Worcester's Day

To Worcester, Mass., last week went France's learned Ambassador-Poet-Play-wright Paul Claudel. His purpose: to visit Assumption College on its 25th anniversary. So distinguished a Frenchman as he could not go to Worcester without causing a civic demonstration. Fully one-quarter of Worcester's total population (197,600) is foreign-born and mostly French or French-Canadian. Of Worcester's four daily newspapers, one, l'Opinion Publique, is printed in French. When ce brave Monsieur Claudel arrived in Worcester, he found 30,000 cheering citizens waiting for him. Assumption College was M. Claudel's chief host, but Assumption College under the Massachusetts laws can only give a B. A. degree. An ambassador should certainly be honored with not less than an LL.D. So Clark University, which is also in Worcester, was glad to help Assumption, give the degree, share the day's festivities.* Assumption College is perhaps the tiniest and purest center of classicism in the U. S. Here are taught the Greek of Homer, Plato, Sophocles; the Latin of Virgil, Horace, Augustine; the French of Racine and Bossuet; the English of Shakespeare. For those who wish there is law, medicine. Although not stressed, science and modern languages are not ignored. Many Assumption graduates go to Harvard Law School or to Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. Although Assumption is a classical college, its regular instructors are all Catholic priests and Assumptionist Fathers. The college and its affiliated high school are the next educational step after Worcester's parochial schools. Its greatest singularity is its rule that no student may come to Assumption unless he speaks fluently both French and English. Classes are conducted either in French or English. Thus Assumption has won the sobriquet of "only French college in the U. S." It was in Nimes, France, one solemn morning in 1851, that the first Augustinians of the Assumption took their public vows. The vigorous doubt of Voltaire and the science of Diderot had troubled Catholic France. The Assumptionist Fathers swore to combat irreligion in Europe, to missionize in the East. From the Balkans to the Dead Sea they established their posts. Shrewd, they learned Oriental languages, heard confessions in German, Greek, Turkish. Some-times they adopted and altered slightly alien rituals to make their gospel first familiar, then embraced. In Jerusalem they erected the Hotelrie de Notre Dame de France. Here in 1893 was held a Eucharistic Congress. In 1900, republican France accused the Assumptionist Fathers of royalist intrigues. Their schools were closed, their activities halted. They fled to Italy, Belgium. England, the U. S. Thus it came to pass that their little college in Worcester, Mass., was founded in 1904.

*Other Worcester institutions are Holy Cross College, Worcester Polytechnic Institute.