14 WALLACE CLEMENT WAKE SABINE— HALL [MBM01KS t v N o A LTxx^ 



Arts and Sciences, and it was adopted by the governing boards of the university in the spring 

 of 1906. Professor Shaler, who had been dean of the Lawrence Scientific School for many years, 

 died in April of that year, and Professor Sabine was made dean of the new graduate school of 

 applied science. 



Sabine took this office at the urgent request of President Eliot, but reluctantly and doubt- 

 less with misgivings, being a teacher and student by nature, not an executive, not a manager 

 of men. In one respect he was, perhaps, little fitted for administrative duties. His nature 

 was intense and reserved. Regarding men, and often regarding measures, he had convictions 

 rather than opinions. Dispassionate argument was difficult for him, though he lacked the 

 instinct and temper of the dictator. So the duties of a dean, the real executive head in this 

 case, of an institution in a period of reconstruction, must have been hard for him at times, 

 harder than they would have been for a man of different temperament. 



The decision once made, he threw himself into the duties of his new position with character- 

 istic energy, devotion, and elevation of ideals. Anyone reading his brief annual reports for 

 the seven years of his service as dean must be impressed by the vigor of his administration and 

 by his constant endeavors to improve the effectiveness of the departments in his charge, both 

 by changes of plan and by a careful selection of the personnel. The school of forestry was 

 soon put on a satisfactory basis. The Bussey Institution was transformed from a very thinly 

 attended undergraduate school of agriculture to a place for "advanced instruction and research 

 in the scientific problems that relate and contribute to practical agriculture and horticulture"; 

 William Morton Wheeler was called from the Natural History Museum in New York to occupy 

 the newly created chair of economic entomology, and other eminent specialists were enlisted 

 in the warfare against the insect pests with which the trees of Massachusetts had been signally 

 afflicted. Prof. George F. Swain and Prof. Harry E. Clifford were called from the Massachu- 

 setts Institute of Technology to chairs of civil engineering and electrical engineering, respectively, 

 in 1909; but at that time "it was impossible to find a suitable appointee for the position in 

 mechanical engineering." In 1911 George C. Whipple came from the practice of his profession 

 in New York City to the professorship of sanitary engineering, and Prof. Eugene Duquesne, 

 from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, to the chair of architectural design, both of the posi- 

 tions thus filled being new ones at Harvard. 



It seems probable that Sabine's methods would in time have built up a strong school of ap- 

 plied science at Harvard, in spite of the great prestige of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, which had now come under the very able management of President Maclaurin. But 

 President Lowell, of Harvard, who by fanrily tradition was a trustee of the institute and whose 

 main ambition for Harvard did not lie in the direction of applied science, either proposed or 

 assented to the terms of the famous merger which undertook to combine the financial resources, 

 the aims, and the teaching staffs of the two scientific schools. His influence, together with the 

 evident economic advantages of maintaining one school instead of two in one community, 

 prevailed, and so the fusion was, for a time, effected. 



Of course this combination involved the extinction of Sabine's office as dean, and he might well 

 have felt that it imperiled some of the aims he had been striving for. Any man, however 

 slight may be his natural ambition for executive power, is likely to become somewhat enamored 

 of it after some years of possession. Moreover, Sabine was strong in the respect and confidence 

 of influential men. I have heard, though I do not profess to speak with authority on this point, 

 that the Harvard Corporation would have rejected the proposed merger if he had opposed it. 

 But he did not oppose, he advocated it. Did he do so with full conviction ? I do not profess 

 to know; but my conjecture is that, when once the change had been suggested and he saw that 

 it would involve in some degree a sacrifice of himself, he was no longer able to view the matter 

 with a free mind. Where another might have shown resentment and made opposition, he 

 took inevitably the path of self-effacement. 



Sabine was in Germany with his family in the summer 1914. Going to England when 

 the war began, he was witness to the spirit in which the British nation roused to action and was 

 immensely impressed by it. He met leading men of the Government, and, in recognition of 



