The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1943-05-06

| ~ ~NNAii lN'''Nt''s AilSlC 10 lllC
call Of the bugle, and the sound Of
martial music, coming from loud
speakers, aiding the orderly march
Of small squads of men in uniform
as they go from building to building
at the end Of each hour.
The old college scene is now so
lar in the past that we already need
to remind ourselves what it was.
Throughout most Of our history as a
nation, the characteristic place of
| higher learning has been the small
college, than which nothing is more
/ American. 1t is as American as base
ball or apple pie. AS our people eX-
banded across the continent. hundreds
OF new communities were quick to
establish colleges, thus seeking to
provide the kind of educated lead
ership which a democracy requires.
The American college was, from the
first, markedly different from any
thing in Europe and has, to some de-
gree, continued so to be. The English
colleges, which provided US with our
first patterns of higher education,
were associated in clusters, so that
! students shared in the total life of
the university town, as we'll as the
individual life of the college. The con-
ditions of early America were such,
however, that this development did
not take place. Instead, each college
began as separate unit. Harvard was
intended to be something like Emman-
uel at Cambridge, except that it stood
all alone in the new world. Other col
leges initiated Harvard, not by set
Ting in Cambridge, but by settling
in New Haven or Oberlin or North
field.
This arrangement for college life
placed great emphasis on the college
chapel, so that it became, in most in
stances, the chief focus and symbol
Of the new institution. The college
usually owned its origin to a strong
Christian motive, the president was
deeply devout and the village pat
tern Of life, with the meeting house
facing the green, was taken over al
most entirely. The centrality of the
chapel was meant to express, not the
Importance Of a mere building, but
nathan. tho coOy,ic+ioO +bat ,va ,,o1lc+
go beyond learning to wisdom.
Neither the mere acquisition Of in
formation nor the development of
special skills," says Harvard's Presi-
dent Conant, in his current annual
report, "can give the broad basis of
understanding which is essential if
our civilization is to be preserved"
The centrality of the chapel for so
many generations was a vivid way Of
/ Saying that Americans believed this
TO be true.
AS our nation grew and small col
leges became large universities, much
of this original conception remained.
We see it explicitly stated in the
founding of Stanford University, tho
it was far from New England and tho
it began late in the nineteenth CEN
| fury While utterly renouncing all sec
tarianism, Mr. and Mrs. Stanford, in
their plan to use their great wealth
to establish university of high de-
gree" insisted upon the centrality
and necessity Of moral and spiritual
instruction. To symbolic this it was
determined that the campus should be
chapel centered, space early being left
at the architectural focus Of the In
ner Quadrangle for the Memorial
Church, with its famous facade, rep
resenting, in Italian mosaic, the Ser
mon on the Mount. This is the first
building which visitors see as they
approach the campus, and the one
which thousands visit each year.
Our newer types of higher educa
ton are, in many ways, however
CLOSER 10 Ilc COlCepIloll VI HISllCr
education long found in Germany
than our earlier American pattern
or the English system. This is i'm
portant for our understanding of the
situation, because admiration of the
German model has been powerful
factor in the cultural change which
has taken place in our country. 1t
is we'll known that, for several years
before the first World War, it was
practically assumed that budding
scholars should go to Germany to
finish their academic preparation. The
| German universities, we must re-
member, do not have chapelS in the
sense that we have them in America.
In their conception, higher education
is one thing and religion is another.
| There is, of course, often theological
faculty with its own chapel at which
all are welcome but it is department
| tai, whereas, in the American pat
/ tern, the chapel was integral.
The classic American collegiate idea
is that the college should have re-
sponsibility for the total life of its
students, intellectually physically,
and spiritually. It was appropriate for
the deepest needs to be met first. The
unargued requirement of daily chapel
was a national outgrowth of the con-
| Sic+an+ halinf that man does not live