MY DEAR FINLEY,—I have your postal from London and it cheereth me—Yea, thou hast done a kindly act to one who is sore beset. …

When you and I can talk together I want to urge a new field upon your great paper. Perhaps you can take it up with Mr. Ochs and perhaps he can see how he can add to his usefulness and to the glory of his paper's name.

My thought is that there should be somewhere—and why not in New York?—a Place of Exchange for the New Ideas that the world evolves each year, a central spot where all that is new in science, philosophy, practical political machinery, and all else of the world's mind-products shall be placed on exhibition where those interested may see. Why should not the Times do this?

It would cost very little. All the plant needs would be a building which would contain one or two fine halls for public speaking, and a few properly appointed apartments. No faculty—but a super- university with all the searchers and researchers, inventors, experimenters, thinkers of the world for faculty. No students—but every man the world round interested in the theme under consideration, welcome, as student without pay. The only executive officer a Director, whose business would be to see that the great minds were tapped,—a high class impresario, who would know who had thought thoughts, developed a theory, found a new problem, or a new method of solving an old one, and [would] bring the thinker on the stage and present him to those who knew of what he talked; and could intelligently, quickly, distribute it to the ends of the earth.

Money? The lecturer would get his expenses from his home and back again, and be cared for appropriately in one of the apartments. Otherwise the incidental expenses of administration. Aside from the single and simple building the whole thing should not cost more than $100,000 a year.

To illustrate—it took years for the world to know what Rutherford was doing with radium. Why should he not have been brought to some central place and there, before all the students who might choose to come, tell his story? Pasteur, Einstein, Bergson, Wright Brothers, Wells (theory of Education). These names are suggestive. The great of the world could walk, as it were, in the groves with their pupils and critics, and we could have a new Athens. Whatever progress the world had made, in whatever line, would be reported at that time. And the world would know in advance that this was to be so. Germany has been the world thought center for forty years. England is now planning to take Germany's place. Why not America? But the government has not the imagination, and this must be done quickly.

Why not the Times? And why shouldn't you start it for the Times— be the first Director?

Then I want someone to take over another of my ideas—a sort of Federal Reserve Board on the good of the nation, an unofficial group of men with foresight, who would be a spur to government and suggest direction. Somebody whose business it would be to attend to that which is nobody's business and so waits, and waits, until sometimes too late. Why should we have had no plans for caring for our soldiers as to employment and giving them the right bent on their return?

There was no one to concentrate attention—the attention of Congress and the public—on any definite plan. I tried it with my scheme for making farms for soldiers, but Congress, as soon as it found that I was really agitating, passed laws making it impossible for me to use a sheet of paper or the frank for the purpose. I do not say my plan was the best possible. Then someone should have come forward with another, and pushed it against a Congress made up of Republicans who feared that Democrats would get the credit, and Democrats who feared Republicans would. Hence, deadlock, and a great opportunity lost! …

Seers, or see-ers, that's what these men should be. Elder
Statesmen, if you please, independent, away above politics.