Butler's 25th

Nature, in ruffling the surface of the island of Manhattan, made Morningside Heights and Coogan's Bluff--between which humps one can walk briskly in 30 minutes. Fate decided that the year 1927 should see the celebration of the Silver Anniversaries of Nicholas Murray Butler as nabob of Morningside Heights (President of Columbia University) and of his neighbor, John Joseph McGraw, as nabob of Coogan's Bluff (Manager of the New York National League baseball nine--the "Giants.") During the 25 years spent on their respective humps, these two gentlemen have developed reputations as potent "bun yankers."* While John J. McGraw was winning baseball championships, Nicholas Murray Butler was evolving the most cosmopolitan university in the U. S. and adding enough distinctions to his own name to fill nearly a column in Who's Who. Last week found both Mr. Butler and Mr. McGraw away from New York. The "Giants" were playing baseball in St. Louis (see p. 29). President Butler was in Paris, characteristically trying to heal international sores. In a speech before the American Club of Paris, he neatly seconded Aristide Briand's plea for a Franco-U. S. anti-war alliance, outlined a program : 1) "France and the United States should agree firmly to renounce war as an instrument of public policy between themselves. . . ." 2) "Both nations should accept the Locarno definition of an agressor as 'that nation which, having agreed to settle differences by arbitration and justice, proceeds to attack another nation without having done so. . . .'" 3) "If there is a war of aggression, we will not aid the aggressor." "That is all!" said President Butler. "Three short paragraphs, each of which can be learned by children in school!" "That is all" in the manner of one who believes, as Plato did, that philosophers should direct the affairs of nations. This belief has caused President Butler to go down from Morningside Heights into the unwelcome field of politics, where he has been dubbed "Nicholas Miraculous" and "one of the world's 100 neediest cases." Scholarly though he is, he has a habit of putting his foot into political mud at the wrong times. He ran for Vice President of the U. S. on the doomed Taft ticket in 1912.* He was an internationalist after the War when the Republican party was whooping for isolation. This spring, as an intellectual Wet, he tossed the Prohibition issue into Republican ranks, hitherto moderately Dry or at least on the fence. He has devoted most of his 65 years to Columbia University. He entered it at 16, and has never severed his connection. He performed his graduate studies there; he taught there; he has been president since 1902. His regime saw Columbia grow big in numbers, and yet he lifted it from a sink of mediocrity to a centre of higher education. On the graduate schools, he built the fame of Columbia. A modern university, according to President Butler, must be "a great organ of public aspiration and public will, as fundamental as the Church and State." Perhaps President Butler, uses this same definition for a modern university's president, justifying his own excursions into politics. An estimate of his value to the commonweal was made by the New York World on the occasion of his Silver Anniversary celebration: "He thinks, and he thinks out loud, and he has become one of the half-dozen or so most clearly speaking and candidly thinking figures in American public life today."

*"This phrase was used by Columbia students, long ago, in referring to prize-winning individuals among whom was young Butler, first student of the class of 1882 at Columbia. His most recent prize is the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters conferred upon him by the University of Rome.

*Vice President James Schoolcraft Sherman was renominated on the original Republican ticket in 1912. He died shortly before the November election, was replaced by Dr. Butler.