Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-02-05
THWING ON EDUCATION
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WEST
ERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY.
Annual Dinner of District of Columbia
Alumni Association
Pleasant Affair.

Graduates of Western Reserve University
who are members of the alumni association
of the District Of Columbia enjoyed their
annual dinner last evening at the Hotel
Barton.
In addition to other features Of the an
nual reunion, the members had the pleas
ure of entertaining the president of the
university, DIR. Charles F. Thwing Of
Cleveland. who made an able address.
Representative Robert w. Taylor, the
president Of the association. acted as toast
master. Mr.. w. E. Curtis told of some Of
his experiences during his residence in this
city as a newspaper correspondent. Major
Bryan. U. S. A, also contributed to the en-
tertainment of the company.
President Thwing's Address.
DR.. Thwing, in the course of his address,
said:
Our college and university. like every
other institution, should subject itself to
at least three tests Is it making scholars?
The American. college is a finer agency
of scholarship than it was a generation
ago. All scholastic conditions and instru-
ments. seen in Libraries and labora-
tories, have been greatly enlarged. Yet l
am constrained to believe that the num-
Der of scholars in the American college
today, as compared with the number Of
scholars fifty years ago, is relatively
smaller.
"Of course, the number of students has
vastly increased; the number of scholars
has absolutely increased, but relatively the
number has declined. The reason of this
decline is, found in the fact that there has
been a general lifting of the level of
scholarship.
Scholarship has, it seems, gone far
ahead of scholars. The field of knowledge
has vastly enlarged, and this enlargement
has been in a larger proportion than the
number of scholars themselves has In
creased. We must never forget that there
is very much more to be known now than
there was fifty years ago.
IF knowledge increases at an arithmeti-
cal ratio, what remains to be known seems
to increase in geome4rical ratio. Men do
no. know less than they did, but they know
less in proportion to the vast regions which
remain to be explored.
Making the Efficient Thinker.
but more important than the making
Of the scholar through the college Is the
making of the efficient thinker. The
scholars who come forth from the Ameri-
can college are, and they must be, few.
But every man who does come forth should
be thinker; a thinker, also. efficient in
solving the problems Of American life.
THE best result of knowledge is not
scholarship. but judgment. American life
needs the thinker more than it needs any
other force What the expert callings de-
mand is not so much expert as it Is sound
general judgment. One of the heads Of
a large manufacturing concern in Cleve-
land, who has works in Germany and Rus
STA, as well as in America, said to me re-
Gently:
1--WE pay our American workmen 1925
day for doing the very same work we
pay our workmen in Germany $1.25, and
the German workman is more costly than
the American
% What do you pay in Russian 1 asked
- Twenty-Five cents day. and my
friend added, The Russian workman at %
cents a day and the German at 81 % are
more costly than the American at 81 25.'
THE reason that the Russian workman
at % cents is worth less than the Ameri-
can at 1925 is that the American is a
better thinker. He can reason judge
weigh evidence. Such thinker the Amer
lean college is endeavoring to make.
THE American college never forgets
that 1t is to make the gentleman. Being
gentleman is, in part, matter of in
tellectual distinction. The quality lies in
the perception of the fitness of things.
Being a gentleman also represents pur-
ity Of heart. 1t embodies the quality of
unselfishness. 1t represents putting one
self in the other mans place. 1t involves
a process of substitution.
Such an essential characteristic Is to be
accompanied with graciousness Of man
ner. Such character and such a type of
man our college and university like every
other institution. hope is making"