CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY 267 



incorporated unconsciously and as a matter of course, much of the 

 spirit of democracy into their organization. The spirit of common 

 fellowship often pervaded the life of the faculty and students. They 

 were intellectual brotherhoods like families or fraternities in spirit. 

 The gradual, quiet transformation that now has made of them, perhaps, 

 the most imperialistic, educational institutions in the world is not so 

 difficult to account for. This has been a land of freedom and oppor- 

 tunity. There have been all kinds of things lying around loose in 

 America — virgin soil, virgin forests, virgin mineral lands, virgin so- 

 ciety and virgin politics. The liveliest and strongest have gone after 

 the benefits, appropriated them, taken means to hold possession against 

 the covetous, and then, alas ! have found themselves unwittingly, as a 

 result of wealth, social preferment and political power, proud, arro- 

 gant and irresponsible, and pitted against their fellows. Those who 

 have not been lucky themselves have nevertheless had something of 

 hero-worship in their veins. They have admired Napoleonic success 

 and Anglo-Saxon strenuousness. They have passively paid tribute and 

 so have had their part in the immoderate inequalities that have sprung 

 up. The inevitable outcome of it all has been a harvest of captains of 

 industry, captains of wealth, captains of politics and captains of edu- 

 cation. 



Do I dare say aught in this place about college presidents? If so, 

 it would be in the " spirit of sweet charity/' They have had their temp- 

 tations and trials; they are subject to weakness of the flesh; they have 

 been battered and buffeted, and whatever is said about them must be 

 spoken in kindly sympathy. They are not vicious, they are not "ex- 

 ploiters of genius " ; they are not worshippers at the shrine of mammon, 

 nor devotees of the God Thor with his symbol of the arm and hammer ; 

 they are just human. Like all of the other citizens in our primitive 

 republic, with its free opportunity, they have seen a good many things 

 lying around loose. This time it has not been some irrigation stream 

 or mineral deposit that they saw lying unclaimed, but the opportunity 

 for power. No one else had been exercising it, and why not they ? In- 

 deed, they have gathered of the treasure in large measure, and why not ? 

 Men do love power if they are normal. There is no better thing in the 

 moral order than a will that can produce, create and help things along. 

 There is not a more righteous joy than the feeling of that fine tension 

 of a strong will that can be a living force in the world. But enough is 

 a sufficiency, and too much, even of a good thing, is dangerous. And 

 men are human. Let us say, with gracious compassion, that it is the 

 fault of the times, of our social order, that has placed in the hands of 

 presidents the power of life and death over the professional career of 

 members of the faculty and also the shaping of the destinies of our 

 educational institutions. 



