* *

Now we come to the application of the second lesson, the lesson of
mobilization, of team play. In the first place, no university is alive
where mobilization is limited to the Recorder's office. In a live
institution, regent, professor, student, janitor, each is a part of the
game and must feel that he is. He must feel that in its administration
the institution has learned the great lesson of direct and human
personal contact. Science, among all its triumphs, cannot include any
device for conveying a message from mind to mind or from heart to heart
half so good as the human voice and the human eye. Within the faculty,
this element of human cooperation should be reflected by the vitality of
the organism rather than by the complexity of the organization, which
may not be vital at all. Each member must feel that the general repute
is safeguarded by honest and intelligent standards, honestly and
intelligently administered. The university, like the country at large,
must make itself responsible for all of each and every student, his
bodily condition, for example, just as directly as his mental.

It will be recalled that one of my justifications for applying war
experiences to university conditions was the share which the college and
university men had in building up our supply of officers. If we study
why the college men made good officers, and make allowance for the fact
that it is the kind of man who goes to college who is likely to make a
good officer anyway, and all the other allowances we can think of, we
can't dodge the conclusion that there is something outside of the
college curriculum which has been an important factor in bringing about
the results. On the other hand, important as the other factors are, the
curriculum has had its share, and it is in my judgment a leading and
not always an adequately recognized share. The comfortable theory that
once he has settled down to something important the college
ne'er-do-well will suddenly blossom forth into a competent leader of men
didn't work out in practice. It may have happened here and there, but it
didn't happen as a general rule. In the fighting line, it was very
generally the man with a sound academic record, not necessarily the Phi
Beta Kappa lad, but the good scholar and active college citizen, the man
who had taken the trouble to learn things and learn people, who made the
best record. I naturally watched with particular interest the records of
m