Sumner, Phillips and Garrison were extremists, you may say; and the best traditions are not made by such. They are made by scholars, who lead retired lives and guide others by the power of thought. Very well; New England has had no more revered scholar, no more keen thinker than Emerson. Emerson was gentle, Emerson was dignified, and you will find Emerson a part of the Harvard tradition—one of its halls bears his name. So let us see what Emerson had to report about the Harvard of his time; how much credit he gives it for progress in the anti-slavery days. Writing in 1861, in “The Celebration of the Intellect,” Emerson said: “Harvard College has no voice in Harvard College, but State Street votes it down on every ballot. Everything will be permitted there, which goes to adorn Boston Whiggism—is it geology, astronomy, poetry, antiquities, art, rhetoric? But that which it exists for, to be a fountain of novelties out of heaven, a Delphos uttering warning and ravishing oracles to lift and lead mankind—that it shall not be permitted to do or to think of. On the contrary, every generosity of thought is suspect and has a bad name. And all the youths come out decrepit citizens; not a prophet, not a poet, not a daimon, but is gagged and stifled or driven away.” And precisely that is what we have to report about the Harvard of the time of capitalistic reaction, which is 1922. For thirteen years Harvard has been under the administration of a cultured corporation lawyer of Boston, who has generally carried out the politics of his State Street associates in all essential matters, and has preserved just as much reputation for liberalism as can be preserved—safely. A. Lawrence Lowell is not, like Nicholas Murray Butler, a climber and a toady; he could not be a climber, because he was born on a mountaintop, and there was no place to climb to—he could only stay where he was or descend. He belongs to the Lowell family, who are among the Boston Brahmins, and it would not occur to him that any millionaire could confer a favor upon Harvard University, or upon the president of Harvard University. On the other hand, it does occur to him that Harvard is a close corporation, a family affair of the vested interests of New England, which cover an enormous financial power with a decorous coating of refined exclusiveness.