Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/218

 true, but they were much more than the word social would seem to imply; they had in view, most of all, the development of character, and they set before their members then, as they do today, the highest moral, social, and scholastic ideals.

It is true that I know bat one fraternity ritual well enough to speak with authority as to what these organizations stand for, but my relations with the members and the officers of a score of others have been so close, and I have learned so much from inference, that I am safe, I am sure, in saying that the principles laid down in all of these statements of faith and practice of Greek-letter organizations are not in their expression essentially different. I can say for the ritual with which I am acquainted that it sets for those young men who subscribe to it the highest and most exacting standards of living, the noblest ideals of life. I have every reason to suppose that the ideals of other similar organizations are equally high.

If fraternity men have failed at times to live up to the best for which their fraternity stands, as no doubt they have, the fault can not rightfully be laid at the door of fraternity ideals any more than the shortcomings of members of the Presbyterian church can be with justice attributed to the inadequacy of John Calvin's expression of faith. The fault may with greater reason be