Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/238

 beyond his own chapter. He usually knows little about his own fraternity chapters, and he knows still less about others. The larger fraternity problems he seldom grasps or considers seriously, and his arguments are superficial and not always based on facts.

He calls attention to the rapidity with which the roll of chapters has increased within the last ten years; he enumerates the chapters which have been installed since he awoke to the fact that Greek-letter fraternities existed; and he begs with all the dramatic art and fervor gained in a college class of public speaking (I taught public speaking once) that we give our serious attention to internal development and build up the chapters we now have before we add further to our list. "Strengthen those we have," he says "before adding more." His inference is that as we add to our list of chapters we weaken those we already have and that the increase in numbers is likely to result in less efficient internal organization.

This sounds well and it is in favor with the boys, but it is bunk. Internal organization of fraternities is better now than it ever was before. It is only within recent years that there has been anything worthy of the name of internal organization in fraternity management. Traveling secretaries, district or province managers, the regular