The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-03-22
THOSE COLLEGE CHAPS

81 8
- Jask LsnAsn.
Some sort Of interest in things at
- hand. IN aliveness to the realities
9 lresent-aay living, is q necessary
component ia the makeup Of all good
men. 1t is excellent to know the de-
yelopment Of the Greek helot system,
VT perhaps it is Just as important. to
MHqW the political development, and
u present trend of politics. in Amer
-
II is the necessity of having this
very aliveneas.-this flrst-hand know
Alge OF things. and expression of him
ae1 In those things, that should like,
aaeye all else. to impress upon the
American college student. He does
not seem to me to have true mental
grasp of present-day actualities.
SQnetimes almost feel like hurting
Bernard Shaw's bomb at his head
that he hasn't single thought later
tAan Spencer. Now the world has
dane some little evolutioning since
s2encer's time: and it is evoultioning
now at about the customary rate;-
some of US believe. at good deal more
than the customary rate. Men are dy-
lag and worms are eating them from
a large variety of causes which did not
exist In Shakespeares time. There
are hundreds of new things under the
sun; something is always doing at the
old stand of the human.
1t is very possible to have BRAIN
understanding of these facts, and still
totally disbelieve them; or at least,
not really know them for truths. This
may be the mental condition of the
college student when he is told that
about one-tenth of the men, women
and children in these United States
are starving in very beastly manner.
When he hears that the bodies of many
working men in England are dried up
for lack of proper nourishment until
their skins hang loose upon their
: faAes. he ts likely to be amused at
the consequences of such a condition
rather than shocked by it's terrible
ness. Possibly this is because of the
image of the common circus India
rubber man which the description con-
jares up in his mind; the freak be-
!. ing the only loose-skinned man with
whom he Is acquainted.
q 1t astonished me considerably, and
shocked me little at first, when a hall
tun of Harvard men almost laughed
me on my feet upon telling them of
some particularly narrowing experien-
4es have had with les mfserables of
our society. l think their amusement
vas caused by relation of the incident
81 couple of laborers eating filthy
apple-cores. picked up from the cutters
Of a big city. If the same men had
Realized. had really appreciated, the
meaning of such a, diet. 1 don't think
they would have laughed; at least,
pot SO openly and. whole heartedly.
They might have shrugged their shout
9ers. and said laissez; and a few of
them might have snickereds fastidi-
4osly,-but I don't think their laugh
you'd have been one Of such delighted
amusement They were good fellows,
clean fellows. noble fellows; but they
4fnDly couldn't appreciate what 1 was
talking about. They had no real alive
ness 10 the acuatlity of such conditions
as I was trying to describe.
30 1t seems to me that one of the
things America most needs today "a
~ awakening. the vivifying of its
college men. They should put out
their hands. and feel the pulse Of the
world; and when they find that that
1slse is beating in an usually feverish
and irregular manner,-which they
must find, II they find the pulse at all.
rnuch will have been accomplished
toward inaugurating healthier order
of things.