Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/240

 are our weakest chapters. From what I know of Alpha Tau Omega and from what I have observed of other fraternities, this is not true. It is more often the oldest chapter which has developed the least business sense, which fits the least easily into the organization, which most often fails to appreciate the fact that the fraternity is a national organization and not a local club, which knows the least about the fraternity as a whole. My experience has been that our new chapters have got to a wonderful degree the spirit of the fraternity. They understand its organization, they appreciate its ideals. I have only to go back to the last two Congresses to which I was a delegate to find abundant illustration of these facts. What is true of my own fraternity is true of others. The Secretary of Delta Kappa Epsilon admitted to me not long ago that next to his own chapter the strongest chapter in his fraternity was organized only recently. I have had the same admissions from the officers of other conservative fraternities. They agree with me that their new chapters are not their weak ones, either in the institutions in which they exist or in the fraternity at large.

It is argued also, by those who plead for culture, that when we expand into the West, especially into the agricultural colleges in the West, we leave culture and refinement behind us. We take