INTELLECTUALS OR MATERIALISTS?

America's contributions to the world have not been inconsiderable, but they have been pitifully scant as regards men of letters, artists, and the like, so that the established order of things now decrees: Europe for art, literature, the belies lettres; America for materialism and its attendant prosperity. Although the iconoclast is a truly reprehensible percentage, no one could object to at least a slight revision of such an order of the above.

Heretofore our time and attention have been occupied by the problems of the physical world rather to the exclusion of the intellectual. Now our physical problems are so far conquered as to allow us to turn to the finer and more enduring sides of life. Among the thousands who fell on the battle fields of Europe there must have been innumerable men who, had fortune been more kindly, would have made their marks in the world of art, literature, and music. They are gone past recovery, and we should try to fill their shoes.

If we are to do this, we should set about it consciously, and not merely hit or miss, and there is no place where such a consciousness could better begin than at Harvard.--We have here all the necessary accessories, the courses, the men, the books,--everything except the proper spirit in the undergraduate. That is our one great drawback. Most of us come here partly because it is the thing to do, partly because we feel that by so doing we shall be better fitted for our future business life, and partly from a desire to learn a little something,--but not one in ten of us comes from the pure love of knowledge and the desire to so train himself as to extend that knowledge and beautify a world too conscious of its more unpleasant aspects. Develop such a spirit, and America would no longer suffer from a dearth of artistic genius; and could take her place with the older nations at the table of the arts as well as in the factory and scientific laboratory: