Norwich bulletin., 1915-06-22
OPPRESSED BY NEUTRALITY TIPS
PouItney Bgelow N F. A., 73, Tells Academy Alumni He's Glad Get Where He Can Speak FreeIy-Distinguis Graduate Traveller and Author Was Chief Speaker at Alumni Association Annual Meeting Joseph T. Tanning and Other Officers Reelected.

Poultney Bigelow, traveller and au- thor, and graduate from the Academy in the class of '73, told his. attentive audience of 300 Monday evening at the annual meeting of the Alumni associa- tion in Slater hall that he was de-
 lighted to be here among his friends, where he could speak his mind for he had had too many suggestions of neutrality lately where he had been invited to speak. At West Point he had been warned to be careful what he said; at Newport naval training station the warning had been given again. and now he had been invited to speak at a. university in Virginia which had also sent a warning that low said he had written back that they had better get the faculty together and write the speech he ought to make and then have someone read it to them.
 These remarks came in the course of an extended and informing address given by MT. BigeIow, which was the feature of the alumni meeting.
 Before the regular programme began at shortly after o'clock, the returning graduates spent an informal social half hour in the Slater hall annex, while the Academy orchestra played a num- Der of selections in the hall.
 President Joseph T. Tanning opened the formal programme with brief re- marks preceding his introduction of MT. Bigelow. President Tanning spoke of the gratifying proof of interest in the Academy shown by so large a gathering of the alumni and said that the N. F. A. was one institution in Norwich that has taken and held the friendly interest of people of every class and age, from the very beginning of the institution. Now with it's estab- lished ability and it's record, it should be the object of it's alumni to make it's name and it's influence even more widespread.
 Introduced Mir. BigeIow.
 He introduced MT. Bigelow as young man of illustrious parentage, who has made good the promise of his student days and whom it was a great privilege to have as the speaker of the evening.
 Acknowledging the applause which greeted him, MT. BigeloW said that he had left his farm home just at having time the sweetest in the year, but the invitation to come here had been ire sistible. The expansion that he could note in the Academy made it seem like coming back to fairyland. He referred to the days when he lived in the fam fly of Principal Hutchinson, whom he had always regarded as a great teach CT, and said that there was one thing to be remembered about those early days, for above all we had Americans. There was not so much of the hyphen.
 His topic was Education in Berlin and Norwich-PruSsia versus Connec- ticut as Alma Mater-and he went on to say that the seeds of civil liberty and self government came to this soil with our ancestors, but this idea of civil liberty has never crossed the Prussian mind In our country it is the people who organize to conduct hospitals, H- braries and build monuments and such other public works but in Prussia if you ask what have the people done, they look at you in amazement.
 Our German friends predicted the collapse of the British empire as soon as the war should start, but it didn't happen. and it is worth while noting that in every case where a British pre- tectorate is established the drift is from the native to the English flag.
 NIr. Bigelow said he liked to get a chance to say this when he had some Feniars in his audience who were hobnobbing with the Germans to see like to see the black eagle of Prussia waving over Donegal and Dublin and then see the Irish rush to get from under it.
 He spoke of the Germanizing atti- tude wherever Germany had a colony and of the contrast between the Ger man occupation of Kiaou Chaou, where there was always trouble with the na- tives, and the English occupation of Wei Hai Wei, where there had been no trouble.
 From this he went on to speak of his acquaintance with a Japanese here in Norwich at the time he was at tending the Academy and with another while he was at school at Potsdan, and then of the way he and the crew of a shipwrecked schooner on the shores of Japan were received. It was as if they were dear, long expected-and prosper ous-rela tives.
 If these are the yellow peril, said MT. Bigelow, let's have a million of them. If the Japanese were in this war they would at least introduce some elements of humanity into it.
 Expressing his belief in the reports of the atrocities in Belgium, MT. Bige-