president are simply middle men who 

 transmit the pressure from the average citizen to the learned classes." 

 " The educated man has been the grain of sand in the college machine. 

 He has an horizon of what ' ought to be,' and he could not help putting 

 in a word and an idea in the wrong place ; and so he was thrown out of 

 education in America as he was thrown out of politics in America" 

 (J. J. Chapman). There is at once a conflict of aims and of ideals, 

 thus inviting, according to the type of provocation, a guerilla war- 

 fare or a civil war. The system provokes unrest, uncertainty, dis- 

 trust; it removes harmony, corporate pride, professional independence. 

 So much is clearly to be read in and between the cited lines. 



Before resuming speech in the first person, it will be well to consider 

 the rejoinder — the alleged incompetence of the faculties to play the 

 part to which some of them aspire. " It has been said that university 

 faculties are poor legislative bodies; if true, this would not be sur- 

 prising, so long as their deliberations are confined to discussing ques- 

 tions such as whether they shall wear gowns at commencement, the de- 

 cision being with the trustees" (J. McK. Cattell). "We appear at 

 present to be between the Scilla of presidential autocracy and the 

 Charybdis of faculty and trustee incompetence. The more incompe- 

 tent the faculties become, the greater is the need of executive autoc- 

 racy, and the greater the autocracy of the president, the more incom- 

 petent do the faculties become" (J. McK. Cattell). "But was there 

 ever a more vicious circle of argument than that which defends the 

 persistence in a system productive of such unfortunate results by urg- 

 ing that the personnel of the profession has now been brought so low 

 that the restoration of its inherent rights would entail disastrous con- 

 sequences?" (Dial: editorial). From this "lack of opportunity to 

 discuss the larger problems of the university " with authority and re- 

 sponsibility, from this " living in cramped intellectual quarters " 



