Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/221

 ment. I have in mind a group of young fraternity men who were taking an examination. The time was short, the last question was difficult, and all were confused. An upperclassman near the close of the hour glancing at the paper of his neighbor read what he supposed to be a correct answer to the question. Without thinking he wrote it down and whispered the solution to his needy brothers. It was an impulsive act of a thoughtless leader who succeeded in getting five men into serious trouble. He had for the time being forgotten his fraternity ideals.

I used to think that a good many fraternity men had little real conception of what the principles and ideals of their fraternities mean. I am not so sure now that this is true. I think, perhaps, that the real trouble lies in the fact that most men accept and believe the principles in a general way as we as we sometimes take the lessons of a sermon, but they think of them more as desirable for the human race than as applying to their own individual daily lives. Honesty, and truth and temperance and chastity and loving one's brother are admirable virtues in an impersonal abstract way and the fraternity man like other well-trained men accepts them without question. It is when it comes to the present personal application of these virtues that he stumbles or falls down. But if fraternity ideals are to be