Scholar Presidents

"Constant Reader" is the busiest writer to newspapers among U. S. citizens. Other citizens--such as "Vox Populi" and "A Friend"-- correspond freely with their editors. Last week another name, not wholly unfamiliar to readers of newspaper letter columns, appeared in the New York Times. This correspondent "ventured a modest demurrer" to a Times editorial belaboring the U. S. tendency to select its college presidents for various educational virtues--but not for scholarship. This correspondent gently pointed to President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard; to one-time (1899-1921) President Arthur Twining Hadley of Yale; to William Rainey Harper, first president of University of Chicago; to David Starr Jordan, onetime (1891-1913) president of Stanford University; to Nicholas Murray Butler, presi- dent of Columbia University; to several others as scholar presidents. This correspondent was President of Yale University, James Rowland Angell.