October 26, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



537 



a geologist if some one had to be sent in from 

 elsewhere to do the work under his very nose? 



And if the professor should protest, what 

 answer would he get? That the assistants sent 

 to do the work are competent men; that the 

 national survey is authorized to enter every part 

 of the national domain; that the state institu- 

 tions have not the money to do the work with; 

 that the assistants of the survey must do some- 

 thing to earn their salaries. And these things 

 are all true enough, though the total results are 

 none the less unfortunate and none the less fatal 

 to an interest in geology among the people. For 

 if the national survey can thus, under cover of 

 national authority, injure the professional repu- 

 tation of the professor of geology in one univer- 

 sity, it can do it for any professor in any college 

 or university in this country, and we have no 

 redress. 



Against all this sort of thing I not only enter 

 my most vigorous protest, but I can not allow my 

 name to stand on the roll of an organization so 

 thoroughly undemocratic, and so thoroughly out 

 of sympathy with the local interests of the coun- 

 try. In my opinion a public bureau administered 

 in the spirit that has grown up in this one ought 

 to have no place in a republic where it is im- 

 portant that there should be a widespread inter- 

 est in science, and above all a feeling of safety 

 for every worker, however hiimble. 



Finally I beg to remind you that the question 

 here at issue is not a question of geology, but a 

 question of the administration of a public bureau. 

 I remain 



Yours respectfully, 



J. C. Bbanner. 



THE PRESIDENCY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTI- 

 TUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. 



Announcement has been made that the ex- 

 ecutive cominittee of the corporation of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology has 

 selected Dr. Andrew Fleming West, professor 

 in Latin in Princeton University, for the 

 vacant presidency. It is ungracious to ques- 

 tion an appointment of this character, and 

 nothing could be gained by criticism if it 

 were not that the corporation has not yet 

 acted and Professor West has not yet accepted. 



Professor West possesses many of the quali- 

 ties that should be found in a college presi- 

 dent. He was not elected to succeed President 

 Patton at Princeton, but he would have been 



an excellent president for an institution, which 

 more than any other of our universities or 

 semi-universities has been imbued with his 

 ideals. These may be illustrated by a quota- 

 tion from Professor West's most recent ad- 

 dress. He writes: "And so I return to the 

 opening thought: The old college ideal is the 

 true one." The opening thought was " The 

 living root of the old faculty, as of every other 

 part of the college, was a distinctively Chris- 

 tian impulse * * * the old college faculty at 

 least professed and tried to show that God is 

 the end of all our knowing and that Christ 

 is the Master of the Schools." 



But it is a long vs^ay from the chair of 

 Latin in a classical and monastic college to 

 the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute 

 of Technology. It is to be feared that the 

 trustees who favor the election of Professor 

 West have been influenced by two factors. 

 He is said to be known at Princeton as ' three- 

 million-dollar West,' in view of his part in 

 securing endowment for the institution, and 

 he is known in the educational world as an 

 opponent of President Eliof and the Harvard 

 system. The writer once heard Professor West 

 read a paper in which he said that the con- 

 nection of the elective system and the three- 

 year course at Harvard University was per- 

 haps not accidental, as three years were 

 enough of that sort of thing. But it is 

 dangerous to cross swords with President 

 Eliot, who replied that he had also noticed 

 the connection between the elective system 

 and the three-year course, but that he inter- 

 preted it as meaning that under the elective 

 system a student could accomplish as much 

 in three years as he could in four under the 

 fixed curriculum. 



It would seem to an outsider that in the 

 present emergency the Massachusetts Institute 

 of Technology needs for its president one of 

 its own men, imbued with its methods and 

 traditions, a man bred to science, believing in 

 science as the chief factor in culture and in 

 life, knowing that pure and applied science 

 must go forward hand in hand, a man who 

 would ally the institution with the city and 

 the state rather than try to coax money from 

 millionaires. 



