Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/176

 persuaded to help champion the project. Our success in building houses for our fraternities, however, shows that many of our alumni have been generous and unselfish in the matter of giving money.

But notwithstanding the importance of money in the management and the progress of the affairs of an individual or an organization, I have never felt that the whole duty of a parent was done when he furnished his young son with generous sums of money, or that a fraternity alumnus had discharged all of his fraternity obligations when he responded graciously to a call for contributions to the house fund or sent in a check to be used in defraying the expenses of the annual dance. The fraternity often and usually needs financial support, but it needs something more than this, if it is to get on. The active chapter of any fraternity should be able to look to its alumni for direction and advice and example in those things in which the older men have had the wider experience. The alumni should give character and stability to the chapter; they determine its family history and its standing in the wider sense of the word. In college, for example, that fraternity is often considered the most fortunate which can show in the college annual the longest list of prominent fratres in facultate or the most impressive list of brothers who live in the college community, or whose names