Lowell Out

The same news that came to Princeton last year came last week to Harvard. Its president resigned. Dr. Abbott Lawrence Lowell has been on the job since 1909. He will be 76 on Dec. 13. Aware that the Fellows of Harvard College had quietly done the same a fortnight ago, the Board of Overseers accepted his resignation, effective when a successor is chosen and ready to take office. The question of a successor was, unlike the same question at Princeton, not without likely answers. Dr. Lowell has long been suspected of having a candidate in mind. In any discussions by the Overseers the following would certainly be mentioned: Kenneth Ballard ("Cotton-Top") Murdock, 37, the scholarly, efficient, humorless Harvardman who was elected Dean of Arts & Sciences last year (TIME, Oct. 12, 1931); Edward Allen Whitney, Associate Professor & Tutor in History and Literature; Francis Parkman of the famed Harvard family; Missouri-born Professor George Harold Edgell of the Fine Arts Department; Boston Lawyer Charles Pelham Curtis Jr., 37, a distinguished clubman but a stutterer; Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams; Law Professor Francis Bowes Sayre, Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law; Harvard Consultant-on-Careers Augustus Lowell Putnam (nephew); Biologist Clarence Cook ("Pete") Little, politically ousted ex-president of the University of Michigan; Professor Samuel Eliot Morison, official Harvard historian who, like Dr. Little, might be considered too liberal. A generation of students have known Abbott Lawrence Lowell as a frostily friendly man, now white-haired, white-mustached, pouchy-eyed, who putters about the Yard hello-ing everybody. Wearing always a low stiff collar and an oldtime high-cut jacket, he carries like all good Bostonians a green bookbag, is always accompanied by "Phantom," a blind old spaniel that has to be guided across busy streets by the crook of Dr. Lowell's cane. Harvardmen know that their "Prexy" is rich, resolute, articulate, astringent; an authority on political science and campanology (the science of bells); A Lowell of Lowells, brother of the late Astronomer Percival and the late terrifying, cigar-smoking poetess Amy who used to proclaim: "I am the only member of the Lowell family that's worth a damn." Harvardmen know that Dr. Lowell was born in Boston, won a silver cup in 1875 for winning a mile race in 5 min. 14 sec.* was graduated from Harvard in 1877; married in 1879 to another Lowell (Anna Parker) who died without issue two years ago. Studying and practicing law, later teaching government kept him busy until, in 1909, he succeeded Harvard's late great Charles William Eliot. Since then Dr. Lowell has almost recreated Harvard. He tightened up its loose system of elective courses, provided new language tests; instituted a tutorial system, general examinations, reading periods. By persuading Edward Stephen Harkness to give $13,000,000 when (some say) he only planned giving $2,000,000. Dr. Lowell accomplished a dream of 20 years--the "House Plan," adopted also by Yale, that is supposed to revolutionize the college's social life. With Judge Robert Grant and the late Dr. Samuel Wesley Stratton. Dr. Lowell reviewed the evidence of the Sacco-Vanzetti case for Governor Fuller, was firmly indifferent to the blackguarding which resulted. No follower of mob-minds, no doctrinaire, he once grew emotional enough to cry, "If I were called upon to fix the destiny of Harvard for the next hundred years, I would commit suicide tonight, because to chart the course of that destiny now would be to put shackles on the college." Distrusting the Press, Dr. Lowell has never bothered to contradict such stories as the one about his bathing semi-nude in the surf at Cotuit, Mass. The one about having never cashed a salary-check during his presidency he turned over to a Harvard official to deny. It seemed plausible that Dr. Lowell would stay on the job for a time; he is still spry and chipper, striding about the Yard, driving his own automobile (last month he was arrested for cutting out of line at high speed--TIME, Oct. 9). Last week, looking forward to resting his old bones, he must have chuckled a bit. The news of his resignation took every one unawares. He had kept it secret two whole weeks.

Missouri Toasted

Graduates of the University of Missouri, whether or not they attended the Big Game with University of Kansas last week at Columbia, Mo. and joined in Missouri's biggest "homecoming" of the season, were shocked last week to read in the weekly Missouri Student:

"A toast to hundreds of returning alumni, bottle-laden, staggering, insensible to the real meaning of homecoming. . . . A toast to drunken mobs in campus restaurants, howling, destroying property, insulting every creed of gentlemen. . . . A toast to the institution of homecoming, which has so degenerated that students use every pretext to keep their parents away from the campus during that weekend ... A toast to the countless dollars that have gone from the pockets of students who could not afford to spend them for liquor.

"A sincere toast, however, to those few who return to homecoming as an honest pilgrimage. . . ."

Missouri's President Walter Williams would make no comment on the Student's charges. But Missouri officials, students, local restaurant and hotel men united in indignation and denials. Said the Alumni Association's President W. A. Cochel: "Most of the drinking . . . was among alumni who were graduated in the last three to five years. I saw very little evidence of any drinking at all. . . ."

*Present record: 4:10 2/5, held by Paavo Nurmi.

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