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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 353 



because of promised or probable connection 

 with the world's leading university. 



8. As could none other, a national uni- 

 versity would attract men of genius and 

 distinction from every quarter of the world 

 to its professorships, lectureships and fel- 

 lowships, thus increasing the cultured in- 

 tellectual forces of both university and 

 country. 



9. A national university, to an important 

 extent, and as could no other institution, 

 whatever its rank, would make itself a co- 

 worker with the Government in the several 

 Departments ; meeting their demands with 

 the least possible delay ; making trust- 

 worthy answers (as in the military and 

 naval Academies) to important questions ; 

 taking up, on request, the solution of diffi- 

 cult problems of every sort ; and supplying 

 the Government with experts of supreme 

 ability in greater number because drawn 

 from the field of the world. 



10. A national university would create 

 an atmosphere at the national capital that 

 would be influential for good in all depart- 

 ments of the Government, and so increase 

 the demand for public men of character 

 and culture as to furnish a new guaranty 

 of wise legislation, and justice of judgment, 

 as well as of faithfulness and efficiency of 

 administration. 



11. A national university, thus honored 

 and encouraged, would powerfully stimulate 

 and strengthen the patriotic sentiment of 

 the country. The people universally would 

 come to feel a pride in it as a sign of intel- 

 lectual supremacy and of exalted aims, 

 while to students in the schools and colleges 

 of the States it would furnish a juster con- 

 ception of what is meant by the field of 

 learning, as well as new incentives to 

 higher, and the highest possible, attain- 

 ments ; thus contributing in a degree beyond 

 calculation to make us an educated people, 

 and filling us with the determination to be- 

 come the most cultured of all peoples. 



12. Having duly established a university 

 of the United States and made it capable of 

 fulfilling all these offices, so important, 

 shall we not have gained for our country 

 that rank and influence among the nations 

 to which not all our vast and varied 

 material resources, the genius and wonder- 

 ful energy of our people, and all our con- 

 quests in war are alone equal ? Heirs to the 

 better part of this great continent, with its 

 vast resources of every sort, we have indeed 

 made a wonderful growth in area, popula- 

 tion, wealth and power; and meanwhile 

 there has been a corresponding develop- 

 ment in the boundless realm of the sciences, 

 so that the national university we should 

 now establish must difier in some respects 

 (those of extent and greatness) from that 

 which would have been founded in the days 

 of Washington. Nevertheless, the special 

 reasons which he so clearly had in mind 

 have not only remained, as they ever must, 

 but have strengthened with the years. 

 They inhere in the nature of the case and 

 should be regarded as conditions of a real 

 supremacy of the American republic and 

 of its becoming the world's most efiective 

 promoter of human advancement. 



Other offices to be fulfilled by a national 

 university will suggest themselves ; but are 

 not these enough to satisfy and forever 

 silence the query, " Do we really need 

 another and national university? " 



The establishment by Congress of a 

 national university is an undertaking of so 

 great importance, of such origin, and of 

 such advocacy throughout the whole period 

 of the nation's life as to have gained an 

 abiding place in the hearts of the people. 

 It is an undertaking, the necessity for whose 

 success is a firm conviction among the men 

 most worthy to be heard in the interest 

 of American education, and one the lead- 

 ership in which, from first to last, has 

 been as purely patriotic as any that was 

 ever known, in peace or war. Such an 



