Woman of the World

When slim, brown-haired Martha Lucas took over the presidency of Virginia's Sweet Briar College for women in 1946, she announced that she would "promote world awareness in every possible way." She planned new instruction "on the Orient, Russia, South America," a broad curriculum which would include "the intellectual experience of the whole of mankind." Sweet Briar soon learned that President Lucas was a woman deeply concerned about the world.

To her 450 students she brought lecturers of every nationality. She organized an annual UNESCO day, started forums on international problems, packed juniors off for a year of study abroad. Sweet Briar, founded as a ladies' seminary, came alive with international chatter. On bridle paths and under the colonnades, Sweet Briar girls talked long and earnestly about the state of the universe. President Lucas herself often joined in their discussions.

She was a pert and pretty president who was only 33 when she came to the college. Born in Louisville, she had studied at Goucher, later took a doctorate in philosophy at the University of London. When Sweet Briar found her, she was an associate dean at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass. In her three years at Sweet Briar, she held fast to her rule that "the administration of a college is the servant of great teaching." She herself taught a course in the philosophy of religion, spent her days wrestling with a shrinking budget and dictating letters "anyplace and anywhere, even under the dryer when I get there."

Last month, when Harry Truman appointed Martha Lucas as a U.S. delegate to the Paris UNESCO conference, Sweet Briar suspected she might not stay much longer at the college she had helped to make one of the best in the U.S. Sure enough, last week, President Lucas sent word from Paris that she would resign next June. Chatting with newsmen before taking the boat train enroute to the U.S., she said she next wanted to write a book on the philosophy of religion which might help to "bridge the gaps of understanding that separate the peoples of the world today." She had been thinking about the project a long time: "Plato once said that it is the duty of every philosopher to go down into a cave and shape his thoughts. I've been down in the cave. Now, I'm coming out."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.