

191 1] West Lectures 



Fixity of term of office is a fundamental policy of 

 our government. By the British system the execu- 

 tive group are members of the law-making body 

 and recall follows loss of confidence. There is much 

 to be said for either plan, but the two cannot be 

 effectively blended. 



The open primary, another piece of "progressive" open 

 legislation, does not as now adjusted yield the de- P rimar y 

 sired results, the great cost of candidacy closing 

 the doors of office to all except those able and willing 

 to spend large sums of their own money or that of 

 their backers in self-advertisement. 



In 1911 we inaugurated at Stanford a special 

 course of religious lectures to ; be given at intervals 

 as funds permitted. In 1906 one of the seniors in the 

 University, Raymond Fred West, was drowned in 

 the Eel River, Humboldt County. In his memory, 

 his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fred West of Seattle, 

 now established a permanent lectureship on the 

 general topics of "immortality, human conduct, and' 

 human destiny/' 



The first West series was that by the Rev. Charles 

 E. Jefferson of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York. 

 His three lectures produced a very profound im- 

 pression. Scarcely any one else who has ever spoken 

 at Stanford on religious subjects has left an equal 

 effect. 



Subsequent courses were given by the Rev. Samuel 

 M. Crothers of Cambridge, the Rev. Hastings Rash- 

 dall of the Cathedral of Hereford in England, for- 

 merly preacher at Oxford, the Rev. Charles Lewis 

 Slattery of Grace Church, New York, Dr. John 

 Dewey, the distinguished philosopher of Columbia 



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