have a big say in this Congress. I do not hope for the total cessation of war in centuries, though it is the deadliest crime in the world, but the power to make it should be taken away from proud kings and stubborn chancelleries and secret diplomacy, and armaments should be controlled if not ended. This war will be fought to a finish. Peace, patched by amiable compromise, and lull would be hideous folly. It should be such a peace that wise men could find time to strike at the root of misgovernment and the badly ordered political arrangements in Europe and the world. In the meantime, I send my renewed congratulations to our old hackneyed friend, Christopher Columbus, for his foresight in discovering America. It is today, by reason of its ideals, its power, its history as the most venerable democracy in the world, the moral referee, the spiritual arbiter of the world. The exalted character and unfailing good sense of our President adds to this power now, and it is heartening to me to see in Germany, Switzerland, France and England, how everybody craves America's good opinion. We should remain strictly neutral in act and deed, but we should study this war in cause, method and effect as we never studied anything before, and when our conclusions are reached and the time is fit, we should utter them to the world and translate our judgments into terms of law, treaty and public opinion. America holds the future if democracy is not an outworn creed, and it is not. It is the religion of honest men and God help those who seek to limit it!!

My stars! What a letter! I dare not reread it and pray your forgiveness for its length, discursiveness and incoherence. I shall be very happy to touch my native soil and to go to work. Faithfully, your friend,

Mrs. W. H. Schieffelin,

242 E. 15th St.,

Stuyvesant Square,

New York.

EDWIN A. ALDERMAN.

COLLEGE HOUR AND DINNER IN HONOR OF PRESIDENT ALDERMAN.

President Alderman made his first formal appearance since his return before the members of the faculty, the students and the University community at the November College Hour, which was arranged especially to afford him an opportunity thus to greet the various elements of the University life. On this occasion he delivered an address on "The Deeper Causes of the European War," which won wide recognition throughout the country as a most sane and thoughtful discussion of the great issues involved.

President Alderman prefaced his address with an announcement of a gift of $10,000 to the University to be used for the founding of another loan fund for deserving students who need financial aid. The circumstances under which the gift was made are more than usually interesting. The donor, who was a brave soldier on the federal side during the War between the States. desires that his name be withheld. He stated that he made the gift as a token of his friendship and regard for President Alderman, of his interest in the University of Virginia, and as a tribute to the memory of the great Confederate leader, whose arms he had helped to oppose, but whom he so much admired. He requests that the foundation be known as the Lee Loan Fund.

The University is peculiarly fortunate in receiving this gift at the present time. Many promising young men from the Southern States were prevented, on account of the situation in the cotton market, from pursuing courses at the University this session. One step in the direction of relieving this situation was taken in October by the Rector and Visitors, when they authorized the acceptance of warehouse certificates of the ownership of cotton in payment of University fees. The new loan fund. will very materially help further to aid Southern young men who may be handicapped by financial conditions.

Loan funds now available for students, established in the last decade, total nearly $35,000.

DINNER TO PRESIDENT ALDERMAN.

On November 30 the faculty gave a dinner in honor of Pres

ident Alderman. The formal greetings of the faculty, signed by each member and beautifully embossed, were presented to President Alderman by Dean James M. Page, as follows: "Your colleagues in the faculty of the University of Virginia desire to unite in this expression of greeting and congratulation upon your return with restored health and vigor to the field in which you have worked with distinguished success. We welcome you back as friends who rejoice in the renewal of your strength; as colleagues who stand ready for all helpful service to the University which you are set to govern and to guide; as Virginians anxious to use the resources of this seat of learning to upbuild the State; and as Americans who believe in trained intelligence as the saving grace of democracy. We look forward to your future labors in the confident expectation that the coming years will be marked by the same notable progress as has characterized the past decade of your leadership.”

In his address, Dean Page referred to the fact that December marked the close of President Alderman's first decade of service as the University of Virginia's first President.

"Ten years ago almost to the month," he said, turning to Dr. Alderman, "I was honored by my colleagues in this faculty by their requesting me to act as spokesman to welcome to the University of Virginia her first President. I extended to you, necessarily as to a stranger or to one known to us solely by reputation, earnest assurance of our satisfaction in having you here as President, and of our eagerness, individually and collectively, to cooperate to the full extent of our strength in all that you might undertake for the welfare of this University.

"Now, after the lapse of a decade, I have again been honored by being requested to act as spokesman for my colleagues, but under utterly different circumstances. It is no longer a question. of welcoming a stranger; but for me the vastly harder task of attempting to express in moderate terms to a colleague and dear friend our happiness at his return to his post after an enforced absence of nearly two years."

President Alderman, after expressing his gratitude for the consideration and kindness of his colleagues, and speaking of the pride he felt in the splendid fashion in which the University had gone forward in his absence under the leadership of Dean

Page and the loyal coöperation of the entire faculty, declared that his period of absence had given him opportunity, free from the "twin devils of fret and haste," to think to the bottom of such things.

He spoke of some of the essential things to the greatness and permanence of a university. All other things were details; interesting and necessary, but details.

"First," he said, "a university must be a school of conduct and idealism rather than a mere learning-shop, and out of it must issue not just the learned man, but the man of judgment, poise, integrity, reverence for honor, fidelity to trust, and capacity for coöperation. Estates, titles, glories, acquisition of knowledge or wealth, fail, but honor endures and brightens.

"Second, a university, as an institution, must maintain austere and high standards of scholarly achievement. A university is not a fit place for weak men or aimless people. In it must be trained a democratic corps d'elite necessary to maintain at a high level the aims and achievements of democracy.

"Third, as a corollary of this position, the university must not stay within its walls, but must go out among the people and carry to the great masses, who cannot reach the university, its knowledge, its standards, its inspirations. Wisely ordered university extension, therefore, follows as a necessity of austere and lofty standards of scholarship within the university's walls."

President Alderman said he mentioned with pride the fact that University of Virginia professors were serving upon almost every kind of board in State and national life, seeking to upbuild and advance State and national interests.

In the fourth place, he predicted the leadership of the scholar in American life, and instanced it as an evidence of the nation's maturity in civilization. We have had as leaders successively, he said, the preacher, the soldier, the lawyer, the business man. He believed that the scholar would now have his turn, and he suggested that the chief requisites for developing such leadership in the scholar's world were economic independence and intellectual freedom. The college professor must have, he said, a sufficient income to give him confidence and dignity, and he must. be granted absolute freedom to think straight and clearly the best thought he has.

A STUDENT'S VIEW OF THE UNIVERSITY IN 1852-1856.

BY CRAWFORD HOWELL TOY, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF HEBREW, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

In accepting the invitation of the editor to write something for the ALUMNI BULLETIN, what I had in mind was to indulge in a little gossip, a plan that he approved. The constitution and achievements of the University have been abundantly described elsewhere, and I thought it might interest members of the University to have the personal recollections of a student of over fifty years ago.

When I left the Norfolk Academy in 1852, out of a number of good Virginia colleges there were three, one of which I proposed to myself to take as my Alma Mater: William and Mary then retained something of its historic glamour and had been the favorite resort of young fellows of the tidewater region; the Virginia Military Institute had a great reputation for the teaching of mathematics as well as for military training, and several of my schoolmates had elected it; I chose the University because it seemed to me to offer in best form what I wanted—a broad course of liberal study with high standards and strict methods.

At that time it stood among the foremost colleges of the country in respect of attendance and general equipment. In 1852-3 Harvard had 659 students (professionals and graduates 329, undergraduates 330), Yale had 604 (undergraduates 447), our University 466; in 1855-'6 the numbers were respectively 669 (undergraduates 365), 619 (undergradutes 473), 558. There was then little diffusion of statistical college literature, and in general students at one place had very little knowledge of what was going on elsewhere. We valued particularly our freedom of choice in the order of studies (though, of course, graduation in certain schools was prescribed for degrees), the credit given for graduation in any one school or in any part of a school, and the high standard (seventy-five per cent) for passing examinations. We knew, however, vaguely that, as with us, so with our contemporaries, there were great teachers and great alumni and traditions.

When I entered, Dr. Gessner Harrison (nomen honoratis