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body of non-experts, in whose hands the entire legal control has usually been placed"; and the first of the ten questions proposed for discussion was: "What should be the real administrative body of a college or university, the faculty or the trustees?"

The clear and frank statement of the problem in the invitation was maintained in the papers and discussions. Dr. Draper opened the conference with an eloquent address on the university presidency. He held that the chief duty of the trustees is to select a great man for president and thereafter to give him a free hand in all directions. He should be the supreme legislator, executive and judge. This point of view was questioned by Mr. J. P. Munroe, a trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Joseph Jastrow, of the University of Wisconsin, and Professor C. E. Bessey, of the University of Nebraska. It was argued that while the autocratic president may gather wealth and produce an efficient machine, such an officer is subversive of democratic ideals and true scholarship, tending in the end to demoralize the academic career.

Dr. Draper was careful to abstain from any laudation of what he had himself accomplished during his presidency of the University of Illinois, but

the impressive material progress of the institution was evident on all sides, and was the strongest argument in favor of a benevolent despotism. It seems therefore fair to call attention to two facts. It is not certain that the University of Illinois is as great a center of education, scholarship and research as might be hoped from its generous support, and its material progress may have been due to a socialistic governor of the state rather than to an autocratic president of the university.

It is indeed on open question as to how far the increasing wealth of our universities, whether from private gifts or from legislative appropriations, is due to the office of the president. It may be that the office is the result of the fact that wealth and numbers have increased more rapidly than they can be assimilated. The ways of scholarship, like the ways of democracy, are slow; but creative scholarship and a free democracy are high ideals, not to be lightly sacrificed to machinery whose only possible use would be the attainment of such ideals.

has speculated on the extent and structure of the visible universe ever since the beginning of history. But however ingenious and plausible some