College and Research Libraries


is the demands of research that make the 
university library expensive to maintain. 
. . . M a n y able and useful men who pre-
side over colleges and universities do not 
grasp the vital importance of the library, 
and I feel that the responsibility for edu-
cating them along this line rests with the 
librarian and the faculty." (pp. 98-9.) — 
Carl M. White, University of Illinois 
Libraries. 

The University outside Europe. Edited 
by E d w a r d Bradby, with a preface by 
Ernest Barker, vii, 332p. O x f o r d 
University Press, London, 1939. $3.50. 
IN 1932 the International Student 

Service published The University in a 
Changing World under the editorship of 
W a l t e r  M . Kotschnig and Elined Prys. 
T h e present volume is designed to sup-
plement the previous one which described 
higher education in Europe. 

Aside from the preface and the intro-
duction it consists of five parts. P a r t I, 
which constitutes nearly one-fourth of the 
book, deals with the university in the 
United States. It is written by President 
W .  H . Cowley of Hamilton College. 
T h e remaining parts give accounts of the 
universities as follows: P a r t I I , T h e Brit-
ish Dominions; P a r t I I I , I n d i a ; P a r t IV, 
T h e F a r E a s t ; and P a r t V, T h e Near 
East. 

T h e general pattern followed in the es-
says is to give a brief historical back-
ground of university development in the 
country under consideration followed by a 
statement of some of the major issues 
faced by those institutions under present-
day conditions. T h e papers are brief but 
for the general reader they give adequate 
pictures of the universities in the countries 
under discussion. T h e influences that 
have shaped education at the university 

level in those countries are well treated 
considering the limitations of space. Espe-
cially is this true of the essay on the uni-
versity in the United States. 

T h i s paper contains a number of errors 
which may result partly from the small 
compass within which the essay was con-
fined, although space is not at all times a 
sufficient explanation. A few illustrations 
may be cited: 

"Under this influence (the French educational 
philosophy) the University of the State of 
New York was organized a non-teaching and 
non-degree granting institution." (p. 45) 

T h e act creating the University of the 
State of N e w York as passed in 1784 
provided that the degree of "Bachelor of 
A r t s " was to be conferred by the member 
colleges but it goes on to give as one of the 
powers of the university itself the author-
ity "to grant to any of the students of the 
said university, or to any person or per-
sons thought worthy thereof, all such de-
grees as well in divinity, philosophy, civil 
and municipal laws, as in every other art, 
science, and faculty whatsoever, as are or 
may be conferred by all or any of the uni-
versities of Europe." 

T h e provision by which "the sixteenth 
section of every township in the new states 
in the North-west territory" is attributed 
to the Ordinance of 1787. (pp. 77-78) 
T h a t ordinance made no specific provi-
sion for the allocation of lands. 

President Hutchins is said to have "ad-
ministratively allocated the last two years 
of the University High School and the 
first two years of the College to the direc-
tion of one administrator." (p. 86) 
W h a t has been done is to extend the work 
of the former high school through grades 
thirteen and fourteen and take from it 
grades nine and ten and combine them 
with grades seven and eight. T h e result 

JUNE, 1941 249 



is a new four-year college made up of 
grades eleven, twelve, thirteen, and four-
teen and a high school that begins with 
grade seven and extends through grade 
ten. T h e College remains a two-year unit 
just as it was before the creation of the 
new four-year unit. 

" T h e private institutions receive no 
financial assistance from governmental 
units." (p. 97) T h e r e are many excep-
tions.—George A. Works, University of 
Chicago. 

Chancellor Kirkland of Vanderbilt. Ed-
win Mims. Vanderbilt University 
Press, Nashville, 1940. xvii, 362P. $3. 
T H E BOOK follows in part the conven-

tional pattern of biographies, tracing the 
ancestry and boyhood of Kirkland, his 
education, his teaching experience in a 
country school, in a private school, at 
W o f f o r d College, his alma mater, and his 
university experience at Leipzig and Ber-
lin, when Americans who desired advanced 
work were compelled to go to G e r m a n y ; 
it tells how "denominational considera-
tions" seemed to keep the young M e t h o -
dist from securing the chair of English 
at the University of N o r t h Carolina, "and 
a Baptist was appointed in order to keep 
the balance between the denominations in 
the faculty." Efforts were made to secure 
a professorship for Kirkland in the U n i -
versity of South Carolina, but the de-
nominational interests and press of that 
state made the going of that institution 
hard also. But three weeks after his 
return from Germany, Kirkland was elec-
ted to the professorship of Latin at Van-
derbilt, where he served as teacher and 
chancellor until his resignation in 1937. 
H e had been chancellor of that institution 
since 1893—perhaps the longest period 
of service that any man has had to date 

as a university head in this country. 
Subsequent developments appear in gen-

eral to support the wisdom of many of 
Kirkland's far-reaching decisions on edu-
cational policies: his position on academic 
and collegiate education in the Southern 
states and his work for the establishment 
and maintenance of respectable standards, 
at a time when both the high schools and 
colleges were almost chaotic in that 
section, and his leadership in the organiza-
tion and direction of the Southern Asso-
ciation of Colleges and Secondary Schools; 
his performance of what may have seemed 
to some people m a j o r operations to save 
Vanderbilt from its inferior medical facili-
ties and to build in Nashville a distin-
guished medical center; his position in 
the bitter contest with the General Con-
ference of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, and the College of Bishops 
over the control of V a n d e r b i l t — " T h e 
T e n - Y e a r s ' W a r , 1904-1914"—in which 
the Supreme Court of Tennessee decided 
with the university against the General 
Conference and the Board of T r u s t — a 
remarkable chapter in the history of higher 
education in this country. H i s answer 
to the "foolishness" of Tennessee's anti-
evolution law and the Scopes trial at 
Dayton was "to build more scientific lab-
oratories." 

A dictator Kirkland may have seemed 
to some people.  I t does appear that he 
did not always heed the counsel which 
J e t h r o gave his great son-in-law, for now 
and then he was "criticized for doing 
everything himself." And it also appears 
that now and then he subscribed, as he 
may have felt compelled to do, to the 
alleged dictum of Benjamin J o w e t t , the 
English scholar and theologian who was 
for many years M a s t e r of Balliol Col-
lege, O x f o r d : "Never retract, never ex-

250 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES