Widner Library Facilitates Study

The most notable change in the aspect of the University within the year has been wrought by the completion of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library; but the contribution thereby made to its working power as a seat of learning has not been less significant. During the summer, with rare administrative skill, the books were transferred to the new building and rearranged upon the shelves, the catalogue improved, and the whole library put into working order. The far greater case and comfort in using the collections was reflected at once, both by the larger number of books used in the Reading Room, and by the large number taken from the building. And yet the principal advance made in the new university library has been due to the facilities for using the books in the stack itself by members of the instructing staff and advanced students. There are about sixty private rooms for the professors in immediate contact with the stacks; and the open stalls in the stacks, with windows and places for table and chair, number nearly three hundred. Such an ample provision for work among the books exists in no other library in the world; and the relief from the intolerable conditions in Gore Hall cannot be without effect on the productiveness of our scholars. In the old conditions scholarly work was done under grave difficulties; but the professors' rooms in the new building, so apportioned as to be as near as possible to the collections a man will chiefly use, furnish all that a scholar could desire. The instructing staff look forward to, and the friends of the University expect, an era of productiveness greater than was possible when our scholars were hampered by the res Angusta domi.

But it is not only among the instructing staff that we ought to foster productive scholarship. The habit of writing ought to begin young; younger than is usually the case in America. Contrary to the common impression, writing becomes more difficult the longer it is put off. As a man grows older he becomes more fastidious, more self-distrustful, less ready to grapple with a large theme, less ready to put pen to paper until he knows all about a subject, which no one can ever do. A certain crudity of youth is inseparable from early and great productiveness, and ought not got be too much repressed. It would seem that American can Graduate Schools do sometimes, quite unintentionally, repress it too much, by prolonging the period of study too long. Real capacity for truly productive work is no doubt rare even among learned scholars, but where it exists it might perhaps be more encouraged, and encouraged younger, than it is to-day. Perhaps fellowships, like those in the English universities, or like those in the Foundation Thiers in Paris, might be created with good results. The holders of such fellowships ought not to be members of any school, because the atmosphere of a school is essentially that of study, and the atmosphere of study is not the same as that of production. The fellows would, of course, be in close contact with the professors, and go to them for criticism and advice; but that is not the same thing as studying under them, or working up under their direction a thesis for a degree. It assumes that the period of study under tutelage has passed, and the period of independent work has begun; and this means a subtle but real change of attitude. It may be too early to devise any plan of this kind, but it seems to be worth consideration.

Divinity School-Has Progressed

The Divinity School has within the year progressed farther on its new path. In the last report the agreement with the Episcopal Theological School for better cooperation, and for the opening of all courses without charge to each other's students, was set forth. It was pointed out that the three affiliated Schools, without in the least surrendering their distinctive aims in training young men for the ministry, were all gainers by the agreement. During the past year the Theological School of Boston University suggested an agreement similar to that made with the Episcopal Theological School. The proposal was welcomed by the Faculty of Divinity, which necessarily gave it, however, a somewhat different form. The Divinity Schools of Harvard and Andover charge their students a tuition fee of one hundred and fifty dollars, and in making the new agreement the Episcopal Theological School raised its tuition fee to the same point. But the School of Boston University does not in practice charge such a fee, and therefore it would be manifestly unjust to allow its students to take gratuitously courses for which the students in the other three Schools are obliged to pay. On the other hand, it was felt that it would not be unfair to admit without charge students whose grade of scholarship is such that if they applied for admission to our Divinity School they would be awarded scholarships covering the tuition. A grade of eighty-five per cent in the work of two years in the School of Boston University was taken by mutual consent as a rough measure of such standing and the agreement was drawn accordingly. The agreement in full will be found in the report of Dean Fenn, in this volume.

The agreements open to the students of the different schools all the courses under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as those under the Faculty of Divinity; and no doubt many of the courses taken will not be primarily designed for divinity students, but they will be on subjects, philosophic, social, economic and historical, with which the younger generation of elergymen feel a need of being familiar. This is as it should be, and it is one of the main attractions of a connection with a great university to the separate divinity schools in its neighborhood. Together with the quality of our own divinity staff, it has enabled our School to take a position as the nucleus for a system of scholarly instruction of a high grade, conducted with the aid of a group of denominational institutions. This position is the highest to which a Faculty of Divinity can aspire, and in our case it can be achieved without giving up the older function of training young men for ordinary parish work. The prospect has given a decided impulse to the energy of the School.

An important part of the plan is the administration of the higher degree of Master of Divinity and Doctor of Theology. The qualification for these, as indeed is now the case for Bachelors of Theology, is not the completion of a fixed number of courses, but a general examination upon a field of knowledge approved in advance by the Faculty, courses of instruction being a means thereto, not an end in themselves. The general examination has proved a satisfactory test of capacity and attainment, and the degrees so conferred have already won a notable standing. Two of the three men who obtained the doctor's degree last June, and one of the two on whom the master's degree was conferred, have already been appointed to full professorships in this country or in Canada.

Law Faculty Much too Small

Apart from the grievous loss sustained by the death of Dean Thayer, there has been little change in the prosperity of the Law School. The only serious difficulty under which it labors is the small size of the instructing staff compared with the large number of students. The ratio of professors to students is less than it was twenty or thirty years ago. In 1883, the School had five professors and 165 students, or one instructor to 29 students: in 1894-95, eight professors (with three lecturers giving special courses) and 353 students, or one full-time instructor to 44 students. Last year it had ten professors (with five lecturers giving special courses) and 730 students, or one full time instructor to every 73 students, and that with a variety of courses that has been much enlarged. One does not, of course, expect to increase the instructing staff in proportion to the growth in students; but when we remember that the professors in the Law School have no assistants, and do the whole work of their courses, reading all the examination books themselves, it is not surprising that with so large a number of students they are very hard worked. The fact is that the School has a comparatively small endowment, more than two-thirds of its revenue coming from tuition fees. It is hoped that before long a larger endowment may be raised.

For the work of the Medical School during the past year the reader is referred to the report of the Dean. There is no doubt that the reputation of the School and of its staff has been growing steadily throughout the country. In its body of instructors and its connections within and outside of the University it has elements of strength for new fields of medicine that could, with greater resources, be developed more fully than anywhere else on this continent.

Medical School Sent Surgical Units

To the general public the most interesting event during the past year has been the work in military hospitals in Europe. Thanks to a gift by Mr. William Lindsay, it was enabled to take its turn among the leading medical schools of the United States in providing for three months, from April 1 to July 1, the surgical staff of the University service in the American Ambulance (Hospital) at Neuilly-sur-Seine. This first Harvard Unit, as it was called, went under the charge of Dr. Harvey Cushing as Surgeon, and Dr. Robert B. Greenough as Surgeon and Executive Officer, and comprised four operating-room nurses.

Dr. Richard P. Strong, well known for his work on tropical diseases in the Philippines and in South America, and for his study of Pneumonic Plague in China, accompanied the Unit as Bacteriologist; but he had hardly arrived in Paris when he was called away to take the position of Director of the American Red Cross Sanitary Commission to suppress the epidemic of typhus fever in Serbia. In an astonishingly short time the confidence of the Serbian authorities was won, the work organized, and, in spite of an almost total lack at the outset of the ordinary medical equipment for combatting an epidemic, the disease was in a few months almost wholly suppressed.

While the first Unit was in France a request came from the British Army Medical Service to a number of American universities for surgical units on a much larger scale -- no less than thirty-two surgeons and seventy-five nurses apiece -- to take charge for six months of field hospitals of one thousand beds. The University of Chicago sent a unit without delay. Representatives of Harvard, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins met, and being already somewhat depleted by surgical services in Europe, agreed to maintain between them a Unit for six months. Harvard offered to take the first three months, and Dr. Edward H. Nichols undertook to recruit and lead the Unit, with Mr. Herbert H. White as the Business Manager in charge of the preparations. These were, of course, difficult and exacting. In a very short time an efficient staff and nurses had to be enrolled: passports, transportation, instruments and supplies procured, and money raised -- for although the English Government furnished transportation and uniforms, with maintenance and daily pay at the usual army rates, several thousand dollars were needed for the instruments, for equipment and for the transportation of surgeons and their substitutes who could not remain the whole three months. The complete Unit sailed on June 25, and was sent to a hospital in France under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Allan Perry.

At the close of the three months if be came evident to the British Government that such a period was too short to justify the expense of transportation from America, and, therefore, the contingents from Columbia and Johns Hopkins did not go. But some members of the Harvard staff, with about half of the nurses, volunteered to stay on, and there arose a strong desire to renew the Unit if needed. The money required was in part given, in part derived from the proceeds of a collection at the Harvard-Yale game; and a third Harvard Unit was recruited, this time for six months. It sailed on November 14, with thirty new members of the staff and thirty-six more nurses, under the lead of Dr. David Cheever.