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908 he was moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. In 1908 he was appointed American lecturer at the Sorbonne. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1909 was elected president of the National Institute. In 1913 he was appointed by President Wilson minis- ter to Holland and Luxemburg, but resigned in 1917. When after the fall of Liege in 1914 von Jagow handed to Mr. Gerard, the American ambassador in Berlin, the note to Belgium, offering full reparation for damages, in case free passage to France were granted German troops, Van Dyke flatly refused to act as inter- mediary. From the first he championed the cause of the Allies in the World War, and after America's entrance into the war he served as a naval chaplain. Dr. Van Dyke was an eloquent speaker. His books, both prose and in verse, give him a high place in modern American literature. Among his best works are his " outdoor essays," especially Little Rivers (1895) and Fisher- man's Luck (1899). His publications include The Reality of Religion (1884); The Poetry of Tennyson (1889); The Other Wise Man (1896); Ships and Havens (1897); The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems (1900); The Poetry of the Psalms (1900); The Blue Flower (1902); Days Off (1907); The House of Rimmon (1908); Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land (1908); Collected Poems (1911); The Bad Shepherd (1911); The Unknown Quantity (1912); The Lost Boy (1914); Fighting for Peace (1917); The Valley of Vision (1919); and Golden Stars (1919).

VAN HORNE, SIR WILLIAM CORNELIUS (1843-1915), Canadian financier (see 27.894), died at Montreal Sept. u 1915. VAN'T HOFF, JACOBUS HENDRICUS (1852-1911), Dutch chemist and physicist (see 27.896), died at Steglitz, near Berlin, March 1 1911. VASSAR COLLEGE (see 27.946). During the period 1910-20 the endowment of Vassar College grew from about $1,500,000 to $3,118,904.40 with 800 ac. in campus and farm. Student enrolment is limited to 1,000, the number that may be housed on the campus; but the pressure for admittance and the difficulty of estimating withdrawals make it impossible to maintain this limit with exactness, and the enrolment for 1921 was 1,106, the faculty numbering 142. The funds available for student aid in one form or another amounted in 1921 to $456,37^.55. Students are admitted on passing the examinations set by the college entrance examination board, or by an examination covering three years of preparation in four selected subjects; this latter method takes the place of entrance by certificate from approved schools. The physical equipment of the college, exclusive of faculty residences, includes 27 buildings, seven of them dormitories, and a farm of 675 ac., with vegetable gardens and a model dairy.

Student self-government is in effective operation, the students themselves assuming responsibility for most of the regulations governing attendance and conduct, and for the management of the Students' Building and the Good Fellowship Club House, and for all extra curriculum activities, including the providing of various money-making occupations for self-supporting students. The facts that the price for rooms and board is the same for every student, the rooms being selected by lot, that there are no sororities or other clubs to which membership is not absolutely open, and that no admission fee may be charged to any campus meeting, all help to maintain a democratic spirit.

Among the notable war-time services of Vassar were the farm unit, the reconstruction units, and the training camp for nurses. In the summer of 1917 Vassar undertook the experiment of student labour on the college farm. Its success led to many similar enterprises throughout the country. Volunteers were accepted for the summer of 1918 to work in two shifts of six weeks each. They were housed in one of the campus buildings, paying their board out of their wages, working eight hours a day, and undertaking every form of farm work, as well as work in the model dairy, and drying, canning and preserving in the college kitchens. The Vassar units for service abroad, one under the American Red Cross, and a canteen unit under the Y.M.C.A., were financed by alumnae and under- graduates, with assistance from the Red Cross, and served in France. The Red Cross reconstruction unit included trained nurses, a dietitian, a doctor and social workers. Much of the rehabilitation work at Verdun was in their charge. The summer training camp for nurses was organized under the direction of the Red Cross and the National Council of Defense. Five hundred graduates of colleges for women entered upon a course of training for three months at Vassar and two years in a hospital, leading to the degree of registered nurse. One hundred and ten colleges were represented in this training camp, the probationary nurses coming from 46 different states of the Union and three British colonies. (B. J.*) VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, RALPH (1872- ), English musical composer, was born at Down Ampney, Oct. 12 1872. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of Mus. Bac. in 1894. He studied further at the Royal College of Music, and also at Paris and Berlin. He took the degree of Mus. Doc. at Cambridge in 1901, and in 1919 received an hon. musical degree from the university of Oxford. His works include Toward the Unknown Region (1907); Willow-wood (1909); Sea Symphony (1910); On Wenlock Edge (1911); London Symphony (1914; Carnegie award 1917) and many fine songs, including arrangements of traditional melodies.

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, SIR ROLAND LOMAX BOWDLER (1838-1916), English judge, was born in London Dec. 31 1838, the fifth son of the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Vaughan Williams. He was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1860. He was called to the bar in 1861, and was made a Q.C. in 1889. In 1890 he was raised to the bench of the Queen's Bench division, in 1891 was transferred to the Bankruptcy division, and in 1897 became a lord justice of appeal. In 1906 Vaughan Williams was appointed chairman of the royal commission on the disestablishment of the Church in Wales. He retired from the bench in 1914, and died at Abingcr, Dorking, Dec. 8 1916. His book TheLawand Practice of Bankruptcy (1870; latest ed. 1915) is a leading authority.

VAZOV, IVAN (1850-1921), Bulgarian poet and writer, was born at Sopot in Bulgaria in 1850, and received his first educa- tion in the Sopot village school. Later on, he went to Russia to continue his studies. His first literary efforts took the form of essays and songs describing the sorrows of the Bulgars under Turkish rule, their hopes for a free united Bulgaria, their dis- appointment when the Treaty of Berlin divided the Bulgarian people once again. His most important work is the novel Pod I goto (Under the Yoke), which has been translated into many European languages. Pod Igoto gives a simple and convincing picture of village life in Turkish times and of the heroes of the struggle for freedom. Among Vazov's other works are The New Craves of Slivnitza (Scrbo-Bulgarian War of 1885-6); The Kaza- larska Czaritza; Borislav and Towards the Abyss, two of his best plays. Vazov, who identified himself with the sufferings and joys of the people, is honoured throughout the country as the national poet and as a true patriot. His jubilee was officially celebrated ip 1920 and he was awarded a pension from the State. He was the first Bulgarian writer whose works had been read outside Bulgaria. He died at Sofia Sept. 22 1921.

VENEREAL DISEASES (see 27.983). There are three distinct diseases included under the term " venereal " gonorrhoea, syphilis, and soft chancre, of which the first two are of primary importance in relation to public health. The advance in our knowledge of venereal disease, its prevention and curative treatment, during 1910-21, may be regarded as the outcome of experience upon a large scale based upon the following discoveries: (1) the specific organism of syphilis by Schaudinn; (2) the inoculation of monkeys by Metchnikoff and protection therefrom by the application of a 33% calomel cream ointment; (3) the application by Wassermann of the Bordet haemolytic test to syphilis; and (4) the discovery by Ehrlich of " 606 " (salvarsan) as a rapid curative agent of syphilis. All four discoveries may be said to have laid the foundation of all modern methods of medically dealing with this disease.

The discussion of the whole subject at the International Medical Congress held in London in 1912, and the change in the attitude of a large section of the public and the press, eventually led up to the appointment of a British Royal Commission in 1913. The report of the Commission, published in 1916, was strongly supported by a National Council for Combating Venereal Disease, and ultimately an Act of Parliament was passed which made provision for the carrying out of its recommendations.

Scientific Advances. During 1910-20 the so-called para- syphilitic diseases, general paralysis of the insane, and tabes dorsalis (locomotor ataxia), were proved to be the direct result of