HARVARD

COLLEGE

Members of the University of Chicago faculties, men and women who keep abreast of the latest developments in their respective fields as covered by departmental journals, are frequently required to vote upon matters of educational policy which they have not had an opportunity to study. Indeed, at the present time there is in the United States no publication which covers the field of higher education. Certainly there does not exist a published summary of educational progress such as would be of special interest to the members of the University of Chicago. For the purpose of making easily accessible brief statements of fact with regard to progress in higher education in this country and abroad, as well as for the purpose of acquainting members of the faculties with significant legislation and administrative action within the University, it is now proposed to issue an occasional supplement to the University Record. Brief statements of such matters as the use of intelligence tests for admission of students to college, the reorganization of Yale College, the activities of the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, the Association of American Colleges, the Association of Collegiate Registrars, the Association of Business Officers of Universities and Collegesthese and other items may legitimately find place in the supplement. Its aim is to serve as a "house organ" for the members of the University of Chicago. The editor of the Record will appreciate the co-operation of all members of the faculties in making available for their colleagues information likely to be of importance to those who, in addition to being experts in their own fields of scholarship, must be called upon to determine for the University of Chicago important educational policies.

IS AMERICA RESPONSIBLE?'

BY DAVID PRESCOTT BARROWS

President of the University of California

I ask you to consider once again the inevadable question, Is America responsible, responsible for the insecurity which envelops the world and gives eloquence to its appeals-responsible for giving or withholding the colossal power of this state from the ordering of the world's confusions and animosities?

Assuredly we may claim that we had naught in provoking the war. We were no party to the precedent intrigues. We owed neither fealty nor treaty obligation to any Ally. Yet the searching of our souls, at last, made us soldiers in this war and shapers of its victory. Has our responsibility ceased?

It is no surprise that now, our armies melted away, our flags encased our sacrifice sealed, the nation recoils from extra-national responsibility. The traditions of the fathers bade us be a separate people. This present generation through youth and maturity has heard few voices, but those warning it from foreign adventure. To the question, What do political societies owe one another beyond a scrupulous respect in leaving each others affairs alone? the voice of authority again and again has replied "Nothing. The whole duty of a statesman is to keep his country's resources intact and his people jealously concerned with their own affairs."

Previous endeavors for foreign peoples have invoked the most respectable opposition; our sacrifices condemned as stupid; our dead deemed to have died as the fool dieth. In 1898 when Colonel Waring fell a victim to yellow fever, contracted in Havana, the New York Nation published these bitter words:

Waring was sent to Cuba

The cleaning of Spanish streets is none of our business. on an errand as foolish as most of the expansionist policy. He sacrificed in it a life of great value to the American people, and we may be sure if expansion continues, Waring will not be its last victim. If we knew the things which make for our peace and prosperity, we should regard the life of Waring as of more value to the American people than the whole island of Cuba and all that it contains.

1 Delivered on the occasion of the One Hundred and Sixteenth Convocation of the University, held in Hutchinson Court, June 15, 1920.

A few years ago the Springfield Republican could say to its readers:

As long as the Mexican people confine themselves to cutting one another's throats, it does not appear why Americans should feel concerned; let them glut themselves until their savage nature is satiated, or until some leader arises with force enough to reduce them to order and submission. Americans ought to be able to stand it if the Mexicans can.

It must be granted that this strictly narrow view of national responsibility is definite and consistent, but it requires a certain hardihood, to maintain it in the face of neighboring misery.

Only the most robust indifference can preserve its restraint when ruin is near complete, and the conscience of the nation grows unquiet when it sees such views erected into a national policy. In the light of all we have thought and felt and done in the last four years can we support such a policy now?

The situation is clearly unprecedented. Despite our American position, this country is a part of Western civilization, bound to Europe by practically the whole of its inheritance, a member, almost despite itself, of the family of Western nations, a participant for twenty months of warfare in the greatest of known ordeals. Alone in the midst of nations that the war wasted and slew, we have more than replenished our power, as we lavishly spent and loaned. Alone among the nations supporting the civilization which we call Christian, we possess vast resource of properties, of trained men, of political stability. Europe, for centuries the center of the globe, the source of the world's exploration and conquest, the seat of that science which has revealed the mysteries of nature and harnessed its forces, the mother of institutions which gave liberty and enlightenment, is exhausted and broken, her blood fevered, her breasts dry. Her peril is unquestionably great. The best to be hoped is only a slow recuperation which will restore her to a secure though diminished rôle. Only a completely provincial spirit, without acquaintance with the world, without imagination to envisage it, can suppose that America can turn her back upon this situation with fame secure and mind at peace.

We have been living the last week in the midst of a powerful and relentless effort to induce us to do this thing. This effort has been in a measure temporarily successful, but those who think they have settled it, have not settled it. They have not settled it because the American people are incapable of an ungenerous and cynical policy, once they understand. Those who have confederated to defeat our sharing responsibility for the political condition of Europe understand this.

They will seek to convince the American people that aid can be given in some charitable but non-political form. Clearly it is not charity that Europe now requires but authority and security under which administration may be reformed and existent resources utilized. Other ways, I repeat, offered in place of our commitment to the use of political power are answers to the call for bread by offerings of stone.

It is the state which needs reshaping and re-establishing in Europe, and the state cannot be reshaped and re-established, except by a concert of political power.

The prospects for American participation are not hopeless but opposed in a combination of diverse interests united to paralyze our hand. I propose to characterize one or two of these, plainly and without apology. Among these confederated elements are, first and frankest of all, those which do not wish the state restored in Europe because they seek the overthrow of the state everywhere. For them the state is not a natural and necessary institution but a sham. They preach that its place can be taken by various forms of industrial or communistic association working on an international scale. The widest extremes of theory and purpose exist in this group, from philosophical anarchists, to those who love not liberty but power, and who seek to gain power by a suppression of freedom, in the most startling and reactionary movement that the modern world has seen. But all of these are united in opposing the political reconstruction of Europe, because the re-establishment there of the state on a representative or republican basis means their defeat and the end of their vast plans of world-aggrandizement through world-revolution.

Another group are those who rejoice to inflame American hostility to Great Britain and the British Empire. Again, this is a singular combination of diverse strains. It includes many who themselves or whose parentage suffered in the past from the mistakes of British policy. It includes many who by reason of different origin are unmindful of the common nature of American and British political and moral conceptions, and of the general agreement of our interests in the world.

We need new knowledge of the English-speaking race and new light on our behavior. The hour is past when century-old passions can be made political capital. War not only finishes old scores, but its blood seals new compacts and new understandings. These become sacred from the trifler and the politician. Let us view the situation as it actually is. It is the British Empire which is today maintaining the stability of Europe and the order of a vast part of the world. Few can

doubt that that empire is in process of a transformation in obedience to the justifiable preferences of the people who compose it. What is essential is that these changes come through orderly arrangement and timely concession, and not through the shock of revolution. To destroy at this moment the fabric of the British Empire is to consign Western Europe to such catastrophe as has wrecked its eastern portion. Sound sense dictates to us a wise support of the British Empire and participation in its mission.

To the urgings of those who would leave the task of worldreconstruction to Great Britain alone there are two objections. The first is that, by British admission, her resources are inadequate. The empire was satiated before the war; today it is over-inflated with responsibility. Great Britain is solvent but without the power to loan. Her navy is intact but her armies could not be reassembled. And where is that youth that was born to carry on her brilliant traditions of governance and enterprise? Alas, it lies buried in Flanders and the valley of the Somme!

The other reason is quite as serious. The war has left America and Great Britain in such a situation that they must be either allies or foes. There must be closer co-operation or inevitable estrangement. We have broken into the predominance of Great Britain upon the sea; our merchant marine is rapidly approximating hers; our navy, as its super-dreadnaughts take the water, becomes, what Great Britain has never tolerated heretofore, an actual rival in sea power. We are contestants in all parts of the world for the great unexploited sources of supplies from which the exhausted resources of the world may be replenished. It is clear that we must choose between a closer understanding with Great Britain or a rivalry which will make us foes. Things cannot stand still. The difficulties in the way are all on our side. Great Britain is conscious of the peril; we are not. Great Britain is willing to concede; we are unwilling to co-operate. She offers us an alliance to guarantee both the world's stability and our common interest. This alliance we are disposed to spurn. Yet the way of safety is in alliance.

I can only barely refer to other elements which have confederated to defeat the prospects of American political action abroad. They include those leaders of party and of Congress who, by the bitterness of a conflict, partly personal and partly constitutional, have been forced into a hostile attitude to the policy of the President. They include those whose interest has been first in maintaining the dignity and position of