48 
Proceedings of the Inauguration 
Today, whether or not a man has had college training, is 
seen to be a matter of importance to more people than himself 
and his friends ; also the kind of education a college offers inter- 
ests a wider circle than its students and graduates, for it has 
become a recognized concern of everybody. 
Prolonged public discussion, here as elsewhere, is a measure 
at once of the public interest and the public estimate of the im- 
portance of the thing discussed. More people are discussing our 
colleges because more people are interested in them. So con- 
tagious has this interest become that some who have never seen 
a college feel no hesitation in entering the discussion. 
Whenever a majority of the people first realizes that some 
large thing belongs to them, that it exists solely for their welfare 
and advancement, it is natural that some wisdom, and a deal of 
nonsense, should be talked about it. 
In the midst of the resulting clamor and confusion, however, 
it is necessary that a considerable body of informed men and 
women should keep their heads, and not be swept from their 
intellectual moorings by the sheer volume of a disordered dis- 
cussion. 
For example, the public loudly demands that our colleges 
train men for citizenship. You will look long to find a better 
group of citizens than the body of alumni of any of our colleges. 
Whether any new and untried method of training citizens will 
serve the people better than our present ones is open to question. 
Again, the public demands that colleges train men for the 
public service. Colleges have always trained men for the public 
service. The larger affairs of state and nation today are pre- 
dominantly in the hands, and under the guidance, of college bred 
men who are carrying the heaviest burdens of public adminis- 
tration and public responsibility, and carrying them better, on 
the whole, than those burdens have been carried before. 
The public demands that the colleges prepare men for busi- 
ness. Yet any careful observer, today, will tell you that the 
conduct of our largest business enterprises is steadily and inev- 
itably drifting into the hands of college men. 
In addition to these and other public demands which the 
college, unknown to many, is already meeting, and meeting them 
well, there are many more demands which the college, as opposed 
to the university, cannot consistently undertake to meet. 
