Both in the nation and in our republics of letters and science, we must learn to distinguish more clearly between the power that comes with knowledge, and the ability to talk about things. It was very interesting to watch in Washington the gradual substitution of the man with the latter quality by the man with the former in positions of responsibility, and I am going to confess that, in the early days, some of the conferences which it was my privilege or my duty to attend, reminded me for all the world of certain faculty meetings, in which gentlemen without definite knowledge of the matter in hand were discussing at considerable length what they were pleased to call principles, but which were really off-hand impressions.
I think that in their service to the university and to the nation, the scholars may well profit by the demonstration that it was not only the man who knew his subject, but the man who knew how to deal with his fellow men, who was likely to make his impression. Isn't there such a thing as academic provincialism, even within the walls of a man's own university, certainly as between institution and institution, which can be remedied by the encouragement of these social and coöperative sides of the scholar's character? It seems to me that we all should face a fundamental extension in the definition of a scholar, away from the individual, the selfish, out to the social and constructive.
In our educational institutions scholarship has three functions: To broaden the field of existing knowledge, and the war has shown us that every field has its valuable practical applications; to train the coming generation of experts, and any country needs not only a handful of distinguished leaders but a great body of well-trained men and women who, when the emergency arises, stand ready to meet it; and last but not least, to inspire a recognition of what scholarship is and a respect for it in the minds of the general students, few of whom, by the most generous stretch of the imagination, can be regarded as scholars themselves, but whose influence in their generation throughout the country is a very important factor. Our nation needs a respect for expert knowledge and it needs a respect for intelligence, and our college graduates can do more than any other group to develop this respect.
We have taken up three of our four lessons as these affect the university: the emphasis on youth, the need of mobilization and team play, and the need of leadership. There remains the fourth factor, a high, clear-cut aim.
The most serious charge against the American undergraduate in the past has been the lack of a sense of responsibility. We now know from their war records that the sense of responsibility lay latent in thousands of these boys and was only awaiting an impulse sufficiently strong to arouse it.
President Hibben of Princeton, who ought to know the American undergraduate if anybody does, said recently: "Young men are capable of far greater amounts of intensive work day in and day out than we had dreamed of; capable of greater concentration of mind upon their tasks. They respond more quickly than we have conceived to the call of duty. The sense of responsibility is there latent, and we teachers must endeavor to quicken and to appeal to it. We have seen that when the occasion comes these young men rise to meet it."
We can't very well stage a world war for the purpose, and I don't think we need wait for any such crisis to bring it out. There is in every normal, wholesome-minded student some motor nerve that can be touched in such a way as to release that type of coördinated energy which we call a sense of responsibility. This all goes back to knowing our men and women and establishing human contacts and human confidences.
In spite of individual disappointments, and as a college dean, I have had my share, I am confident that the normal young American either already possesses as a motive force some worth-while aim or that he can be guided toward such an aim if approached in the right way.
Let me quote a paragraph or so from the report of the War Department Committee on Education: