Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/215

Rh ideal except in athletics. The condition of the foot¬ ball field is a thousand times more important to the undergraduates and the alumni than the number of books in the library or the quality of the faculty. The fraternities will fight each other to pledge an athlete, but I have yet to see them raise any dust over a man who was merely intelligent. “I tell you that you have false standards, false ideals, and that you have a false loyalty to the col¬ lege. The college can stand criticism; it will thrive and grow on it—but it won’t grow on blind adora¬ tion. I tell you further that you are as standard¬ ized as Fords and about as ornamental. Fords are useful for ordinary work; so are you—and unless some of you wake up and, as you would say, ‘get hep to yourselves,’ you are never going to be anything more than human Fords. “You pride yourselves on being the cream of the earth, the noblest work of God. You are told so constantly. You are the intellectual aristocracy of America, the men who are going to lead the masses to a brighter and broader vision of life. Merciful heavens preserve us! You swagger around utterly contemptuous of the man who has n’t gone to col¬ lege* You talk magnificently about democracy, but you scorn the non-college man—and you try pathetically to imitate Yale and Princeton. And I suppose Yale and Princeton are trying to imitate Fifth Avenue and Newport. Democracy! Rotl