Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-10
VIRGINIA HONORS
JEFFERSON, BYRD
Admiral Guest of Honor at
MonticeIIo's Religious and
Political Shrine.
Special Dispatch to The Star.

Special Dispatch to The Star.
UNIVERSITY, Va. August g.
Thomas jefferson and Richard E.
Byrd shared honorS at Monticello this
afternoon.
It was the day annually set aside in
the midst of the Institute of Public
Affairs at the University of Virginia to
pay tribute to Jefferson, founder Of the
university.
Admiral Byrd was the guest of honor
at the white-pillared mansion on the
sun-baked mountain top which is being
preserved as shrine of religious liberty
and political freedom by the Jefferson
Memorial Foundation.
noted American is chosen as
"guest of Monticello" each year. The
first chosen last year was Thomas E.
Edison. Today also was the occasion
of tribute to Byrd on behalf of the
University of Virginia, which the ex-
plorer attended for one year.
The ceremony was enlivened by an
impromptu boom for the presidency of
Harry Flood Byrd, former Governor OF
Virginia, which was started by Gov.
Max Gardner of North Carolina, who
welcomed the guest of honor in behalf
of the South.
The thermometer on the mountain
top stood at 104 and the guests swell
giant linden trees planted by the hands
of Jefferson Admiral Byrd, gazing
over the distant hills and the valleys
from which the heat seemed to be ris-
ing in waves, RECALLED the audience
with a realistic account of Winter in
Little America, where the thermometer
sometimes stood at 104 below freez-
ing, where his party lived almost COM
pletely buried in the snow, where it
outside without
getting any exposed part of the flesh
frozen almost instantly, and where 1t
was possible to hear the breath freezing.
Stuart G. Gibbony of New York,
president of the Jefferson Memorial
Foundation, was in charge of the cere-
monies. Admiral Byrd was welcomed
by President Edwin A. Alderman of the
University of Virginia in behalf of his
alma mater and by DR.. Charles G.
Maphis for the Institute of Public At
fairs. Byrd received as souvenir one OF
the original 81 900 Monticello mortgage
bonds recently paid and Cancelled in his
honor
DR.. George J. Ryan, president of the
New York City Board of Education,
announced that the foundation now
has paid off 100000 of the 100000
purchase price of Monticello. All the
Indebtedness that remains is 100000
first mortgage, held by the Langhorn
estate, of which Lady Aston and Mrs.
Charles Dana Gibson are joint heirs.
Joseph Miller, jr, of New York, chair
man Of the National Educational Com
mittee of the foundation, announced
national contest among school children
to draw the scroll of honor to be pre-
sented to Admiral Byrd.
America has departed far from the
religious ideals of Jefferson, DR.. Wal
Nv. A AEatA NF Do
cal Seminary told the Institute of Pub
lie Affairs in a scathing address to-
night.
He insisted that the chief concern
of the sage of Monticello had been to
keep the pulpit out of extraneous af-
fairs. The country now is witnessing,
he said, fragrant intrusion by church
bodies into the realm of pure politics"
He scored paid reformers operating
under the church sanction and with
church salary, the maintenance of po-
Iitical Hobbies by religious groups in
the National Capital, the defiant utter
ances of churchmen who still main
tain, in spite Of all the tragedies to
which this principle has given express
sion, that the church must direct the
affairs OF the American Nation" DR..
Maier also attacked as antagonistic to
the philosophy of Jefferson "the move
ment to insert the name of Jesus into
our national Constitution, which would
mean the drafting of the governmental
sword for the propagation of Christ'S
faith, the un-American tendency to
make Bible reading compulsory part
of our public school curriculum, and the
campaign designed to make the Ameri-
can Sunday a replica of the Jewish
Sabbath through the passage of dis
mally blue laws"
Jefferson, DR.. Maier said, would have
been unalterably opposed to propaganda
He continued:
His voice would be raised against
those aggressive interferences in the in
dustrial life of the Nation which, au-
thorized by Federal church organi-
cations, have gone far beyond the scope
of the church's province in busying
themselves with economic issues
financial problems and purely socio-
logical questions. He would not counte-
nance the campaigns to mold popular
opinion on such purely political issues
as entrance into the League of Nations
He would disavow the outspoken pacifist
tendencies of certain religious groups
and their one-flsted control which some
churches yield in the petty circles of
ward and city politics. the customary
procedure of church bodies in passing
pOuClcal resolutions or HQOrSlng pOllLl-
cal candidates at their annual conven-
lions and the whole unholy relation by
which the spiritual power of the church
is prostitued, its appeal to the soul
materialized and its inner effectiveness
hopelessly paralyzed."
THE whole concept for government
has changed in the past 25 years, and
the machinery of government must be
changed to fit the pattern" Gov. Gard
ner of North Carolina told the institute
The past idea, he said, has been that
government was primarily for the sup
preston of anti-social conduct and
providing common defense. Even edu-
cation, he said, hardly was regarded as
a government function and the cost of
this branch in his own State has risen
twentyfold in a quarter century. The
change has come, he said, by the
banished isolation and greater inter-
dependency brought about by modern
science, and has made necessary a new
type of government official.
He proposed tearing a page from
the book of big business and establish
ing our States universities departments
for research in the science of practical
government. 1 would make available
for high school and college students the
same opportunity to learn government
that they now have to learn chemistry
and physics"