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History of Inverness County, Nova Scotia
Appendix 2


THE COLLEGE MERGER OF THE MARITIMES.

We publish the report set out below because it is interesting and deals with a public question of exalted importance. We have reason to feel the folly of not preserving such valuable records. Consequently, we have decided to embalm the document referred to between the covers of a new book.

The report was sent to us a few days ago by mail unasked, and the kind sender is to us nameless and unknown. Even the names of the committee who prepared the report are not given. The paper does not purport to be signed by anybody; nor is it addressed to anybody. We understand, however, that the Governors of St. F. X. College have adopted this report, and we must, therefore, assume that it represents the considered views of that much respected institution.

The report is lengthy. It would not loss in force or finish by being just a bit more concise. We may not be able to agree with all the several statements of that lengthy memorandum; but it strikes one note with which we do agree without hesitation or reserve. That note may be given in the following terms and manner:—

The teaching of Christ is the greatest and best force in all this world. No school in any christian country, from the humblest common school to the highest imaginable University, should be blind or indifferent to that supreme force. Without the steadying influence of this inerrant and enduring teaching of the Master, what can all else avail? Ask the wrecks and ruins, the punished and perpetuated pride, of the most powerful ancient empires, to which alas! we must add some modern empires, as well!

We believe there are no better people on earth than the majority of our own people in these lower provinces. They have high and noble ideals which they would fain bequeath to their descendants. They want a University worthy of themselves and their children. They are all as one in their desire for christian teaching; but, unhappily, they are not as one in their interpretation of the very teaching they look for.

Then, the problem confronting the federation of the colleges would appear to be simply this; Can the different creeds meet and agree, not upon a compromise, for compromise with truth is unthinkable, but upon some binding, practicable basis, formula or concordat which would enable them to build, equip, conduct and maintain, an up-to-date University which would be virtually undenominational, but frankly and fearlessly christian in wish, word and work. If there is a solution at all for this problem it does not lie in controversy or contention. A spirit of love, of peace, of good will and progress, must underlie every step in the movement.

THE EDITOR.

The purpose of education is to help men to live well. This is the reason for the existence of our common schools, high schools, colleges and universities. But men cannot live well no matter how highly trained they are in the secular sense unless their activities are guided by the principles of religion. Religion is not something for Sunday alone. It should guide man in all his activities. Now Man's activities depend to a great extent upon his ideas. If, therefore, his activities are to be right, his ideas must be right, they must conform to christian truths. On this account education in the public schools, high schools and universities should not leave christian principles out of account but should be guided by them. Probably universities need the guidance of religion most of all. And why ? Because their influence on life is so important and because they give us new ways of doing things, they aim to develop hidden powers. These new ways of doing things must conform to the christian law and for that reason they should be taught under christian auspices. For example, many suggestions as to how to live come from the biological departments of our universities. Some of these suggestions are productive of much evil because they are against christian truth. Many suggestions as to how to live from the economic and social departments of our universities; many of these do harm because they are pagan. The late Theodore Roosevelt is quoted as having said that there is not a disrupting and dangerous movement in the United States but can be traced to Harvard University. Our mode of living, whether it be according to the ways of our fathers, or whether it be new, depends on our education. Our educational system from the universities down, moulds our activities, and for that reason it should be christian from top to bottom.
The troubles of the world today are due to the divorce of religion and education, especially in the colleges and universities. Their pagan teachings have filtered down to the man in the street. The remedy lies not in less religion in college and university teaching, but more.

In the life of the individual the period of college age is considered most important. "This period of adolescence'' says Dr. McCrimmon Chancellor of McMaster University, "is now recognized as a most critical one in the organization of the factors of life in the unifying of the outlook upon life, in the choice of a life-work, in the adoption of life's ideas." Stanley Hall, Clark University, one of America's greatest psychologists says: "The young pubescent achieving his growth in the realms of fundamental qualities, dimensions, functions comes up to adult size at 18 relatively limp and unfit like an insect which has accomplished its last moult and therefore far more in need of protection, physical care, moral and intellectual guidance." "Now come epoch-marking physical changes, sex modifications of far-reaching importance," says Chancellor McCrimmon of McMaster University, "mental correlatives of revolutionary character, the storm and stress of new emotions, the conflict of intellectual standards the varying emfases of resolutions, the criticism of earlier religious experiences, the age when by far the greater number of conversions take place.''

Amid all this adolscence,vacillation and uncertainty, these varying emfases, this struggle after foundations and ideals, that are some of the factors which appear at once capable of steadying this adolescent life and guiding it towards christian leadership? It is not so much the mingling with other adolescents who, in the words of Stanley Hall, have accomplished their last moult, helpful as that may be, but contact with strong consecrated experienced personalities, with an atmosphere and conditions which mature aright, and with a continuity in the influence of such personalities and conditions. Can we do anything to guarantee the christian character of the teacher, the religious atmosphere of the school, the conditions of the daily and hourly round of consecutive duties? It is only the christian college that is free to do this, the college that is avowedly christian that insists upon evangelical church membership for its teachers, that considers its work a mission of Christ. Notwithstanding all that christian teachers may do wherever they may be working, no state system can constitutionally provide such conditions.....The state schools are worthy of all praise as they direct students to the truth but after all any truth is unrelated truth, is truth without its meaning for life until it is centred in Christ the Son of God, the God of truth. Each one of the factors; personality, atmosphere, continuity of influence, is of vital importance To furnish such factors is a most difficult task and demands the fullest possible control."

The work of education has been compared to the work of a sculptor. Let us imagine the case where several sculptors work on the same statue. Let us further suppose that one sculptor has one idea of what the work should look like when completed and another has a different idea. In such a case the statue will be anything but a success. The work would be ridiculous. It is just as ridiculous to have several agencies, who disagree on fundamentals, educating our youths. Liberal training to be successful must be a co-operative enterprise. The teachers must have definite ideas as to the aim of a college course and as to the best methods of attaining that end. Failure can only result where one part of the Faculty has one set of ideas on this matter and another part of the Faculty another set of views. One part may even (and must be in the case of the merger) be tearing down what the other part is building up.

The importance of co-operation in teaching is explained by a number of writers recently in "School & Society."

A writer in the Dublin Review, Dec. 1851, p. 585, says on this point: "Once more and fourthly, as a condition of success, we must name a perfect unity of thought and purpose in the teaching body. Mixed education makes this impossible. Thus the Bishop of Liege remarks in his valuable letters. 'What is your secret,' an intelligent man one day asked me, 'for making your establishment flourish?' 'It is, I replied to him, 'the homogeneousness of the professional body. And this may easily be conceived. When all the members of this body have but one thought and one action to inspire into the minds of youths with the love of knowledge, that of virtue and religion, may one not expect, with some confidence, happy results? But what are we to expect where there does not exist this unity of views and actions?"

Divided control,........one set of teachers proclaiming one thing and another proclaiming the opposite would probably lead the average plastic college student into scepticism.

Necessity and Function of an Arts College.

The work of education is divided between the common schools, high schools, colleges and universities. Here we are concerned with the work of the colleges. In some quarters there have been tendencies to destroy the colleges, in various ways and for various reasons, some of them not altogether unselfish. Some would split their work up between the high schools and the universities, but on the whole the college of liberal arts is considered necessary, and its existence is assured. Donald J. Cowling, Ph. D., LL.D., President of Carleton College, said on the occasion of the inauguration of President Burton of the University of Michigan, 1920, that "The aim of a college is just as definite as that of any professional school." "That aim," he said, "is to develop the student with respect to all his capacities into a mature symmetrical and well-balanced person, in full possession of all his powers, physical, social, mental, spiritual and with an intelligent understanding of the past and a sympathetic insight into the needs and problems of the present." The purpose of the college is to develop leaders,........leaders who will harmonize the conflicting aims of various classes of society. The professional schools and graduate schools of the universities alone will not and do not produce these leaders. Their training is too narrowing to enable their students to see things in their proper perspective. This vision comes from the liberal arts training. On this point, President Rush Rhees of the University of Rochester, says: "I believe that the American College contributes to preparation for professional studies an influence for intellectual maturity which no other agency has to offer. By intellectual maturity I do not mean simply developed intellectual power, for professional studies as at present conducted have no superior in that respect. I mean by intellectual maturity a well-balanced judgment, a sense of proportion in the estimate of truth and ability to see facts in larger and more remote as well as in nearer and obvious relations."........But college education offers the most promising means for such intellectual emancipation.

But how can the college give "this sense of proportion etc." if it leaves revealed truth out of account in some of the college courses. The college then has a function to perform, viz., the creation of broad-minded leaders, but it cannot do this unless it is christian through and through.

One of the functions of leaders is to show men how to deal with one another in their social relations. On them depends the development of a public opinion that will lessen disorder, unrest, economic strife and the wastes of war. On them depends the solution of the social question which according to Pope Leo XIII "is first of all moral and religious." Our leaders cannot do their work without the guidance of christian truth. Hence a college education that leaves Christianity out of consideration, is defecient and cannot produce leaders competent to direct men in their social relations. This is abundantly shown by the quality of the eugenic, psychological and sociological literature that is pouring out of our non-sectarian universities.

Elements of a Standard College.

To do this work of creating leaders efficiently a college must meet certain standard requirements; it must have a certain amount of equipment and its teachers must possess certain qualifications, but above all it must be thoroughly Christain.

It is claimed that Saint Francis Xavier's college does not and cannot meet these requirements, and it would meet them and do better work if it entered the Merger.

What are the requirements for a standard college? Remember we are concerned with the requirements for a standard college and not with those for a large university with professional schools, etc. Confusion on this point would seem to be at the root of a great deal of the agitation in favor of the Merger. It is not claimed that at present we could run a university with its many faculties, etc., but it is claimed on the best of authority that we can run an efficient college. What is that authority?

A committee of the Association of American colleges investigated for a number of years the subject of the requirements for a standard college and submitted their final report to the Association in 1917. They distinguish between an Average College, a Minimum College and the Efficient College.

The Minimum College should have 100 students, a faculty of ten including the President and Librarian, should have an income from all sources of $32,000, should have equipment worth $350,000, and endowment worth $432,000.

Dean Cole, President Oberlin College, in explaining the term Minimum College said:

"By this term I understand that we mean not to describe the smallest institution we think should be allowed to bear the name of College, but rather an institution having such admission, requirements curriculum, standards for graduation, teaching staff, administrative organization, endowment and physical equipment as render it capable of doing acceptable college work in every respect for an arbitrarily fixed number of students."

The Average College will have one hundred and sixty-five students distributed as shown; it will have a faculty of sixteen, one of whom will be the president, another the librarian, the others being instructors. It will have an income of thirty-six thousand two hundred and fourteen dollars."............."The total invested in the plant will be $236,877 and the total endowment will be $265,170. To capitalize donations and deficit would require $189,840, making a total endowment of $455,010."

The committee also drew up standards for what they called the efficient College. There was some objection to the use of the term "efficient." It was admitted that colleges that are not as large as the Efficient College are doing and can do just as good work as the Efficient College.

In the words of the Report: "There is no implication that colleges which fail to meet the tests of efficiency as set forth in the discussion are not good colleges." And in the words of the Committee on the distribution of colleges; "These statements should in no case be construed as implying that smaller colleges adequately endowed to provide a full staff and generous equipment for a smaller enrolment are not desirable. Wherever in the country such small colleges are maintained, they can do superb work."

The Report says: "There is a wide difference of opinion with regard to the desirable limit of numbers in a student body. Probably none would contend for a number larger than a thousand. Many would be willing to say that five hundred is the best number. No doubt, most educators will agree that certain conditions of unity homogeneity and intimacy should characterize a college group and that these conditions indicate a certain limit as to numbers. Certain personal relations between teachers and students should exist and these also indicate some limitations as to numbers. Chiefly, however, for the practical purpose of getting a starting point from which to develop the efficient college, we will assume a student body of five hundred. It should have a faculty of forty-six consisting of twenty-two professors, sixteen assistants and eight instructors. It should have a library of 25,000 volumes. Its total income should be $166,750. Such an institution is characterized as "Efficient", because "If the number of students should be small the per capita cost would be high. As the numbers increased the per capita cost diminished until at an enrolment of 400 to 500 it becomes merely stationary and showed little or no decrease for enrolment increase beyond this number."

A comparison of these standards with conditions at St. Francis Xavier shows that our college has more than is required by the standard college of our size. We have practically the plant required for an "Efficient College." We have an endowment practically secured of over $800,000. The Association requires for an Efficient College, a library of 25,000 volumes". We have probably 15,000 volumes. True, many of these are not what would be called college books, still they are valuable assets. But surely it should not be a difficult proposition to increase our number of college books to 25,000.

It has been contended that our constituency is too small for an Efficient College. This is not the judgment of the best available authority on the question. A Committee of the Association of American Colleges were at work on this question and brought in a report in May, 1921. It may be remarked that Dr. Clyde Furst of the Carnegie Foundation was one of its Advisory Members. They found that there was in the United States an average of one college student per 212 population. In some places the average is much greater; 1 to 145, 1 to 147. As the high schools multiply and improve there may be 1 student in 100 population.

Let us take the average in the whole United States, 1 in 212. The Catholic population of this diocese is estimated at 85,000. According then to the statistics of college attendance in the United States, we should even now have over 400 college students in our constituency. In time, no doubt, our people will be able to send their boys and girls to college in the same numbers that they are sent elsewhere. And besides it is not unreasonable to expect that Cape Breton and Eastern Nova Scotia will share some of the increase in population and prosperity that is supposed to come to Canada in this century. However that may be, we have even now according to the estimates of the committee of the Association of American Colleges a constitutency large enough for the Efficient College.

Can we hope to become an Efficient College? The progress made during the past ten years would seem to warrant the conclusion that we can. During the past twelve years the college course has been lengthened by two years, the endowment has been increased by $785,000 and the equipment by $351,000. (The Science Building $60,000; the chapel $25,000; the library $15,000; the gymnasium $20,000; the Rink $30,000; the Heating Plant $113,000; Mount Cameron Farm $40,000 and Mickler Hall $48,000 have been added to the Plant within the last fourteen years.) Six of these years have been very hard on the colleges. Surely then the history of the past twelve years warrants us in believing that when normal times return our college may hope to attain the most exacting requirement for a standard college. — But perhaps we could do better work if we were part of a large University. Let us examine this argument from size.

Argument from Size.

The efficiency of a college depends but slightly upon its size. It depends upon the relationship between equipment, etc., and the number of students. Prof. Frank Aydelotte of Swarthmore College writes in the Nov. 5, 1921 No. of "School & Society" that provided the small colleges limit the number of their students and the subjects they teach "the size of an institution need have no effect on the quality of its work." Any efficiency that comes from bigness is had when the number of students reaches 500. The small college of less than 200 students can do excellent work, and in the judgment of competent authority is in many cases doing better work than the large institutions. At a meeting of the Association of American colleges held in 1917, Dr. Crawford made the statement that Haverford was the best college in the State of Pennsylvania and it never had more than 176 students. From a discussion of the relationship between the size of a college and its efficiency, between Dr. Crawford and Dr. Cole, at this meeting as reported in the Bulletin of the Association, the following is taken:

Dr. Crawford: Then there is no indication whatever in your remarks that because the college grows larger it necessarily grows better.

Dean Cole: No, that doesn't follow. It ought to, I think, but as a matter of fact it doesn't.

Question: I think I have read somewhere in statistics from our Government that a larger percentage of graduates of colleges with less than 500 students had become distinguished than from colleges of more than 500 students. Is this True?

Dean Cole: I do not know.

Question: I think that is so. If so, is not your assumption that the larger a college is, other things being equal, the more efficient it will be — is't that assumption wrong?

Dean Cole: That question is quite possibly wrong, under present conditions, but it is not my assumption.

Thorstein Veblen, by many considered the most brilliant mind in America, and for many years the University of Chicago's most distinguished professor discusses in his book "The Higher Learning in America," the attempt to join college and university together.

The value of Veblen's authority may be judged from the following criticisms of his works: "The Publishers' Weekly," Sept. 7, 1918, says: "The appearance of a book by Thorstein Veblen is always one of the literary events of the year in which it occurs. Veblen holds, in political theory, the position that Emerson ascribed to Plato in philosophy. Very few of us read Plato, but we all owe our education to him, for he teaches our teachers. Veblen's mind is more like the X-ray than any other thing. When once you have looked with him into the very centre of social and political customs, nothing can erase the picture from your mind. Those who like to keep up to date in reading usually do not read Veblen. He is about fifteen years ahead of date. But, considering the present rush of events, it might be well to read him, so as to be prepared if the present has a telescope wreck with the future in about fifteen minutes. "Higher Learning in America." (Huebsch.)

The "London Nation" calls Veblen, "the most original modern thinker. His contributions to Sociology and Economics have had a profound influence, and those who seek understanding of the origin, development and direction of our own industrial society, must study Veblen's works." The "London Nation" is, unquestionably, the formost literary review of our day and generation, and "The Publishers' Weekly" is the most influential and authoritative organ of the publishing and book-selling trade in America.

The "American Economic Review" describes Veblen as the "pre-eminent thinker in the field of critical thought relating to modern economic study."

"The American University, Veblen says, has come into bearing, and the college has become an intermediate rather than a terminal link in the conventional scheme of education. Under the names of "undergraduate and graduate", the college and the university are still commonly coupled together as subdivisions of a complex whole; but this holding together of the two disparate schools, is at the best a freak of aimless survival. At the worst, and more commonly it is the result of a gross ambition for magnitude on the part of the joint directorate.............The attempt to hold the college and university together in bonds of ostensible solidarity is by no means an advisedly concerted adjustment to the needs of scholarship as they run today. By ill-advised or perhaps unadvised imitation, the younger universities have blundered into encumbering themselves with an undergraduate department to stimulate this presumptively honorable! pedigree, to the detriment of both the university and the college so bound up with it."

"It appears then that the intrusion of business principles (by this he means trustification or the grouping of colleges etc., into large units) in the universities goes to weaken and retard the pursuit of learning, and, therefore, to defeat the ends for which a university is maintained. This result follows, primarily, from the substitution of impersonal mechanical relations, standards and tests, in the place of personal conference, guidance and association between teachers and students; as also from the imposition of a mechanically standardized routine upon the members of the staff, whereby any disinterested preoccupation with scholarly or scientific inquiry is thrown into the background and falls into abeyance. Few if any who are competent to speak in these premises will question that such has been the outcome."

In another place he writes: "It is coming to be plain to university men who have to do with the advanced instruction that, for the advanced work in science and scholarship, the training given by a college of moderate size commonly affords a better preparation than is had in the very large undergraduate schools of the great universities. This holds true, in a general way in spite of the fact that the smaller schools are handicapped by an inadequate equipment, are working against the side-draft of a religious bias, with a corps of under-paid and over-worked teachers in great part selected on denominational grounds, and are under-rated by all concerned. The proposition, however, taken in a general way and allowing for exceptions is too manifestly true to admit of much question, particularly in respect of preparation for sciences proper as contrasted with the professions." Veblen: Higher Education in America, p. 126.

Prof. Veblen proposes that these universities be broken up into independent units, and says: "Indeed there might even be ground to hope that, on the dissolution of the trust, the underlying academic units would return to that ancient footing of a small-scale parcelment and personal communion between teacher and student that once made the American college with all its handicap of poverty, chauvinism and denominational bias, one of the most effective agencies of scholarship in Christendom."

Any amount of testimony to the same effect could' be brought forth. Two more will suffice.

Prof. Vernon L. Kellogg, M. S. Secretary of the National Research Council of the United States said at an educational conference held at the University of Michigan in Oct. 1920: "Another familiar fact of general knowledge is that a major part of university research in this country comes from a comparatively small number of larger richer better-equipped, more brilliantly-staffed institutions. But it is less familiar that the great majority of the graduate or research students of these larger institutions come to them, not from their own annual output of bachelors but from other smaller colleges and universities. The dean of the graduate school of one of these largest universities, particularly famous for its annual output of graduate degree men, reports that ninety per cent of its graduate students come from other smaller institutions." (Educational Problems in College and University p. 81.)

And in the Report of the British Educational Mission to the United States, 1919, we read:

"Colleges have the same curricula and standards (as the university) ; and many of them possess the advantage that their numbers being limited, the students may expect more personal attention...........

We were frequently assured that the best intellectual material of the graduate departments of the universities comes from the independent colleges............And the better colleges have by no means been injured by the growth of the universities.''

Again, in another part of the Report: We were constantly assured that many of the best students in the universities come from the independent colleges, the small colleges as well as the large."

And yet some say that Saint Francis Xavier's College cannot hope to do good work because it is small.

Objections.

It is contended that if we do not enter this merger, we shall be swamped. Why should we be? From all that I have quoted it is evident that the small college can do just as good Arts work as the large university. Against the cock sure declarations of the merger-ites let me put the words of ex-President Harper of Chicago University as given in "The Trend in Higher Education." He said "There is no reason to suppose that the larger institution, however influential it may become will supplant the smaller."

Burgess Johnson, assistant professor of English in Vassar College speaks in the December 1920 number of the "North American Review," of the inefficiency of the college courses of the large universities and compares their work with that of the smaller colleges. He writes: "No wonder the great universities seek to affiliate with the small colleges of their neighborhood. Let us hope that the Colleges will decline with thanks. The best passible antidote so far discovered for the germ of educational elephantiasis, is the small college."

2. Another argument for the Merger is that degrees would be standardized, and also the courses leading to degrees. If the Merger became a reality we should have higher education dominated by one authority with probably a progressive intrusion by the state. This is an argument against the Merger and not for it.
Progress depends not on moulding all in the same form but on allowing as much freedom as possible in higher education.

Prof. Ross of the University of Wisconsin, says in his Principles of Sociology: "The people will be managed without their knowing it unless there are numerous founts of authoritative opinion independent of one another and of any single powerful organization. Let there be many towers from which trusty watchmen may scan the horizon and cry to the people a warning which no official or mob may hush." P. 436 Ύ.

"The higher means of social control ought to emanate from many minds of divers experience and interests." P. 433.

The case against the Merger on this score is well put by Donald J. Cowling, Ph. D., President of Carleton College. He says in an address: "I think we should all agree that it is not desirable that all of the educational institutions of this country should become of the same type or that their forms of development should proceed along identical lines. There is room in this country for a great variety of institutions; and educational progress and national stability are better safeguarded by a multiplication of types than by a standardized form which represents the views of some specialist as to what a college or university should be. There must be ample opportunity for variation and wide freedom for growth in different directions. The complex needs of our one hundred five million people will be better served when institutions grow up from the people rather than when they are imposed from above, either officially by the government or unofficially by the concerted action of the stronger types of institutions now holding the field."

"There is reason to believe that if Germany had had a greater variety in her institutions of higher learning and particularly in the matter of their financial support, the Prussian military regime would never have been able to secure a strangle hold on them as it did and through them on the whole German system of education." America is fortunate in having its higher education carried on half by institution supported by the state and half by institutions on private foundations, and I believe it is equally fortunate that the undergraduate students of America are half in colleges associated with universities and half in independent institutions with, no such university relationship.

3. It is claimed that the "modern requirements of good higher education," are so great that "to perpetuate present arrangement therefore, is foregone defeat." If by good higher education is meant university work the statement is probably true. If college work it meant, the testimony of the best authorities goes to show that the statement is false.

The Carnegie Report deals with this subject under three heads, viz., (a) Cost of laboratories, (b) Libraries,and (c) Professors' salaries.

The requirements of laboratories in providing a good modern university education seem fabulous no doubt when compared with the equipment of forty years ago. This is not true of college work. According to the Report of the Association of American Colleges, the value of equipment, outside of buildings, library and heating plant for the minimum college should be $35,000. Surely there is nothing fabulous about this.

The Carnegie Report characterizes our equipment as "fair". With regard to (b) the Report says that none of the New England Colleges already mentioned presumed to operate with a working book collection of less than 100,000 volumes. Large libraries are of course most desirable, but the library demanded by the Association of American colleges for the Efficient College used not have more than 25,000 volumes.
(c) With regard to salaries, the need for a "fabulous" increase in salaries in the case of Catholic Colleges (and let us hope in the case of the other christian colleges also) is not apparent.

The non-sectarian universities must give fabulous salaries for the reason that fabulous salaries are paid to motion picture actors, because of competition. But Catholic colleges can get and keep their best men without resorting to the jungle tactics of large corporations that are so characteristic of the modern university.

No doubt the Catholic college must pay those large salaries to laymen who are out for the most they can get, but there should be enough zeal for christian education left in the Catholic body to give a supply of teachers who are willing to give their lives to the work for the love of truth itself.

Teachers surely should get a decent living and enough to enable them to travel and to get their sabbatical year, but experience and facts show that this salary need not be fabulous.

On page 30 of the Carnegie Report we read: "Yet the typical "small college" of New England, a college such as Amherst Bowdoin or Williams, confined strictly to curricula in Arts and Sciences, and doing comparatively little graduate work, has in each of the cases mentioned nearly or much more than $3,000,000 of endowment for approximately one-half of 1000 students."

Note well: The U. S. Bureau of Education gives the following statistics for the New England Universities and Colleges for 1918: Only 9 of the 47 institutions had libraries of 100,000 volumes and over. Only 5 of the 47 institutions had endowments of 3 million and over. Only 8 of the 47 had endowments of $2,500,000. So much for the "typical small college of New England."

There are other standardizing agencies besides the Association of American Colleges. In our argument we have taken not the standardizing agency with the lowest standards but one with the highest, the Association of American Colleges. The National Conference Committee on Standards of Colleges and Secondary Schools at its annual meeting, March 24, 1919, adopted the standard of a productive endowment of $300,000. The North Central Association requires an endowment of $200,000. A committee organized by the U. S. Bureau of Education requires an endowment of $250,000. The Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Southern States requires an endowment of not less than $300,000 and a library of at least 7,000 volumes. According to the statistics of the U. S. Bureau of Education 400 colleges and university libraries did not have in 1918 as many as 20,000 volumes. 77 per cent of the total number of institutions have fewer than 41,563 volumes. Only 42 of the 600 institutions have 100,000 volumes and over.

An examination of even the state universities shows that only 16 of them have libraries of 100,000 volumes and over, while 28 of them have each fewer than 100,000 volumes.

Expensive equipment, large libraries, and heavy endowments are necessary for the university and for specialized work. It does not, however, follow that these are the essentials of a college of liberal Arts. Good equipment is important but it certainly is not so important as some would have us believe.

At a conference of the American College held on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of Allegheny College, President W. P. Few of Trinity College had this to say on this point: "The greatness of our College will depend upon the elevation of the teaching profession does not depend upon higher salaries, better technical training or more elaborate equipment but upon giving it the proper dignity and importance in our life.....Hirelings can never give the truest service."

And President William E. Slocum of Colrado College at the same celebration said: "It was this that Lord Bryce so strongly emphasized in his memorable address, when the Rhodes Scholarships were established at Oxford, as he urged that there should be the utmost possible degree of efficiency in equipment and instruction for scientific education, but he insisted still more strongly that to subordinate the interests of the humanities to those of science is deliberately to dethrone the essential function of the college. He said that there would be a scientific foundation for every department of industry in its application to the arts of life, but said that this is not the primary function of the college which has a much more fundamental and essential part to play in the creation of the leadership of the nation.

........It is not so much what it (the college) teaches and how many subjects; but something it must teach so that its graduates shall be strong to serve, and powerful enough to battle the evil of the world, and construct virtue in the characters of men and women.....If the American College loses sight of this sacred duty, it becomes false to its trust, recreant and faithless before the most essential of all the ends for which an educational movement can exist. All attacking upon its function, all would-be modifications of its range and scope, and of its four years of opportunity for study and spiritual growth are the outcome of a misconception of the end which led to its foundation."

"Lord Bryce's position is the true one. There should be the utmost possible degree of efficiency in scientific education; but to subordinate purely intellectual and moral discipline to the interests of science is not only to dethrone the essential interest of the college, but to miss the pre-eminent function of education."

Attempts have been made to befog the issue by quoting statistics with regard to the large endowments and incomes of the American Universities. Since the testimony with regard to the worth of the "small colleges" is so damaging, an attempt has been made to make it appear that the small colleges of the United States have endowments of millions, etc. What are the facts?

According to the latest available statistics as given in the World Almanac for 1922 there are over 600 colleges and universities in the United States, and not 349 as was stated in the Halifax Chronicle of Oct. 2. Of these 600 institutions only 109 have endowments over a million. 317 of the 600 institutions have each fewer than 500 students, and of these 317 institutions with 500 and fewer students only 16 of them have endowments of a million and over. Notwithstanding the fact that there are in all the States heavily endowed institutions there are hundreds of small colleges with a small number of students and with small endowments. Philander P. Claxton says in The American College, that in 1914 there were 328 colleges having working incomes less than 50,000 dollars a year. How explain the existence of these small colleges alongside so many large institutions? If the small college is as inefficient as the Federationists claim it is in comparison with the State Universities and the heavily endowed institutions, the American people must lack ordinary intelligence.

A final bit of testimony with regard to the advantages that the small college has over the large university and we have finished with this phase of the subject. The late Prof. Alexander Smith of Columbia University whose name is a household word to all college students, wrote in Science, N. S., May 5, 1910: "In respect to loss of time by overlapping, the university, with its numerous instructors, is at a disadvantage when compared with the college. In the latter, three or four years of chemistry are all given under the immediate direction of one man, and continuous work and rapid progress by the pupil are more likely to be secured."

From an educational point of view, then, entering the merger would be a mistake. It would be detrimental to the well-being of the country as a whole and especially to the cause of Catholic education.

Education needs all the resources it can command. Entering the merger would dry up many Catholic sources of revenue. The same appeal for Catholic education could never be made again. And with the disappearance of that appeal would go a great opportunity to arouse Catholics and to unify them. Going into the merger would mean practically the giving up of control of Catholic College education. When the tail begins to wag the dog then will be ready to believe that we can still control Catholic College work and enter the merger. The social welfare of the country demands that our main source of right principles and of christian leaders be kept intact and allowed to do its work freely.

Religion and the Merger.

If the pedagogical and social objections to the merger are serious the religious objections are still more serious. True, many good Catholics see no objection in it, and since Rome has not spoken in this particular case, the advisibility or inadvisibility of entering the scheme must be judged on its merits.

It may be premised that the fact that similar schemes are in operation elsewhere throws no light on the subject. If the ideal cannot be obtained then the next best thing must be tolerated. Now the ideal for Catholics is an efficient Arts course carried on under Catholic auspices. If some people cannot themselves carry on an efficient Catholic college then they must be satisfied with the next best thing — partial control of Catholic college work as obtains in Toronto. And Rome at best only tolerates this when the most ample safeguards are assured. The existence of tolerated plans of education though should be no reason for trying to frustrate the attempts of others to attain the ideal.

Now it is probable that the education carried on at the Maritime University will be anything but acceptable to Catholics.

According to the tentative proposals put forward the greater and most important part of the work is to be done by University Professors. It is reasonable to suppose that if this consolidated university is to be a "Modern University" its teachers will be somewhat like the professors of the modern university. Consequently it is reasonable to suppose that much of the teaching done will be of such a character as to be dangerous to faith and morals. Those who advocate the merger either do not think that this teaching is morally unsound, or, if they do believe that it is morally unsound, they must believe that no harm can come to the students from having it given them. If the first is the case, they know nothing about the social and philosophical teaching of these professors. If the second, they are putting themselves directly against the teaching of experience and of the Church.

With regard to the first, anybody who knows anything about non-sectarian university teaching knows that it is saturated through and through with materialism. It is safe to say that it is impossible to find a textbook in sociology or any of the social sciences or in philosophy by a professor of a modern secular university that is not built up on a materialistic foundation.

Here are one or two examples of their teaching: "Man is not born human," says Prof. R. E. Park of the University of Chicago, "it is only slowly and laboriously, in fruitful contact, cooperation, and conflict with his fellows, that he attains the distinctive qualities of human nature."

1. Prof.Conklin of Princeton University says in Hereditary and Environment: "Intelligence develops from trial and error." P. 48. "The phenomena of mental development in man and other animals, etc. Page 55.

Profs. Park and Burgess of the University of Chicago in their Introduction to the Science of Sociology says: "There is no fundamental difference between intelligent and instinctive behavior." Page. 80. Prof. Giddings of Columbia University writes in Studies in the Theory of Human Society: "Man consciously has ideas, and the higher animals perhaps have a few simple ones." P. 155.

2. Prof. Edman Irwin in his work Human Traits and Their Significance says: "Given another environment, his moral revulsion and approvals might be diametrically reversed..........standards of good and evil depend on the accidents of time, space, and circumstance." P. 425. Moral laws are not regarded as arbitary and eternal, but as good in so far as they produce good." P. 431. And Prof. Conklin of Princeton in Heredity and Environment page 322 says: "We once thought that men were free to do right or wrong and that they were responsible for their deeds; now we learn that our reactions are predetermined by heredity, and that we can no more control them than we can our heart beats."

"Conscience Codes" writes Prof. Ellwood in his Introduction to the Study of Sociology, "are as typical and characteristic products of social evolution as languages or political systems.....A moral code instead of being a universal requirement applicable to the treatment of all mankind, was first the requirement devised by a group and inculcated and enforced, by a group for the benefit of that group and its members. No man is born with a conscience any more than he is born with a language." The freedom of will is generally denied. "The balance of probabilities however, seems to favor the opposite interpretation — determinism." writes H. L. Warren, Princeton University, in Human Psychology.

"They teach young men and women plainly that an immoral act is merely one contrary to the prevailing conceptions of society; and that the daring who defy the code do not offend any Deity, but simply arouse the venom of the majority." (Bolce.) And the reason is because they believe (to quote Profs. Park and Burgess again); "Conscience is a manifestation in the individual consciousness of the collective mind and the group will." P. 33.

"Religion is a social product" Prof. Todd in Theories of Social Progress. "Religion had its origin in the choral dance." P. 87, E. L. Earp of Syracuse University an ex-minister is quoted as having said: "It is unscientific and absurd to imagine that God ever turned stone-mason and chiseled commandments on a rock.' Or, more generally, Religion is merely a human invention that "assists control, and reinforces by a supernatural sanction those modes of behavior which by experience have been determined to be moral i.e. socially advantageous. Thomas, Source Book of Social Origins.

Dr. W. McDougall, Professor of Psychology in Harvard University says in Body and Mind: "I am aware that to many minds, it must appear nothing short of scandal that any one occupying a position in an academy of learning other than a Roman Catholic seminary, should in this twentieth century defend the old-world notion of the soul of man.' (P. XI, ed 1920). Dr. McDougall is "the least prejudiced of living psychologists" yet he has written of the freedom of the will: "The fuller becomes our insight into the springs of human conduct the more impossible does it become to maintain this antiquated doctrine," (Social Psychology, p. 14.)

Prof. Todd has nine pages on the disservice of religion. Here is a sample: "The clerical influence in politics has almost invariably proved nefarious. In education even worse. Dogmatic teaching is good discipline, but it seals up, nay, it kills the mind. Speaking generally, in proportion as the mental influence of a religion is wide, the outlook for individual advance is poor.....Such schools (religious schools) are backward because they usually assume religion to be the fundamental fact of life; whereas it is only one of the elements which make up that indissoluble unity. They frequently represent an antiquated notion of the family life. The family was held superior to the state.' They tend to stultify the mind by holding to revelation instead of to free inquiry."

.......'Andrew T. White, he says, "demonstrates beyond cavil that theology has sought to block every field of scientific advance.'

'With regard to marriage, Prof. Giddings of Columbia University, the Dean of American sociologists, teaches that "It is not right to set up a technical legal relationship....as morally superior to the spontaneous preference of a man and a woman."

Prof. Charles Zueblin of Chicago University is quoted as having said "There can be and are holier alliances without the marriage bond than within it.....Like politics and religion we have taken it for granted that the marriage relationship is right and have not questioned it." "The notion" Prof. Charles Sumner of Yale says, "that there is anything fundamentally correct implies the existence of a standard outside and above usage, and no such standard exists." "Marriage secures better provision and training to children than promiscuity"

says Prof. Thomas in his Source Book of Social Origins. "The major prophet among them all, whose name they speak with awed reverence, John Dewey, never misses an opportunity to speak slightly of supernatural religion. His influence has made Pragmatism the generally accepted basis of American educational philosophy." (The Catholic Educational Review, Oct. 1922.)

Here is the experience that one of the St. F. X. Professors had at Columbia University, New York. It was in a graduate course on Value, a course in Economics, not in Ethics or Philosophy. The Professor conducting the class was Dr. B. Anderson, who later became professor of Economics Harvard and is now connected with one of the large banking institutions of New York City. He said in substance: All institutions, customs, and laws are human inventions derived for the welfare of the group or society. Our matrimonial institutions, our laws, ideas and customs with regard to the relationship that should exist between the sexes are human inventions. They were derived at a time when nothing was known about prevention of conception and the spread of venereal disease. Our commandments and institutions were invented to prevent the spread of disease and to safeguard the offspring. At present conditions are different. Through the great advances that science has made we know how to prevent the spread of these social diseases, and we know how to prevent conception. The conditions that brought about our present ideas and regulations with regard to the relationship that should exist between the sexes have disappeared. He then asked the class: Seeing that the reasons for our present views on those relationships no longer exist how long will these views themselves last? The conditions that brought about our present views on modesty, marriage, etc., have disappeared, when will our present old-fashioned views go too? There were about twenty in the class — the majority of them teachers of Economics in colleges and high schools. Not one of them disputed his assumptions with regard to the origin of our present views on marriage, etc. Some of them said our present ideas on these relationships, etc., are so old and so thoroughly ingrained in us that it would take a long time to change them.

This professor merely carried to its logical conclusion the ethical teaching that is given in every non-sectarian university and a good many non-Catholic colleges in the country. No wonder that Rev. Dr. George E. Hunt, Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church, Madison, Wis., is quoted by Dr. Crayne in his work the Demoralization of College Life as having said: "If I did not live in Madison, I never would send a young girl to the University of Wisconsin — or any other State University for that matter."

Clarence F. Birdseye in his book "The Reorganization of our Colleges" says: "In many of our larger colleges and universities, and too many of our smaller ones, a very considerable part of the college home life is morally rotten — terribly so."

It is little wonder too that proportionate to number there are more college men in the penitentiaries of Ohio, Indiana and Illonois than there are of any other class. There should be fewer because of their ability to get round the law, pull, etc., but there are more according to an investigation made by Prof. Murchison of Miami University and reported in School and Society for June 4, 1921. He found 72 college men in these penitentiaries, while according to the Law of Chance no more than 25 should be there. That is to say, if college men were no worse than those of other classes, according to their numbers there should be but 25 of them in the penitentiaries of these states. Pro!. Murchison comments on these statistics as follows: "The inference is very strong that college experiences are directly responsible for the percentile increase in sex-crimes and crimes of deceit and robbery.....This implies a lack of habitual thinking concerning the inexorable laws of existence and development, etc."

The great danger of this teaching is its insidiousness; bit by bit, through innuendo, raising of doubts questionings, etc., faith is undermined. Their attacks are usually not frontal ones. They may take the following form: "A desire for rain may induce man to wave willow branches and to sprinkle water" P. 26. (Dewey, Professor of Philosophy, Columbus University in Human Nature and Conduct). Or as in Human Traits already referred to P. 455: "Those ascetics who have denied the flesh may have displayed a certain degree of heroism, but they displayed an equal lack of insight."

And Prof. Ross of the University of Wisconsin says in his Principles of Sociology: "The Spanish mind bears deep traces of the long emasculating servitude to which it was subjected by its blind and bigoted loyalty to throne and altar." P. 518. Again, "rigid ecclesiastical dogmas as to interest, almsgiving, marriage and propagation simply cannot survive the light of social science. P. 508.

A writer in the "Catholic Mind," for Aug. 22, 1916, who spent four years in a state university, says: "As I view the matter the young man who expects to go through a secular university with faith unshaken and morals unimpaired must possess the courage of a saint, and the mental training of a Catholic Doctor of Philosophy. He has enemies within and without the classroom and the lecture-hall. He is surrounded by pagan servants, learned theorists, superficial thinkers, men to whom tradition is a joke, the soul a myth, and the spirit of reverence, which Carlyle sets down as a prime requisite in a student, a mental and moral weakness."

Dr .Edward S. Young said quite recently at the Bedford Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn: "What the times demand is not fewer college men but fewer colleges that take the religious convictions out of the youth who enter them. Practically all your leading institutions of learning such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wellseley, etc., began as religious educational enterprises but many of them have politely bowed the Almighty out."

And Right Rev. Bishop Shahan, Rector of the Catholic University, says: "And in general, is it not the professors of our modern secular universities who are responsible for the vulgar materialism, the cheap hollow rationalism, the frivolous pleasure philosophy, the irreligious and soon anti-religious hearts of multitudes of modern men and women."

The quotations given represent the views of the non-Catholic professors on the nature of man, of economics, of religion and of morality. These views come to expression not only in such classes as Philosophy and Sociology, but also in History and the other sciences, even in Economics as has been said. They consider their view of life the right one — the Catholic one is mediaeval and superstitious — and they feel that they have a mission to enlighten the benighted.

Another danger that would result from the merger is the danger of an increase in mixed marriages against which the Third Council of Baltimore issued a warning. That there is a real danger here, cannot be questioned. Prof. Conklin, in his book, "Heredity and Environment" says: "The President of a large co-educational institution once said that if marriages were made in Heaven, he was sure that the Lord had a branch office in His university." "I had occasion a few years ago," Prof. Corklin writes, "to investigate the eugenical record of a co-educational institution, which is not unknown in the world of scholarship, and I found that about thirty-three per cent of the recent graduates had married fellow-students, that there had been no divorces and that there were many children. There is no doubt that co-education promotes early marriages and that it is not necessarily inimical to good scholarship, even though it violates the spirit of medieval monasticism."

Objections.

Much has been made of the Toronto University situation. Father Carr, Rector of St. Michael's says: "That our participation in the University will reduce teaching that conflicts with Catholic views to a minimum, and that this alone is a big reason for joining."

The modern professor looks upon Catholicism as superstitious and as a relic of the Dark Ages. Do the mergerites believe that these professors will be unscrupulous and cowardly enough to keep their views to themselves because they will be afraid of hurting the feelings of superstitious people? If the professors of philosophy and of social science are not to say anything that conflicts with Catholic teaching then they must give the antiquated Catholic viewpoint or be false to their trust. These men have a mission to teach, to enlighten, and it is reasonable to suppose that they will be faithful to their obligations. If they are then they must say things that are dangerous to faith and morals. The contention of the mergerites makes cowards of them.

The President of St. Michael's says that it is possible that bad teaching may be offered but that so far they have had no reason for complaining.

It seemed strange that Toronto should be so orthodox. To settle any doubts on the matter we looked up the only Toronto University publication at hand, Prof. Mclvor's Elements of Social Science, and we find there the same false teaching. After giving the customary materialistic explanation of the history of the family he writes: "Let us next observe the similar process which created the Church.....The awakening ideals of the tribe creates gods of beauty, like Apollo or Balder, and of the imperious attraction of sex, like Aphrodite, As-tarte, Venus, and of motherhood like Isis and Demeter and later of the Virgin Mother Mary."

How reconcile this ignorant statement with Fr. Carr's statement? It is probable that the students of St. Michael's being immature like most college students do not recognize materialistic teaching when they hear it. This is a further reason for keeping them from such places. Students in these universities unconsciously imbibe false teaching without knowing it.

"The only thing we can do" he writes, "is judge from our own experience and that of others, and from our knowledge of men."

What does the man mean? You cannot take a textbook treating of a philosophical or social topic and to a great extent of many other topics whose whole philosophy is not materialistic. Does he mean to imply that they write one thing in books and teach something different in class? Sometimes they do, but in that case what they give in class is usually much worse than what they write in books. In such matters we cannot be guided by the experience of one or two but by more general experience and by a knowledge of human tendencies.

It may not happen that those professors will try to indoctrinate their disciples with their pagan light and learning, but it is probable that it will happen. "Almost anything is possible" writes Fr. Carr. What we should be concerned with is not what is possible or here or there but with the tendencies that are existent in human nature, and with what probably will happen. Now it probably will happen that these professors will want the unenlightened to partake of their enlightnment. "Bonum est diffusivum sui." It should not be necessary to substantiate this with any authority other than common sense, but it seems that it is.

Prof. Ross in his Principles of Sociology speaks of social processes or tendencies and has a whole chapter on one called Expansion "Throughout the social organization of an enterprising people," he writes, "there is a marked tendency to expansion. Officials press for more authority, etc."

"But there is another force for expansion which may be called the proselyting spirit. This willingness to take trouble to spread one's convictions and ideals, or to support those who do it for one is praiseworthy because it is disinterested. Furthermore it helps the valuable new thing to displace the sooner that which is antiquated and affected............"

"Revolutionary propagandists believe they have a Gospel to preach.....In their sense of a mission to the suffering the great social artists resemble the founders of the redemptive religions."

Mathew Arnold writes in Culture and Anarchy, "Culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater:— the passion for making them prevail.....The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making pervail, for carrying from one end of society to the other the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time, etc."

If the professors of this university are to be men of culture they will try to make prevail the ideas that they believe. If they will not do this then they are time-servers and craven, and even in that case are not fit to guide the students under them.

But it is said that colleges will counteract this teaching and have antidotes for it. How will they counteract it? Will the professors of the colleges take each student individually every day in the evening and go over the whole field of history, psychology, and the social sciences and give the right answer to the assertions of these material-isic professors? Hardly. Will they hold classes corresponding to the university classes for the purpose of combating errors given them? This does not seem very practicable. This means a duplication of professors qualified to answer all the objections of the University professors. How are the teachers going to keep track of what is taught in the University classes? The students cannot always tell them when wrong teaching is given. They know when we are called ugly names but they cannot distinguish wrong philosophical teaching from correct. This is no reflection on the student. It takes long training in Philosophy and Theology to equip one with sufficient knowledge to distinguish between what is true and what is false in university work. Even theologians have been known to disagree as to what is heresy and what is not.

The students of a university may be receiving instruction that is false and that will in the long run undermine their faith without their realizing it. Any statements made then about the absence of false teaching in any university must be taken with a grain of salt. The probability is that a modern university gives the philosophical and sociological opinions of the specialists in these subjects and this teaching is materialistic through and through.

Even if the Toronto scheme was the best for Toronto Catholics, it does not follow that it would be the best everywhere else. We can cite an instance in which an experiment was made similar to that of Toronto, and the results were so unsatisfactory that the arrangement was abandoned.

Were we to enter the merger the college would become little more than a residential hall. It would have little control over the teaching of the last two years of the Arts course, and these are the most important years of the course.

Dr. Cowling at the inauguration of President Burton of Michigan University said: "Furthermore, I think it may be justly maintained that is in the last two years, and not in the first two, that a college accomplishes its purpose with a student, and creates within him its distinctive ideal. It is not in connection with the freshman mathematics, or beginning languages or elementary sciences, that the college finds its real opportunity. The work of these first years is largely a preparation for what the college has to offer in the years to follow. It is only when the student begins to delve into philosophy and economics and the social sciences, and when he begins to understand the natural sciences in their implications and has developed a real taste for literature and something of perspective in history, — it is only then that his personal philosophy of life begins intelligently to take on final form." Two quotations along this line about the junior college movement may not be out of place here.

President Rush Rhees of the University of Rochester, says: "I believe that the American College contributes to preparation for professional study an influence for intellectual activity which no other agency has to offer. This service cannot be so well rendered by an extension of the secondary school, after the pattern of the German or French practice." (American College, Crawford, p. 88, 89.)

President Slocum says of the junior movement: "To yield to this new attack is but a step in the path which leads ultimately to its (the college) obliteration and thus to lose sight of the most important element in the educational movement in America."

The most important years then of the college course are the last two and these it is proposed to give over largely to the University. It is in the last two years that fruit begins to be seen, that the student begins to get interested and show signs of progress. One result of the merger by the way would be that the student would begin to contrast university work with college work and to the disadvantage of the Catholic College.

It would be preferable as far as Catholics are concerned to have the first two years done by the university and the last two by the college.

According to the Carnegie Report "The sophomore year would furnish a natural transition from this largely intra-mural collegiate regime of the first year to the largely extra-mural organization of the later years." The plan submitted by Dalhousie for discussion reduces teaching by the colleges to very insignificant proportions indeed. This memo for discussion is significant of what we may expect if we put our heads in the merger noose.

According to the Dalhousie plan the colleges will not be allowed to control the teaching in any subject. They cannot teach even English and philosophy for more than two years. They would not have complete control of the teaching of philosophy for even two years as the professors of the subjects must be approved by the University. The very sciences that should be under the complete control of the colleges (at least of those few who believe in the validity of their christian principles) are to be taken away from them altogether. Education, psychology and the social sciences "must not be taught by the college at all." Anyone with even the most meagre knowledge of these sciences knows that they are bound up with ethics and religion. Pope Leo XIII said that the social question is largely a religious question. And still we are asked to hand over instruction in these sciences absolutely to the university!

It may be said that the proposals of Dalhousie may not be accepted. Perhaps not. But even the proposals made show the trend of opinion in a very prominent quarter and the lack of appreciation of the Catholic view point.

It makes little difference whether a few subjects or many subjects are taught by the University as far as the validity of this argument against the merger is concerned. If teaching will be apportioned according to the memo submitted by Dalhousie then we give up control of the most important part of the curriculum. If on the other hand the colleges retain control over those subjects then we do not get the supposed advantages of consolidation, and may as well stay as we are. The more teaching we give up the greater the reason why we should stay out. The more teaching we control, the less reason for going into the merger. In either case whether we teach little or much the argument against the merger is strong.

Some Catholics see no danger in the merger. More important than the opinion of individual Catholics is the mind of the Church on this question. But the teaching of the Church as expressed in the decrees of popes and councils is against non-sectarian teaching of this kind and consequently we should not give up control of that part of higher education that we now control.

On Oct. 9, 1847, a letter approved by Pius IX, was sent to the bishops of Ireland by the congregation of the Propaganda with regard to attendance at secular universities. Propaganda condemned the scheme although some bishops favored it. "Monitos provide vomit Archie piscopos et episcopos Hiberniae ne ullam in ejusdem excutione partem habeant........

Certerum S. C. probe noscit quanti intersit adolescentium, civilioris praesertim coetus scientificae instructioni consulere; provide Amplitudinem Tuam et suffraganeos simul Episcopos hortatur ut media omnia legitinia quae in vestra sunt potestate ad eamdem prom-ovendam abhibeatis. Curandum erit ut collegia catholica quae jam constituata reperiuntur magis magisque floriant.

With regard to these three colleges that were banned, Prof. Bertram Windle writes in the February number, 1909, of the Catholic World "Even as it was, it was much less non-sectarian or non religious, to speak more accurately, than university institutions have since become; indeed in some respects, it permitted more recognition of religion than is contemplated by the measure which has just passed through Parliament. (Birrel's Scheme.")

The Congregation advised the establishment of a university similar to Louvain. New representations were made to the congregation by the supporters of the English scheme (and some of the objectionable statues had in the meantime been removed) but the Congregation reaffirmed its former condemnation.

True, this did not prosper, but the reasons of this are known to all: As, E. A. D'Alton writes in the Catholic Encyclopedia: "This want of harmony was conducive to enthusiasm or efficiency." The Congregation of propaganda sent an encyclical letter to the English bishops in which it was forbidden Catholics to attend Cambridge and Oxford.

Pope Leo XIII in the Encyclical Militantis Ecclesiae says: "We must take care that what is essential, that is to say the practice of Christian piety be not relegated to a second place; that while the teachers are laboriously communicating the elements of some difficult science, the young students have no regard for that true wisdom of which the beginning is the fear of God, and to the precepts of which (wisdom) they must conform every instant of their lives."

Leo XIII in this same Encyclical expressly states, "that all the branches of teaching should be saturated and dominated by religion and that religion by its majesty and its gentle force leave in the souls of youth the most salutary impressions."

Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical Constanti Hungarorium to the bishops of Hungary, 1893 writes: "In the secondary and superior schools you must watch carefully lest the good seed sown earlier perish miserably in the souls of the grown up youths."

And in an encyclical to the bishops of Poland, 1897, he renews the same advice. "Those to whom we teach letters and arts should at the same time with no less care be instructed in things divine. The advancement of the age and in education in young people is no reason to pause in this task; on the contrary we must apply ourselves to it with the more ardor because youth in that state of its studies feels each day urged by the desire of knowing and because more formidable dangers threaten his faith."
As far as America is concerned the mind of the Church is expressed in the decrees of the Council of Quebec and of the Third Council of Baltimore.

In title VII, chapter II, page 256 of the Acts and Decrees of the Council of Quebec we read: "Non-sectarian schools are by the Church condemned." "Scholae neutrae ab ecclesia damnatae;" and in chapter VII, p. 274, Students are to be disuaded from going to non-Catholic professional schools, and they are to be permitted to attend them only in exceptional cases and on account of grave reasons. "Ii autem juvenes a frequentandia Universitatibus heterodoxis prorsu arceantur, neaue id sine gravi motivo, de sententia Ordinarii ipsis per exceptionen permitatur."

The Third Council of Baltimore urges Catholics to establish their own colleges and universities because of the danger to faith and morals for students attending non-catholic institutions.

"Only too frequently it happens that dutiful and innocent boys and girls pass from the security of christian family life and from the protection of the Catholic school into non-Catholic institutions of learning and return, proud indeed of their knowledge but deprived of their charity, faith and christian morals."

"We therefore admonish our faithful people by all that is sacred in the Lord and we entreat them that they may hasten by united actions towards these blessed conditions wherein high schools, colleges and Catholic universities will be so numerous and so highly reputed that every Catholic boy and girl may be able to find under Catholic auspices all desirable knowledge, whether sought for by their parents or selected by themselves." (Title 6, Chap. II, P. III.)

Pope Leo XIII in the Encyclical Affari Vos to the Bishops of Canada says: "In like manner one must at all costs avoid as most pernicious those schools wherein every form of belief is indifferently admitted and placed on an equal footing.....You well know Venerable Brothers, that all schools of this kind have been condemned by the Church because there can be nothing more pernicious or more fitted to injure the integrity of faith and to turn away from the truth the tender minds of the young."

The American bishops in their recent Pastoral Letter say: "The Church in our country is obliged for the sake of principle to maintain a system of education distinct and separate from other systems. It is supported by. the voluntary contributions of Catholics, who at the same time, contributed as required by law to the maintenance of the public schools."........

Our system is based on certain convictions that grow stronger as we observe the testing of all education, not simply by calm thear-etic discussion, but by the crucial experience of recent events."

With regard to the movement to take away the control of education from the Church and give it to the State, Monsignor Paquet says in his work, L'Eglise et l'education, p. 199, "What astonishes us is that certain Catholics, even priests, deliberately shut their eyes to the perils of this manouvre; that others through prejudice, or interest, or passion directly lend their support to it, and thereby more or less consciously make common cause with the worst enemies of the christian faith and of the Catholic school."

The ardent advocates of the merger, who see in it no danger to faith or religious training would do well to consider a principle condemned in the syllabus of Pius IX. The following proposition No. 48 is condemned by the Church.

"That system of instructing youth, which consists in separating it from the Catholic faith, and from the power of the Church, and in teaching exclusively, or at least primarily, the knowledge of natural things and the earthly ends of social life alone may be approved by Catholics."

The only country, it may be said where a scheme similar to the proposed merger obtains is Ireland. But the present scheme for higher education in Ireland is radically different from what would obtain in the Maritime Provinces. In the constituent colleges of the National University the governing bodies ae largely National and Catholic." (Cath. Encyc.) And Prof. Bertram Windle writes in the Feb. 1909 issue of the Catholic World: "The University of the South and West and the three colleges attached to it, will each of them have nominated governing bodies which will hold office for the first few years, and on each of these Catholics have a substantial majority. It may be concluded that the great majority of these representatives will be Catholic as long as Ireland is Catholic, and by this means the problem of providing the bodies in question with a management at least not hostile to Catholic ideas, seems to have been solved."

Summing up, then, common sense, the natural law and the mind of the Church declare that all education from the lowest to the highest must be guided by christian truth. Any education that leaves it out of account is imperfect and dangerous to faith and morals.

But the teaching given by any but Catholic teachers is more or less dangerous, therefore Catholics are forbidden to encourage the sending of young people to non-Catholics colleges and universities.

This is only tolerated when the proper safeguards are taken, and when it is impossible or difficult for Catholics to get higher education in Catholic colleges or universities. But there are no grave difficulties in the way of Catholics getting a liberal arts training in the Maritime Provinces. (This is proved by the testimony of the Report of the Carnegie Foundation, and of the American Association of Colleges). Therefore the Catholics of the Maritime Provinces are forbidden by common sense and the natural law to give up their distinctively Catholic liberal arts work for a diluted, semi-Catholic, semi-pagan course of instruction in this proposed non-sectarian university.

It is claimed that many conversions to Catholicism would result from the mingling of Catholics and Protestants in this university.

There, undoubtedly might be a few, but the probability is that there would be more conversions to infidelity than to Catholicism. The reason for this is that the non-Catholic party would be in the position of advantage. Controlling as they will the university work, they will derive a good deal of pulling power fro m the prestige of their position. Moreover, it is much easier to doubt, deny, question and pull down than to build up.

A writer in the Dublin Review of Jan. 1865, who made his college course at Oxford, sums up the argument against the scheme similar to the proposed merger as follows: "If the proposal in question were carried out, the few highly intellectual students of the Catholic College would suffer detriment to the purity, simplicity, and humility of their faith from the circumambient, anti-Catholic and unbelieving atmosphere. They would, in their turn, communicate the infection to their Catholic brethern; the college would become a permanent and traditional home of unsound and disloyal Catholicism; and the plague of indifferentism would possess the whole rising generation of English Catholics."

A part of the development of his argument is as follows: "Take, then, some youth of active intellect, who has hitherto been thus Catholically trained, but whose principles are not yet firmly rooted (as is evident from the very fact that his education is still in progress) and who is now more open to new impressions than at any other time of his life. Consider further, that (human nature being what it is) his intrinsic bias, apart from divine grace is intensely opposed to intellectual submission of every kind. If, then, in every other instance, fearful injury is done to the workings of grace by free social intercourse with those oppositely minded, what is to make this particular case an exception? Just as a man, habitually tempted to profligacy will most certainly yield to the temptation, if he freely and eagerly associates with profligates; so a man habitually tempted to intellectual pride (and all intellectual men are greviously tempted to it) associates with those who make intellectual independence their very boast. But intellectual pride irreconcilably conflicts with docility to the Holy See, and is the direct road to apostasy. We do not understand then how any thinkers can doubt that such students reverence for Rome, and deference to its teachings, would be indefinitely impaired by habits of familiarity with youths of powerful and energetic mind, who are unanimous in regarding "the maxims of the Papacy, theological, social and political, as a synonym for everything which is narrow, retrograde and imbecile."

The Bishops of Ireland in their Address on the Catholic University, 1851, say: "A sort of moral electric fluid is continually passing from all teachers to their pupils; if this be not positively Catholic, it is certain to be positively uncatholic. The supposed neutrality is unreal. All gain is on the side of Protestantism and infidelity. The real concession is to them and private judgment sits enthroned in the very penetralia of education."

Much is made of the statement that there are 40,000 Catholic students in the state universities and normal schools while there are only 19,000 in all the Catholic colleges for men and women in the United States. Consequently they conclude we should hitch up our Catholic college with the state university.

First of all let it be said that their statistics are wrong, The Directory of Catholic colleges and schools published by the Department of Education N. C. W. C. gives 19,802 as the number of students in the Catholic universities and 13,996 as the number of students in the Catholic colleges of the United States. This makes a total of over 33,000 students in the Catholic universities and colleges of the United States. How many Catholic students there are in the state universities we do not know. Dr. O'Brien, chaplain of Illinois University says there are approximately 40,000 in state universities and normal schools. We know that the number of Catholic girls attending the normal schools to qualify for the teaching profession is very large. The difference between this number and 40,000 would be the number of Catholics attending the state universities.

Why are these attending the state universities? Is it because of the inefficiency of the Catholic college? Some of the federationists would seem to imply this. But such is not the case. True a small number of parents send their sons to these universities because like Mrs. Jiggs they want to be in "sassiety", but, thank God, their number is exceedingly small.

Dr. J. A. O'Brien, Catholic chaplain, University of Illinois gives the main cause. He says: "From an intimate acquaintance with the many hundreds of Catholic students who have attended the University of Illinois during the past three years, and as the result of statistical study extending over that period, the writer is in a position to say that unquestionably the chief cause of the Catholic attendance is the offering of technical courses which few, if any, Catholic colleges have the means to offer. From a study of the actual courses pursued by the Catholic students at the university the writer ventures to say that more than 97 percent of the Catholic students are following some courses at the University which are obtainable at no Catholic institution in the State. There is not one percent of the students who are taking the straight Liberal Arts Course which constitutes the back-bone of the curriculum in the majority of our Catholic colleges."

In a widely circulated letter of Fr. Carr, St. Michael's College, Toronto, we find the following: "There are in the United States 17,-000 Catholics in Catholic educational institutions of university grade and 40,000 Catholics in secular universities. Would it be better to have things as they are or to have the 57,000 in Catholic colleges federated with the big universities? It seems too that the development of this is the thing in a nutshell."

The federationist who sees an argument for federation here can see an argument for federation in anything. We fail to see that inability to provide all educational opportunities possible for our young men is a reason for giving up supplying the opportunities that we can give. The ideal state would be to have all instruction, from that of the university to the common schools, given by Catholic teachers. We have not the means and the numbers to conduct a modern university but we can conduct our own colleges. Surely it is better to have 33,000 in Catholic universities and colleges than to have not 40,000 but 73,000 attending non-sectarian universities and subject to all the dangers enumerated above.

But it may be said that by entering the federation we do not give up control of our Catholic colleges. In reply we would say that in the proposed federation our Catholic college would exist in name but not in reality. It would be little better than a boarding house. At present there are courses given in Catholic Philosophy and courses taught by Catholic teachers in Harvard and other universities of the United States but that does not make Harvard a Catholic university. No one would say that the influence of the secular universities on the Catholic school system of the United States is very great, yet there are educators who think that even that influence and connection s too strong. Dr. George Johnson writing in the Catholic Educational Review for October 1922, says of these tendencies: "If such tendencies are operative in secular education, it is surely high time for us to become more self-conscious and to divest ourselves of the girdle of blind leadership.....Instead of attempting to conform to secular standards derived from a secular philosophy of education, let our leaders work out a system of standards that are inherently Catholic, and then present it to the state as evidence of what we are doing."

"Again, there is grave cause for concern in the spirit of compromise that some of our people are cultivating as a means of disarming hostility to our schools. As a prominent Catholic educator once remarked — pity he did not write it— "It is a question as to whether it is better to perish miserably in compromise or to die fighting gloriously." The result would be the same in the end, but the second method savors more of Calvary. We may take the road of state certification, of state certification, of state supervision and inspection, but we are likely to find ourselves with a school system that is Catholic only in the sense that it is supported by Catholic money. The question is: Would a system such as that be worth supporting? They might allow us to teach religion after we have devoted as much time as they indicate for the teaching of the other subjects out of the texts that they prescribe. The teachers might be allowed to retain their religious garb. But for all the outward seeming the voice would be the voice of Dewey, or Snedden, or Strayer, or Judd."

What would they say about the proposed surrender to the federation scheme?

It should be remembered that the Carnegie Report is only the recommendations of two men or at most a few. One could pick another group of equally qualified men to recommend to us staying as we are. Veblen and Burgess Johnson, or Cowling and Dr. Cranford may be as good batteries as Learned and Sills, and they would have us "decline with thanks" the invitation to get gobbled up.

Dr. Veblen says that the eagerness for consolidations comes from the glamor that goes with big things, and not from any intrinsic merit of consolidation. He writes: It will be objected and with much reason, that these underlying "school units" that go to make up the composite American University habitually see no great evil in so being absorbed into the trust. They bend themselves readily if not eagerly, to schemes of coalition; they are in fact prone to draw in under the aegis of the university corporation by annexation, "affiliation", "absorption," etc. Any one who cares to take stock of that matter and is in a position to know what is going on can easily assure himself that the reasons which decide in such a case are not advisedly accepted reasons intrinsic to the needs of efficiency for the work in hand, but rather reasons of competitive expendiency, of competitive advantage and prestige; except in so far as it may alt be — as perhaps it commonly is — mere unreflecting conformity to the current fashion. (The Higher Learning, P. 285.)

Many a bad cause on the one hand has been camouflaged and made to appear good by shibboleths such as patriotism, efficiency, etc. This has happened to such an extent that even patriotism has been described as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." And on the other hand many a good cause has been damaged by mud splashing. Many a movement for social betterment has been branded with the stamp of socialism and killed. These tactics have been used freely in this campaign. Scarcely a week goes by but the federationists crown themselves with "Vision" "Intelligence" "Broad mindedness", "Patriotism", etc. It has been done to such an extent as to deceive even the very elect. Such arrogance! Patriotism indeed! If patriotism consists in lessening Catholic teaching; if it consists in lessening the strength of the only secure foundation of society; if it consists in minimizing the only force that can bring peace to a distracted economic world; if it consists in substituting modern pagan and materialistic teaching for Christianity, then surely the federationists are the very quintessence of patriotism. If, on the other hand, true patriotism consists in emphasizing the things that alone can check the headlong rush to perdition that obtains today: (President Farrand of Cornell University said recently in his inaugural address: "Our civilization is not only under indictment, it is fighting for very existence") if patriotism consists in giving society that which it needs most, the cementing force of Christianity; if patriotism consists in opposing the partial substitution of pagan and materialistic teaching, then the anti-federationists, the defenders of the college that is Catholic through and through are the real patriots, are the truly broad-minded and the ones "with vision."

It may be objected that the federation will not lessen the influence of the Catholic college. But how can this be reasonably maintained? The federation will lessen the number of College subjects taught by Catholic professors and the contention of the federationists looks like trying to prove that the part is equal or greater than the whole. We find it impossible to believe that descending from complete control of college work to running a dormitory and teaching a few subjects in the lower years will mean the same influence or an increased Catholic influence on the thoughts of our students.

From these considerations — pedagogical and religious — it would appear that the arts course given in the proposed university would be less desirable for our Catholic young men than the distinctively Catholic course now offered.

But what about the professional schools and scientific research? It is said that a large federated university would develop our resources, etc.

Is it necessary or advisable for us to give up our control of the arts work in order that this great imaginary university may materialize? Neither are we, nor are any of the other colleges keeping water from the mills of the professional schools of Dalhousie University.

Surely our staying out of the federation need not prevent the Carnegie Foundation endowing the professional schools and research departments of Dalhousie. It would seem that the best plan would be to endow Dalhousie and preserve its present system of administration. In the federation scheme the administration would not be so homogeneous and consequently there would be, probably, some inefficiency and loss from friction. Dalhousie has already shown its ability to manage its affairs well, and it is doubtful that the heterogeneous administration that would obtain under federation would be nearly so successful.

After our students have had a course in a thoroughly Catholic college then will they be better prepared to meet the dangers of secular teaching.

Again we say that the best way we can contribute to the social development of our country is to remain as we are.

Economic prosperity for the masses cannot be had without a public opinion that is christian, without a public opinion that gives to the many a fair share of the product of industry. Now this public opinion we have not today. And hence we believe that the greatest contribution Catholics can make to the economic prosperity of our country is to stand four square against the secularization of education and to develop our Catholic college as much as possible. We must not overemphasize any factor in life. We must give everything its due importance. There is little danger of research or science languishing from want of support, but there is grave danger of overemphasizing the material and underrating the spiritual. What the world needs most today is not efficiency, but fewer knockers and more boosters of Catholic education.

Our Catholic young men are entitled to the best. And the best is an independent St. F. X. We have seen that the "Efficient" college is not outside our reach — in a number of respects we already have the requirements. Even the Carnegie Report with its side draft towards merger, secularization, etc. characterizes St. F. X. as "a very genuine institution. Its courses appear sound, and its aims well defined and of high standard, etc." (Surely one might expect its own children not to call it any harsher names, than are given it by the stranger who is not in sympathy with its fundamental aims.)

Discontent may be divine; criticism is helpful — but there is a difference between criticism and assassination. The fact that there are effects in any institution is not always sufficient warrant for doing away with that institution. The attitude of some people towards our Catholic colleges reminds one of the Reformation; because of the defects of some churchmen they started to kill the Church itself in their respective countries. It may be just as dangerous to do away with the distinctively Catholic college — the main prop of the Church.

The existence of defects in an institution is not always a justification for killing the institution itself. For every criticism that is made of the Catholic college, criticism just as strong can be cited about the big university.

Here is a sample by F. M. Padleford of the University of Washington in School and Society for June 28, 1919: "It is mere truism to observe that during the last thirty years there has been a deplorable absence of intellectual enthusiasm among the undergraduates and nonprofessional students in our colleges and universities." Yet no reasonable person, with the exception of a few unbalanced people, advocate the assassination of our colleges and universities.

Our Catholic young men are entitled to the best: The best is an education that is scientific and christian. The best would be good common schools that are christian, good high schools that are christian, good liberal arts that are christian, good professional schools that are christian and good graduate schools that are christian. In Canada we cannot give the two latter at present, so we must be satisfied with the next best thing. But the authorities quoted and the facts as known to all prudent people, show that we can give a liberal arts course that is "sound". Moreover, it is unreasonable to assume that St. F. X. will not improve in the years to-come as it has done in the past. Would not then the giving up control of our college work be a step backwards, and away from the ideal? Surely we should not be faint hearted at the difficulties confronting us and give up some of the territory conquered. It would be treason to the past and to the future. If we do not hold on to what was given us and gotten at much sacrifice, future generations may arise to curse over our graves at our cowardice.

The welfare of the country demands that we defend one of the main sources of the truth that saves and that will bring peace and harmony into a distracted world — the college that is Catholic through and through.

Were not this Report already too long much might be said about the problems of discipline, of vocations to the priesthood, of the importance of homogeneity and harmony in the governing body of an institution of learning; and of the increased cost of education in the federation scheme; but these and many other disadvantages that would result from the federation are obvious to all.

Let us not forget the words of Bishop Shahan: "Shall we therefore abandon this field to the adversaries of religion of Jesus Christ, of the Catholic Church? Certainly not, no more than we have abandoned our Catholic faith to Henry VIII and John Knox, or primary education to our adversaries........."

........"You will go on enlarging your excellent Catholic school of higher studies, perfecting it in every useful way as time or opportunity, pressing need or noble generosity compel you. You will cherish it in your hearts as the best and most useful work to which you have yet put your hands........."

"Let no one say that the tide of modern thought, the impact of modern institutions, are against us, that we react in vain against all the world forces of evil and the tremendous drift of public opinion, saturated, so to speak, with ignorance of religion, with satanic malice in regard to it, or with an ineradicable temper of injustice where its interests are concerned. Even did we have no assurance of success, we should still struggle on, satisfied that we were doing logically and obediently the work God had set us in this time and place. We should be in the good company of our fathers and our fathers fathers, whose hearts could not forecast the present felicitous conditions of our holy religion as compared with the hopeless outlook of the early decades of the nineteenth century."

"One word on the two other important phases of the grave question before us, the necessity of higher education under Catholic auspices. Good leadership, sane and reliable, in our Catholic life is the crying need of the hour. How shall you obtain it in all parts of your beloved country without earnest and profound and sustained study, without a broad and solid grasp of history, a sure hold on right philosophy, a thorough understanding of the nature and uses of good government, of the false, but specious makeshifts daily put forth to deceive the ignorant and unsuspecting........."

"Do not say that we are a small people, remote from the great centres of New World population and activities. The history of education abounds with precedents of powerful schools established in places that seemed unpromising, but where in reality happily adapted to the views of Divine Providence. The peace, good order, simplicity, and regularity of smaller communities are no mean advantages, not to speak of the independence and self-respect which develop gradually in such schools and lend them a dignity all their own."


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