Page:Modern review 1921 v29.pdf/746

Rh chancellor o1 president of English and American universities But there is one important distinction In France the head of a university is the administiator also of secondary imstruction for one of the seventeen educational districts (techically known as Academies} mto which France { including Algeria) is divided In French official language Appeil is recteur de f deademee de Parts Says President Appell

“T¢ is from the bottom of my heart, that I send to the savants and students of India (N B In France as in the United States the term ‘Aainfoa? 1s geographical and therefore includes Mussalmans as well as those who are Hindu by faith } the warm sympathies of the professors and students of the University of Paris We shall work wath them for the advancement of a human civilisation which will be directed henceforth to the service of {iherty and Justice ”’

In these few lines as in everything that he has done in his hfe Appell is recognized hy the representative men of France asa

true child of the French revolution And India finds her ‘ideas of 1905” fraternizms

herem with the spirit of x78, another instance of the elderly West lending a helping hand to the msg East

There ate universities and some very celebrated too where a man becomes president, chancellor or governor not because his scientitic attainments, if fortunately he should happen to possess any, automatically raise him to the head of the Faculties, but because he commands a social pull, perhaps because {te is a successful broker Such presidents might as well have shone as directors of a brewery or of a cigarette. manufacturing company, for the simple reason that the accident of their birth

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enables them to giacefully approach the moneyed atistocracy for 7unds,~a no mean qualification, however, m contemporary evilisation when the efficiency of instruction and the heightenmg of the educational standard aie invariabiy dependent on the expansion of the budget

Bui Appel! owes his position entirely to his address m the world of science Specia- lists m mathematics can judge for themselves the value of Ins Yheorze des fonetsors alecdiigues el de leurs rutegrals, Prinerpes de fa theorse des fonctions ellipiigues et applieatiens and Liat. de mecanique rationueld. (1m three volumes} In astronomy also his name ts gute well known And just as dwing the war another French mathematician, Painleve, rose to the highest political office in the state and came to be the most discussed man of France, so also the name of Monsieur Appell became a house- hold word in the erty and m= mofusszd in connection with lis services as director of Secon: National ( or Fatiya Seva Samiti, to use the current Indian expression) whitch was institutea by the government to relieve the people m distress of all sorts

The call to comradeship from Paul Appell w for the Hindus and Mussalmans a message of welcome into a life of expansion Tt furnishes an atmosphere of co-operation between the East and the West on the one hand and of unhindered competition in brain-powers between India and the world on the other And coming asit does from one of the first citizens of the French re- public the noble message deserves a gener- ous response from the apostles of Greater india

re

"“The evolution of humanity beyond its present level depends absolutely on its power to unite and create true social organisms.”

“The beauty of great civilisations has been built up far more by the people working together than by any corporate action of the State.”"

“A. E.”

is now no longer necessary to discuss whether Swaraj is attainable or not in India. Our observation tells us that it is already in being. Wherever a man or a woman refuses to be enslaved,