Some Speeches

For the 28th time, the Men's Bible Class of the Park Avenue (Manhattan) Baptist Church met to consume their annual dinner. Speeches were made.

P: Banker Alvin W. Krech, of the Equitable Trust Company, spoke on Business -- and Peace, for the diners sat in the International House of Columbia University.*

P:General Charles P. Summerall spoke on Christianity and the Army. Said he: "War appeals to the spiritual nature in man."

P:After-dinner Speaker Job E. Hedges spoke on a number of things, including hypocrisy, with which he taunted the American people.

P:Chief Speaker was Rev. Harry E. Fosdick, recently (TIME, Oct. 13 et seq:) jockeyed out of a Presbyterian pulpit. "Nine-tenths of the religious problem," said he, "is a senseless controversy over questions of History." Religion is like a crab, outgrowing one shell and building another. Religion consists of "the great reproducible experiences of the soul itself, with its fellows, with its God."

P:But the evening's hero was its toastmaster, John D. Rockefeller Jr. He placed himself squarely with the admirers of Dr. Fosdick, saying:

"There is no man in the world who is doing more to help the young men and young women interpret the great fundamental truths of religion in modern terms and to help them apply those truths to modern life. There is no man in the world for whom more people are ready to stand up and say blessed."

*Built with Rockefeller money to house foreign students.