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 Preface

A journalist, after completing a nationwide tour of American campuses,

noted, “At every one of the fourteen universities I visited, I was met with the
remark, ‘You have come to us at a critical moment. This university is just
now in a transition stage.’ ”1 It’s a statement that resonates with the
uncertainties and changes that college and university presidents face in 2011.
What may be surprising to contemporary readers is that the remark was made
a century earlier—in 1910—by Edwin Slosson when he was finishing the
fieldwork for his classic anthology, Great American Universities.
Whether 1910 or 2019, an element of continuity is that our colleges and
universities are constantly changing, both by accident and design. The
temptation is for each generation of academic leaders to consider its own time
to be the critical juncture. This historical myopia is especially evident to me
when the crises of today are seen as surpassing those of an earlier period—
especially in the recent past, such as 1981. One needs historical context to
counter the egocentrism of present college and university presidents. As one
who has been a faculty member and administrator at both endpoints in this
more than thirty-year span, my best estimate is that one reason the problems
of 1981 seem manageable, perhaps even quaint, today is that colleges and
universities survived a severe storm of financial and political problems
thanks to some remarkable displays of imaginative adjustment, academic soul
searching, and sound educational thinking. How bad were the good old days?
The years 1978 to 1981 were a time when the staid Carnegie Commission on
Higher Education made the sobering projection that about 25 percent of
American colleges and universities were soon going to cease operation. A
historical message, then, is that the problems facing American higher
education in the present day are not necessarily unprecedented in their
gravity. But this time around the insights and priorities that might have led
academic leaders to good solutions do not seem to be surfacing as well and
creatively as they did in 1981.
Troubling today is that for those who are seeking to understand and solve
the problems now facing colleges and universities, there does not seem much
inclination to seek genuine historical perspective about higher education as a
lens. For example, in November 2010 the Chronicle of Higher Education and
Inside Higher Ed reported that Yale University’s School of Management was
going to work with India’s Institute of Management at Kozhikode to train
university leaders.2 The M.B.A. was the model for setting higher education
aright. As such, there was little indication that in-depth historical analysis
would have an integral part in the kinds of readings and projects associated
with an M.B.A.-style curriculum. The problematic and unanswered question,
then, was what role the history of higher education ought to play in the
education of future academic leaders.
I resist invoking the academic adage attributed to George Santayana:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” My
hunch is that the real genesis of this bold claim was that a wise, pragmatic
senior warned some lazy sophomores, “If you don’t study for your History
101 exam, you will fail the course and will have to repeat it!” That sound
advice was not quite as earthshaking as Santayana’s dramatic version. My
modest argument is that colleges and universities are historic institutions—
and this is a characteristic that warrants careful consideration for those who
live, work, and even lead there. Consider once again the insights from a
century ago, as journalist Edwin Slosson (himself a chemist) observed about
the material and physical environment of higher education: “But it is
impossible to ignore history in dealing with the University of Pennsylvania.
One cannot get away from it. All the walls are covered with it. The buildings
are genealogical museums. Paintings, bas reliefs, inscriptions, windows,
relics, manuscripts, and similar memorabilia catch the attention of the visitor
wherever he goes.”3
 Most established American colleges and universities share this legacy of
architecture and artifacts. The irony is that often the most unhistorical offices
tend most to invoke historic motifs. Often it is the main administration
building that is home for the relics and paintings—even though few
presidents or board members have a deep grasp of the history of higher
education. Reasonable doubt about the efficacy of history is kindled as one
walks around and through a campus and pays attention to the people and
values that are honored in the memorial plaques and naming of buildings.
Sitting in the boardroom of a renovated historic administration building, the
gallery of presidential portraits often are underwhelming and uninspiring.
Why this lackluster impression? Perhaps it is because the patina of heritage
wears thin and exposes merely an accumulation of mediocre-quality oil
paintings of old white guys sitting in high-backed chairs, wearing academic
gowns with hoods and medallions that bring to mind lodge initiations rather
than serious ideas or excitement about education.
The good news is that in recent years a number of colleges and
universities have dared to revisit their heritage with fresh, critical eyes. At
Brown University in 2003 the president appointed a broad-based committee
of faculty, administrators, and undergraduate and graduate students to
investigate the university’s history “with regard to slavery and the
transatlantic slave trade”—an exploration that was indelibly linked to the
university’s namesake Brown family. This Steering Committee on Justice
spent three years researching and discussing the “complex historical,
political, legal and moral questions posed by any present-day confrontation
with past injustice.” It led to the creation of a memorial that was no less than
“a living site of memory, inviting reflection and fresh discovery without
provoking paralysis or shame.”4 What was refreshing about this project was
that it showed how the history of colleges and universities could be ongoing,
as a source of both renewal and rediscovery. It provided a welcome
alternative to a widespread tendency for institutional histories to avoid or
deny controversial episodes—and for present and future generations of the
campus community to gain strength and purpose from the informed research
and reflection.
In a similar vein, there are promising signs that historians who are writing
institutional histories are including and addressing characteristics that may
today be unflattering. A good example is James Axtell’s 2006 The Making of
Princeton University, a history that ranged from Woodrow Wilson’s
presidency up to the early twenty-first century.5 Axtell was remarkably
candid in noting that the Princeton of Wilson’s presidency was intolerant of
Jews and other religious minorities, as well as exclusive in its formal and
informal restrictions facing women, African Americans, and those from
modest income as students, as faculty, and as administrators. Yet the
important sequel is that over time Princeton confronted internally and
externally these biases—and learned from them, ultimately and continually
changing so that Princeton enhanced both its academic stature and its
appropriate commitment to equity and social justice. Brown and Princeton,
then, have provided models for harnessing heritage in ways that are
simultaneously thoughtful and useful for present institutional policies and
practices.
Resurrecting history to face all dimensions of the institutional past will, of
course, require initiative and commitment, especially from a president and
other academic leaders, in conjunction with grassroots ideas and energy from
students and alumni. And, although Brown and Princeton have led by
example in showing how a college or university might replace superficial
celebration of the past with a complex, timely presentation of institutional
heritage, it will not necessarily be easy for other institutions to follow suit.
This is because there are numerous problems facing even those presidents,
board members, and alumni groups who wish to keep history vital in higher
education. One disturbing development is logistical. Colleges and universities
have been losing their institutional memory because dedicated,
knowledgeable archivists often now have less and less resources, professional
staff, and space for preserving the artifacts and records of campus life,
especially in the realm of student culture. The justification for this shift in
mission is that in an “information age” campus archives have been required
to devote increasing time and resources to serve as custodians of official
records and institutional files, in both electronic and paper form. Meanwhile,
photographs, yearbooks, student posters and publications, sample student
term papers, examinations, diaries, and memoirs from recent years have a
shrinking place in the institutional memory.6
The bricks and mortar of colleges and universities are impressive yet
inconsistent in their ability to instill respect for the past. The emphasis on
building and expansion is central to American higher education. One
journalist noted in 1985 that more than 75 percent of campus buildings had
been constructed in the preceding twenty years, leading him to conclude that
“the true campus symbol for the tumultuous decade of the 1960s wasn’t a
picket line; it was a construction crane.”7 This building tradition has meant
that American colleges and universities are simultaneously major sources of
historic preservation and major destroyers of historic buildings, as illustrated
by George Washington University, which razed late eighteenth-century row
houses to create space for its office-retail-complex enterprise.8
Transformations in campus architecture are symptomatic of changes—and
problems—in American higher education. A century ago nationally famous
architectural firms competed for the honor of being selected to design and
build handsome campus environments. In recent decades, however, the trend
has been toward what historian Gay Brechlin called the drift from “Classical
Dreams to Concrete Realities.”9 By the 1950s campus construction at public
universities often was determined by state agency low-bid contract
guidelines. Today campus architecture is large but often neither inspired nor
inspiring. The American campus has become a prisoner of its own success
and growth. A century ago it was praised as a beautiful, amenable place to
walk and visit; today it is more likely to be about the hardest place for a
visitor to find parking—and sometimes so large that students are not able to
reach one side of the campus from the other during class breaks. A football
stadium and basketball arena used to be built adjacent to one another in the
heart of the campus, similar to metropolitan train stations. Illustrative of the
transformation of the American campus away from being an integrative,
cohesive environment in the twenty-first century is that campus design is
more likely to resemble the logic of airports, with athletic complexes built far
away from the campus core.
The most disturbing aspect of the historical myopia of American higher
education today is the belief by presidents and boards that, if only they had
more money, then their institutions would be great. Equally plausible is that,
with more money, the institutions would be merely larger, more complex,
and less coherent. When gauged by the standard of the history of higher
education from the seventeenth century to the present, the problems are more
those of confused purpose than lack of resources. I gain reinforcement for
this view from one of my favorite authors and books—the late Clark Kerr’s
The Uses of the University. Kerr had no fewer than five opportunities to write
a new preface in which he could defend or amend the insights he made in his
original work. In his final preface, published in 2001, he concluded that
American higher education in the twenty-first century had become uncertain
and unclear in its direction and mission.
One manifestation of this institutional malaise has been shown during the
past decade in the conventional wisdom of college admissions offices,
especially at academically selective institutions. Annual increases in college
enrollments nationwide have been accompanied by an even greater growth in
the number of applications for undergraduate admissions that colleges
receive. It is indicative of what has been called “application inflation,” which
college presidents ascribe to the belief that “bigger numbers mean better
students.” As Eric Hoover has questioned, however, where are the signs that
college officials have considered “When is enough enough?”10 Evidently a
number of colleges gain reflected glory in their record for denying even
highly qualified applicants. It is a syndrome that is commensurate with the
research arms race in pursuit of federal grants—pursuits that at some point
become counterproductive and dubious in educational propriety. Illustrative
of the unfortunate abuses of the syndrome is its encouragement of indulgent
consumerism. High school seniors, for example, tend to be encouraged to
apply to ten to twenty undergraduate programs—a behavior made
increasingly easy by the availability of internet on-line common application
forms. In addition to inflating and clogging the admissions and selection
channels, this collective behavior most likely favors students who already
have advantages in terms of college counselors and educated parents. It may
help some colleges buoy their statistics and ratios in such rankings as those
published by U.S. News and World Report. On balance, however, it does little
to increase genuine access, choice, and affordability to students from
underserved constituencies. It represents a peculiar, furtive behavior on the
part of established colleges and universities that begs the question of
significant educational issues.
How should we gauge the most significant historical changes that will
have implications for the twenty-first century? I think that universities,
contrary to a stereotype of being stodgy and belatedly mimicking companies
and commercial organizations, have often led the way in an organizational
transformation that is consequential for American life. The university model,
in sum, has been increasingly attractive as a structural and legal arrangement
for what once would have been categorized as commercial ventures. The
truism used to be, “Why can’t a college be run more like a business?” On
closer inspection one finds that pragmatic entrepreneurs have discovered that
the smart money opts for a business to be run more like a college—or, more
specifically, like a university.11 Often overlooked is that, in legal and
technical terms, all the designation “nonprofit” means is that an organization
does not offer stocks and dividends to investors. Nonprofit status is relatively
silent on matters of compensation and earnings. It is relatively easy to gain
status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt entity. Hence, any enterprise even
remotely related to educational, scientific, and service-oriented activities has
a good chance to qualify as a privileged nonprofit entity. This has certainly
been an attractive option for numerous enterprises associated with health care
services and commercial applications of research and development. To
suggest the flexibility of this legal arrangement, one might consider that even
the National Collegiate Athletic Association enjoys nonprofit standing,
despite its highly lucrative and commercial ventures into broadcasting and
spectator sports. As a recent Stanford University study concluded, when it
comes to gaining nonprofit status, the American model is that “Anything
Goes!” The downside has been that universities are less distinctive and less
special in how various levels of government treat them.
If the institutional conduct in inflating admissions applications were not
sufficiently suspect regarding college and university priorities, events of the
past decade involving endowments and investments have suggested what
truly is a world turned upside down. Or, stated another way, it has been a
strange world in which university values about stewardship have been
inverted so as to be wrong-headed. Almost twenty years ago Yale’s chief
investment officer, David Swensen, wrote the influential book Pioneering
Portfolio Management—with the interesting subtitle “An unconventional
approach to institutional investment.”12 According to Andrew Delbanco’s 14
May 2009 essay review in the New York Review of Books, Swensen’s
principal case to his professional academic investment managers was that he
had discovered no less than the formula to assure university endowments
high yields with low risks.13 Indeed, this worked—for a while. Perusing the
annual editions of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s special almanac year-
by-year over the past decade, one does indeed find a three- or four-year run in
the middle of the decade when numerous universities reported annual
enrollment growth of 10 percent, 15 percent, and even 20 percent. But look
again—by 2008 and 2009 the double-digit numbers are intact, except that by
these years they had turned from gains to losses. What is ironic in terms of
sound academic values is that philanthropy and higher education, including
the wise and sound stewardship of endowments, evidently has come to mean
in the twenty-first century that it is imprudent for a university to spend 10
percent or 15 percent per year on academic improvement and enhancements
to assure quality and affordability for students. Evidently, however, it is all
right—or, at least, understandable and forgivable—for the same institution to
lose 10 percent to 30 percent on its endowment through risky investment
strategies. Are our universities off course in their gyroscope of values and
priorities and goals when it is acceptable to lose a large part of the
endowment due to greed and risk-taking investments but off base and
spendthrift when “investing” in the present and future by spending
substantially more than the customary albeit unworthy limit of 5 percent
spend-down per year to solve problems and provide solutions to educational
concerns? That is a dilemma of endowments and philanthropy for American
higher education in the twenty-first century that calls out for historical
complexity and context to shape present and future deliberations. One
imperative for this brand of informed, rigorous self-scrutiny of development
and endowment policies is the sobering fact, according to the New York
Times in November 2010, that universities will be challenged to reconsider
“business as usual” because donors have retrenched. One reason for this
change in giving behavior is evidently due to a loss of confidence in colleges
and universities, with the result that “donors, especially major donors, ask
tougher questions about institutions than they did when they trusted
leadership throughout society.”14
The kinds of enterprising organizational behavior found in admissions,
fund-raising, and endowments have yet another, related significant
consequence for the blurring line between educational and commercial
activities in American higher education. An Achilles heel in large-scale
academic research is that the private or commercial sector, as represented by
pharmaceutical companies, has been able to evade a great deal of expense
and risk. That situation has been allowed to persist because federally
sponsored research usually directed toward university-based research centers
has been well funded, leaving campus-based scientists to take on the burden
of expensive, time-consuming, and precarious basic research. But the
indefinite, generous support of campus research has become increasingly
uncertain and fragile. Over the long run this cobbled relationship of
corporations and campus has become harmful or at least skewed, in that it
obligates federal resources to projects that might be directed elsewhere within
higher education for other goals.15 The most troublesome consequence is that
these dynamics propel universities to act increasingly as if they were
commercial rather than educational institutions.
Writing a new final chapter for a third edition of the book was a welcome
task. It was also challenging because writing history close at hand has
peculiar pitfalls. In this case, the recent past dealing with issues and
developments in American higher education since 2010 brings into historical
context a concentration of significant issues framed by dis cussions found in
abundant contemporary documents and data. After immersing myself in
primary and secondary sources, I came to the observation that the years from
about 2010 through 2018 have been in large measure “opportunity lost” for
established institutions to anticipate problems. This includes a tendency for
many college and university boards and presidents to allow innovations to
turn, over time, into imitations. And they have paid dearly for failing to heed
storm warnings of deep campus schisms. In contrast to this myopia, some
academic constituents have shown remarkable innovation and resilience at
the grassroots of teaching and learning, philanthropy, and financial aid, along
with numerous programs committed to equity. I hope that the new final
chapter, chapter 10, by focusing on prominence and problems, brings
attention to fresh initiatives and unfinished works in progress.
Since some who are influential inside and outside colleges and universities
have persisted in arguing that higher education should be run like a business,
I have taken their message to heart. It has meant that when I undertook
writing a new chapter in 2018 for this third edition, my readings and research
leaned increasingly toward the economics of higher education. This has
included attention to where the money comes from and where it goes, both at
the campus level and at the state and federal levels associated with higher
education as an enterprise.
College and university presidents and their boards of trustees who have
emphasized branding and commercialization brought my focus back to
activities intended to generate revenues, such as on-line programs, research
parks, product endorsements, and stadium construction. This strategy often
has included reliance on big-time intercollegiate athletics as a source of
prestige and revenues. When I started writing seriously about college sports
as part of American higher education as a graduate student in 1969, I
frequently was met with discouraging words on the grounds that the topic
was marginal and relatively unimportant. I persisted in writing about the
history and economics of college sports for several decades, both as an
informed advocate and fair critic. By 2010 I thought I had exhausted the topic
and that numerous commissions and panels finally would lead to fundamental
reform. I was mistaken on both counts, as intercollegiate athletics has surged
in the importance and publicity it engenders in both positive and negative
ways. A puzzle for me is why few American colleges or universities have
dared to connect image and reality by acknowledging that intercollegiate
athletics has become a central mission of the institution.
Preoccupation with commercial enterprises and consumerism has
perpetuated the belief by leaders that the problems of American colleges and
universities are primarily financial ones. An implication is that more money
would solve problems and put higher education aright. I have taken this logic
into account to analyze the financing of higher education, with emphasis on
disparities. I found that some of the most severe cases of scandals,
professional misconduct, presidential firings, and uncivil campus behavior
have taken place at academic institutions that are well endowed and have
abundant revenues. In addition to lack of money, problems facing colleges
and universities deal with essential principles and historic commitments.
Issues of social justice, equity, educational opportunity, affordability, an
inclusive heritage, and education for citizenship are still central in going to
college in American life of the twenty-first century.
I have resurrected from sixty years ago the question (and challenge) posed
by John Gardner: “Can we be equal and excellent, too?” Gender, race,
ethnicity, religion, and social class still call for attention as part of American
colleges and universities. In the latest edition of this book, I hope that a
combination of serious research, thoughtful reading, and informed discussion
will remind a new generation of readers that history still matters in shaping
the appropriate character of American higher education.
 Acknowledgments

I’ve been fortunate to receive help from many colleagues while working on
this book. Geraldine Joncich Clifford, professor emeritus at the University of
California, Berkeley, has been my mentor since 1969. Frederick Rudolph,
professor emeritus at Williams College, has shared materials from his own
projects dealing with the history of American colleges and universities.
Professor Jack Schuster, Claremont Graduate University, started talking with
me about this topic when we both were graduate students at Berkeley—a
conversation that has been going for three decades. Scholars who frequently
gave me insights on higher education include James Axtell of the College of
William and Mary; Thomas Dyer, Jr., of the University of Georgia; John T.
Casteen III, of the University of Virginia; Bruce Leslie of the State
University of New York, Brockport; Kathryn Spoehr of Brown University;
Lawrence Wiseman of the College of William and Mary; James W. Thelin of
the University of Tennessee; Peter C. Thelin of West Valley Community
College; and Alan W. Blazar of the Marquandia Society for Studies in
History and Literature. The late Howard Bowen of Claremont Graduate
School encouraged me to write about the history of colleges and universities.
Donald Warren, my trusted dean at Indiana University and fellow historian of
education, has long supported my work. Edward Kifer of the University of
Kentucky patiently read chapter drafts, with concern for my understanding of
statistical analysis and public policy as part of the historical record.
My writing has benefited from longtime membership in two groups: the
History of Education Society and the Association for the Study of Higher
Education (ASHE). I owe special thanks to fellow members who have
compared research notes over many years. These include Linda Eisenmann of
the University of Massachusetts, Boston; Maresi Nerad of Berkeley and the
University of Washington; George Keller; Katherine C. Reynolds of the
University of South Carolina; Jan Lawrence of the University of Michigan;
Ann Austin of Michigan State University; Jana Nidiffer of the University of
Michigan; Edward McClellan of Indiana University; and Hugh Hawkins of
Amherst College.
Graduate students with whom I have worked demonstrate the adage that
ultimately the teacher becomes the taught. At the College of William and
Mary, Marsha Van Dyke Krotseng co-authored numerous articles with me
and contributed original scholarship on governors and higher education.
Barbara K. Townsend, Louise Robertson, Jane Minto Bailey, Robert Seal,
Bill Wilson, Deborah DiCroce, Elizabeth Crowther, and Todd Cockrell were
research assistants on various aspects of higher education’s history. When I
was teaching at Indiana University, David Campaigne briefed me on all
aspects of academe, literally ranging from A to Z (athletics to zoology).
Gerald St. Amand kept me posted on contemporary higher-education issues.
Gayle Williams educated me on religion in American colleges and
universities. Doctoral students at the University of Kentucky—Amy E.
Wells, Eric Moyen, Robin Geiger, Chris Beckham, Dexter Alexander,
Richard Trollinger, and Jason Edwards—have been research assistants and
co-authors on a variety of publications. The original contributions that all
these have made in their own scholarly works provide a good sign of vitality
for teaching and research about higher education.
One reason I was able to complete writing this book was the generous
support provided by the University of Kentucky in the 2000 – 2001 academic
year when I was named University Research Professor. I am grateful to
Professor Alan DeYoung for having nominated me for this honor, and to
Vice President James Boling and Kathy Stanwix-Hay of the University of
Kentucky Research Foundation, who were advocates for my book project. I
owe special thanks to Vice President Wendy Baldwin and to Dean James
Cibulka, Associate Dean Robert Shapiro, and to Professor Jeffery Bieber of
the University of Kentucky’s College of Education for providing funding for
editing and indexing expenses.
I wish to thank the following individuals and institutions for their kind
permission to reproduce original sources as illustrations: Martha Mitchell of
Brown University’s Archives and Special Collections; Craig Kridel of the
University of South Carolina’s Museum of Education and its Hawley Higher
Education Postcard Collection; Susan Snyder of the University of California,
Berkeley’s Bancroft Library; Mary Cory of Illini Media Company
Publications and The Illio yearbook of the University of Illinois; Stacy
Gould, university archivist of the College of William and Mary’s Department
of Special Collections; Daria D’Arienzo, head of Special Collections and
Archives at Amherst College; and Hilary Johnson of Time Pix and the Time
and Life Picture Corporation for the covers of Life magazine; and MCA
Home Video, Inc., for the 1932 Marx Brothers movie poster. Terry
Birdwhistell and Tom Rosko of the University of Kentucky Libraries have
helped me with numerous questions about campus archives, oral histories,
and special collections.
For the first edition, Sharon Thelin-Blackburn read chapter manuscripts,
with attention to improving my transitions. Dan Vantreese, director of
graphics for the College of Education at the University of Kentucky, excelled
at taking care of technical arrangements for the book illustrations. Mary V.
Yates skillfully copyedited the manuscript. Alexa Selph drafted the index.
Jacqueline Wehmueller, executive editor at the Johns Hopkins University
Press, combined expertise and support at all stages of the project.
I am especially grateful to Ashleigh Elliott McKown of Johns Hopkins
University Press for her encouragement and expertise in making the second
edition come to fruition as a timely part of American higher education in the
twenty-first century.
Starting in 1988, I have had the honor of being a Johns Hopkins
University Press author. With this project involving a new, third edition,
Editorial Director Greg Britton has given me advice and encouragement. I
especially appreciate the patient support from him and his JHUP colleagues
and staff. Assistant Editor Catherine Goldstead has been thoughtful in
working with me on all phases of the manuscript. Jacqueline Wehmueller,
with whom I have worked on JHUP books and projects for thirty years, once
again provided commentary and insights. Juliana McCarthy, managing editor,
and Robert M. Brown, assistant production editor, were responsible for
copyediting and production. Hilary Jacqmin, Kathryn Marguy, and Morgan
Shahan worked on various aspects of marketing and promotion. I am grateful
to the JHUP team for their oversight and excellence in bringing the third
edition to life.
In drafting the new final chapter for the third edition, I continued to rely
on colleagues I have cited earlier for their insights that shaped the first and
second editions. I am grateful for the fresh commentary associated with the
third edition provided by Michael A. Olivas of the University of Houston,
William Tierney of the University of Southern California, Katherine
Chaddock of the University of South Carolina, Bruce Kimball of The Ohio
State University, Stanley Katz of Princeton University, Bruce Leslie of
SUNY-Brockport, James Axtell of the College of William and Mary, Richard
Trollinger of Centre College, Charles Clotfelter of Duke University, Luther
Spoehr of Brown University, Marybeth Gasman of the University of
Pennsylvania, Linda Eisenmann of Wheaton College, Margaret Clements of
Indiana University, Terry Birdwhistell of the University of Kentucky,
Dorothy Finnegan of the College of William and Mary, Christian Anderson
of the University of South Carolina, Ralph Crystal of the University of
Kentucky, Bennett Boggs of the National Conference of State Legislatures,
and Gerald St. Amand. Jonathan Imber of Wellesley College, who is editor of
the scholarly journal Society, provided a forum for my articles about higher
education’s recent trends. I owe special thanks to Kim Nehls, executive
director of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, for having
supported my work at ASHE conferences over several years.
History is, of course, about change and mortality. I accept that and note
with great sadness the deaths of dear colleagues who assisted me in my
scholarship over many years: Thomas Dyer, Jr., of the University of Georgia;
James Medoff of Harvard University, who also was my college classmate and
friend at Brown University; Frederick Rudolph of Williams College; Hugh
Hawkins of Amherst College; Clifford Adelman of the U.S. Department of
Education and the Institute of Higher Education Policy; J. Douglas Toma of
the University of Georgia; Grady Bogue of the University of Tennessee; Jack
Quinlan of Pomona College; Cameron Fincher of the University of Georgia;
Barbara K. Townsend of the University of Missouri, who was my first
doctoral advisee at the College of William and Mary; David Underdown,
who was Sterling Professor of History at Yale and for whom I served as
research assistant as an undergraduate when we both were at Brown
University; and George Keller. I also mourn the loss of several of my
mentors from the University of California, Berkeley: Harold L. Hodgkinson,
Martin Trow, Clark Kerr, Henry F. May, Sanford Elberg, Lawrence Levine,
Carlo Cipolla, and Earl F. Cheit.
Editors Scott Jaschik, Douglas Lederman, and Sarah Bray of Inside
Higher Ed have been critical analysts and encouraging editors for my op-ed
essays on higher-education topics related to the third edition. Editor Kalpana
Jain of The Conversation invited me to write a lengthy essay about the
legacies of California higher education since 1960. The resultant piece,
published in November 2017, allowed me to research themes that were
central to the third edition’s chapter 10.
Some authors complain that writing is difficult. Not me. Thanks to these
many thoughtful colleagues, I have enjoyed writing this book. I hope they
enjoy reading it.
 Introduction
Historians and Higher Education

A beleaguered public-relations officer at a White House press conference

once fended off a reporter’s tough question with the arch quip, “Hey, that’s
history!” The implication was that placing an issue in the historical domain
destined it to the dreary insignificance associated with obsolescence. For
politicians and journalists, it effectively closed the case. And since American
higher education today is a formidable modern enterprise, academic leaders
can easily overlook its past. However, my response is markedly different. For
me, the discussion of timely higher-education topics starts—not stops—with
history.
Colleges and universities are historical institutions. They may suffer
amnesia or may have selective recall, but ultimately heritage is the lifeblood
of our campuses. I take my cue from a passage in a 1963 Harvard admissions
brochure sent out to prospective undergraduate applicants. Its succinct insight
was that “wealth, like age, does not make a university great. But it helps.”
That candid observation was bolstered by some thoughtful reflection. The
admissions brochure elaborated: “Obviously age does not guarantee
excellence. It may produce simply smug somnolence and hardened arteries.
But the University has grown with the country. It has maintained over three
centuries an extraordinary vitality and a tough-minded awareness of changing
conditions. Its ability to survive and grow strong over these three troubled
centuries and its deep roots in the American past have given it an unusual
mixture of perspective, confidence, and continuity of purpose.”1
 I find this to be a healthy attitude for approaching the history of higher
education. In this book I will introduce the topic by relating some stories that
I hope will prompt readers to think historically about events whose outcomes
were neither clear nor certain to the participants when the events were taking
place. The aim is to gently upset some conventional notions about how
colleges and universities have developed and behaved, especially in such
volatile matters as institutional costs and effectiveness; admissions and
access; and the character of the curriculum and extracurriculum. This
undertaking will mean exhuming forgotten facts and overlooked data to
persuade readers to suspend contemporary notions about academic prestige as
well as academic problems.
History does matter. Even the basic facts—names, numbers, and dates—
are subject to contemporary confusion and debate. At the inauguration of a
college president, institutional representatives usually line up according to the
age of their respective institutions, with seniority conferring the privilege of
marching at the front of the academic procession. Seldom does anyone in
Europe question the right of the delegate from the University of Bologna to
lead the procession, because, after all, it was founded in the thirteenth
century. Nor do many representatives from colleges in the United States have
the audacity or ignorance to step in front of Harvard, with its charter of 1636.
After that, however, things get a little more tense when, for example, the
delegate from Hampden-Sydney cuts in line in front of Brown University’s
representative. How does a historian resolve the dispute as to whether both
were chartered in 1764?2
Consider the recent dispute between two colleges as to which had the right
to use a historic name. In 1996, Trenton State College announced that
henceforth it would call itself the College of New Jersey. This was the
original name for what is now Princeton University. Although Princeton had
not used that title for over a century, it “filed trademark applications to try to
retain rights to the name and strip it from Trenton State College.”3 This was
no trifle, as Princeton’s vice president for public affairs explained in a letter
to the editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The only college president to sign the Declaration of Independence was

 John Witherspoon, from the College of New Jersey. The first meeting ever
of the New Jersey State Legislature took place 220 years ago this summer
on the campus of the College of New Jersey. The only U.S. Presidents
educated in New Jersey, James Madison and Woodrow Wilson, were
students at the College of New Jersey. The first intercollegiate football
game was played between two New Jersey teams, including one wearing
the orange colors of the College of New Jersey.
Much important U.S., New Jersey, and collegiate history took place at
the College of New Jersey. So it is not surprising that Trenton State
College wishes to wrap itself in that history by taking over a name that, for
150 years, was the name of what is now Princeton University. We are
proud of our history and proud of our original name, and we will do
everything we can to prevent someone else from taking it from us.
In its efforts to improve quality, we wish Trenton State every success,
as we do all other colleges and universities in New Jersey. But we hope
the trustees of Trenton State will proceed under a name of their own, not
under ours. At a minimum, if they decide to change let them think about
becoming the College for New Jersey, not the College of New Jersey, and
leave our history to us.4

Eventually the two institutions reached an agreement to allow Trenton

State to call itself the College of New Jersey. Soon thereafter, the “new”
College of New Jersey asserted its heritage with a preamble that had
Princeton’s tone, but fleshed out with different facts: “At the College of New
Jersey, you will find that traditions are important. The college’s history
reaches back to 1855. It was established by the state legislature as the Normal
School, New Jersey’s first, and the nation’s ninth, teacher training school.
The school flourished in the latter 1800s and the first baccalaureate program
was established in 1925. This change marked the beginning of TCNJ’s
transition to a four-year college.”5 Each institution had a different story for
the same name. Both cases demonstrated that justifiable institutional pride in
the past was essential for purpose and confidence in the present.
From time to time presidents and trustees at colleges and universities face
pressure from politicians to alter their institutional history because of its
Another random document with
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profession on practically the same level as the only three that to us have a
level at all, namely, the Army, the Navy, and the Service diplomatic or
ministerial of the State?
To Browne, therefore, when I finally climbed down from my caravan into
the soaking grass that awaited me at the bottom and found him breakfasting
alone, the others being scattered about in the condition of feverish yet sterile
activity that is characteristic of caravan life, I behaved in a manner perfectly
suitable applied to an ordinary pastor who should begin to talk to me with an
air of equality—I was, that is, exceedingly stiff.
He pushed the coffee-pot toward me: I received it with a cold bow. He
talked of the rain in the night and his fears that my wife had been disturbed
by it: I replied with an evasive shrug. He spoke cheerily of the brightness of
the morning, and the promise it held of a pleasant day: I responded with
nothing more convivial than Perhaps or Indeed—at this moment I cannot
recall which. He suggested that I should partake of a thick repulsive
substance he was eating which he described as porridge and as the work of
Jellaby, and which was, he said, extraordinarily good stuff to march on: I
sternly repressed a very witty retort that occurred to me and declined by
means of a monosyllable. In a word, I was stiff.
Judge then of my vexation and dismay when I discovered not ten minutes
later by the merest accident while being taken by Mrs. Menzies-Legh to a
farm in order that I might carry back the vegetables she proposed to buy at it,
that the young gentleman not only has a title but is the son of one of the
greatest of English families. He is a younger son of the Duke of Hereford,
that wealthy and well-known nobleman whose sister was not considered (on
the whole) unworthy to marry our Prince of Grossburg-Niederhausen, and
far from being mere Browne in the way in which Jellaby was and remained
mere Jellaby, the young gentleman I had been deliberately discouraging was
Browne indeed, but with the transfiguring addition of Sigismund and Lord.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, with the same careless indifference I had observed in
her husband, spoke of him briefly as Sidge. He was, it appeared, a distant
cousin of her husband’s. I had to question her closely and perseveringly
before I could extract these details from her, she being apparently far more
interested in the question as to whether the woman at the farm would not
only sell us vegetables but also a large iron vessel in which to stew them. Yet
it is clearly of great importance first, that one should be in good company,
and secondly, that one should be told one is in it, because if one is not told
how in the world is one to know? And my hearers will, I am sure,
sympathize with me in the disagreeable situation in which I found myself,
for never was there, I trust and believe, a more polite man than myself, a
man more aware of what he owes to his own birth and breeding and those of
others, a man more careful to discharge punctiliously all the little (but so
important) nameless acts of courtesy where and whenever they are due, and
it greatly distressed me to think I had unwittingly rejected the advances of
the nephew of an aunt whom the entire German nation agrees to address on
her envelopes as Serene.
While I bore back the iron vessel called a stew-pot which Mrs. Menzies-
Legh had unfortunately persuaded the farmer’s wife to sell her, and also a
basket (in my other hand) full of big, unruly vegetables such as cabbages,
and smooth, green objects, unknown to me but resembling shortened and
widened cucumbers, that would not keep still and continually rolled into the
road, I wished that at least I had eaten the porridge. It could not have killed
me, and it was churlish to refuse. The manner of my refusal had made the
original churlishness still more churlish. I made up my mind to seek out
Lord Sigismund without delay and endeavour by a tactful word to set
matters right between us, for one of my principles is never to be ashamed of
acknowledging when I have been in the wrong; and so much preoccupied
was I deciding on the exact form the tactful word was to take that I had
hardly time to object to the nature and size of my burdens. Besides, I was
beginning to realize that burdens were going to be my fate. There was little
hope of escaping them, since the other members of the party bore similar
ones and seemed to think it natural. Mrs. Menzies-Legh at that moment was
herself carrying a bundle of little sticks for lighting fires, tied up in a big red
handkerchief the farmer’s wife had sold her, and also a parcel of butter, and
she walked along perfectly indifferent to the odd figure she would cut and
the wrong impression she would give should we by any chance meet any of
the gentlefolk of the district. And one should always remember, I consider,
when one wishes to let one’s self go, that the world is very small, and that it
is at least possible that the last person one would choose as a witness may be
watching one through an apparently deserted hedge with his eyeglasses up.
Besides, there is no pleasure in behaving as though you were a servant, and
old James certainly ought to have accompanied us and carried our purchases
back. Of what use is a man servant, however untidy, who is nowhere to be
seen when washing up begins or shopping takes place? Being forced to
pause a moment and put the stew-pot down in order to rest my hand (which
ached) I inquired somewhat pointedly of my companion what she supposed
the inhabitants of Storchwerder would say if they could see us at that
moment.
“They wouldn’t say anything,” she replied—but her smile is not equal to
her sister’s because she has only one dimple—“they’d faint.”
“Exactly,” said I meaningly; adding, after a pause sufficient to point my
words, “and very properly.”
“Dear Baron,” said she, pretending to look all innocent surprise and
curling up her eyelashes, “do you think it is wrong to carry stew-pots? You
mustn’t carry them, then. Nobody must ever do what they think wrong.
That’s what is called perjuring one’s soul—a dreadfully wicked thing to do.
Do you suppose I would have you perjure yours for the sake of a miserable
stew-pot? Put it down. Don’t touch the accursed thing. Leave it in the ditch.
Hang it on the hedge. I’ll send Sidge for it.”
Send Sidge? At once I snatched it up again, remarking that what Lord
Sigismund could fetch I hoped Baron von Ottringel could carry; to which
she made no answer, but a faint little sound as we resumed our journey came
from behind her motor veil, whether of approval and acquiescence or
disapproval and contradiction I cannot say, for there was nothing, on looking
at her as she
 “Dear Baron,” said she, “do you think it is wrong to carry stew-pots?”

walked beside me, to go on except the tip of a slightly inquiring nose and the
tip of a slightly defiant chin and the downward curve of the row of
ridiculously long eyelashes that were on the side next to me.
When we got back to the camp we found it in precisely the same
condition in which we had left it—that is, in confusion. Every one seemed to
be working very hard, and nothing seemed to be different from what it was a
full hour before. Indeed, hours seem to have strangely little effect in
caravaning: even hours and hours have little; and it is only when you get to
hours and hours and hours that you see a change. In our preparations each
morning for departure it always appeared to me that they would never have
ended but for a sudden desperate unanimous determination to break them off
and go.
The two young girls who had not appeared the previous night when I
retired to rest had at last, as Menzies-Legh would say, turned up. They had
done this, I gathered, early in the morning, having slept with their governess
at an inn in Wrotham, she being a discreet person who preferred not to
search in rain and darkness for that which when found might not be nice.
She had arrived after breakfast, handed over her charges, and taken her
departure; and the young girls as I at once saw were not young girls at all,
but that nondescript creature with a thick plait down its back and a
disconcerting way of staring at one that we in Germany describe as
Backfisch and the English, I am told, allude to as flapper.
Lord Sigismund was cleaning boots, seated on the edge of a table in his
shirt sleeves with these two nondescripts standing in a row watching him,
and I was greatly touched by observing that the boot he was actually
engaged upon at the moment of our approach was one of Edelgard’s.
This was magnanimity. More than ever was I sorry about the porridge. I
hastily put down the stew-pot and the basket and hurried across to him.
“Pray allow me,” I said, snatching up another boot that stood on the table
at his side and plunging a spare brush into the blacking.
“That one’s done,” said he, pipe in mouth.
“Ah, yes—I beg your pardon. Are these——?”
I took up another pair, with some diffidence, for the done ones and the
undone ones had a singular resemblance to each other.
“No. But you’d better take off your coat, Baron—it’s hot work.”
So I did. And much relieved to hear by his tone that he bore me no ill will
I joined him on the edge of the table; and if any one had told me a week
before that a day was at hand when I should clean boots I would, without
hesitation,
 Thus, as it were, with blacking, did I cement my friendship with Lord Sigismund

have challenged him to fight, the extremity of the statement’s incredibleness

leaving me no choice but to believe it a deliberate insult.
Thus, as it were with blacking, did I cement my friendship with Lord
Sigismund. I think he thought me a thoroughly good fellow who was only,
like so many people, a little stiff at breakfast, as I sat there helping him, my
hat pushed back off my forehead, one leg swinging, and while I brushed and
blackened chatting cheerfully about the inferior position the clergy occupy to
the German eye. I am sure he was interested, for he paused several times in
his work and looked at me over his spectacles with much attention. As for
the two nondescripts, they never took their exceedingly round and
unblinking eyes off me for an instant.
 CHAPTER VI

I T was twelve o’clock before we left Grib’s (or Grip’s) Common, lurching
off it by another grassy lane down into the road in the direction of
Mereworth, and leaving, as we afterward discovered, several portions of
our equipment behind us.
“What a lovely, sparkling world!” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, coming and
walking beside me.
I was struggling with the tempers of my very obstinate horse, so could
only gasp a brief assent.
The road was narrow, and wound along hard and smooth between hedges
she seemed to find attractive, for every few yards she stopped to pull
something green out of them and take it along with her. The heavy rain in the
night had naturally left things wet, and there being a bright sun the drops on
the blades of grass and on the tips of the leaves could not help sparkling, but
there was nothing remarkable in that, and I would not have noticed it if she
had not looked round with such apparent extreme delight and sniffed in the
air as if she were in a first-class perfumery shop Unter den Linden where
there really are things worth sniffing. Also she appeared to think there was
something very wonderful about the sky, which was just the ordinary blue
one has a right to expect in summer sprinkled over with the usual number of
white fine-weather clouds, for she gazed up at that too, and evidently with
the greatest pleasure.
“Schwärmerisch,” said I to myself; and was internally slightly amused.
My hearers will agree with me that such raptures are well enough in a
young girl in a white gown, with blue eyes and the washed-out virginal
appearance one does not dislike at eighteen before Love the Artist has
pounced on it and painted it pink, and they will also, I think, agree that the
older and married women must take care to be at all times quiet. Ejaculations
of a poetic or ecstatic nature should not, as a rule, pass their lips. They may
ejaculate perhaps over a young baby (if it is their own) but that is the one
exception; and there is a good reason for this one, the possession of a young
baby implying as a general rule a corresponding youth in its mother. I do not
think, however, that it is nice when a woman ejaculates over, say, her tenth
young baby. The baby, of course, will still be sufficiently young for it is a
fresh one, but it is not a fresh mother, and by that time she should have
stiffened into stolidity, and apart from the hours devoted to instructing her
servant, silence. Indeed, the perfect woman does not talk at all. Who wants
to hear her? All that we ask of her is that she shall listen intelligently when
we wish, for a change, to tell her about our own thoughts, and that she
should be at hand when we want anything. Surely this is not much to ask.
Matches, ash-trays, and one’s wife should be, so to speak, on every table;
and I maintain that the perfect wife copies the conduct of the matches and
the ash-trays, and combines being useful with being dumb.
These are my views, and as I drove my caravan along the gravelly road I
ruminated on them. The great brute of a horse, overfed and under-worked,
was constantly endeavouring to pass the Ailsa which was in front of us, and
as that meant in that narrow lane taking the Elsa up the bank as a
preliminary, I was as constantly endeavouring to thwart him. And the sun
being hot and I (if I may so put it) a very meltable man, I soon grew tired of
this constant tugging and looked round for Edelgard to come and take her
turn.
She was nowhere to be seen.
“Have you dropped anything?” asked Frau von Eckthum, who was
walking a little way behind.
“No,” said I; adding, with much readiness, “but my wife has dropped
me.”
“Oh!” said she.
I kept the horse back till she caught me up, while her leaner sister, who
did not slacken her pace, went on ahead. Then I explained my theory about
wives and matches. She listened attentively, in just the way the really clever
woman knows best how to impress us favourably does, busying herself as
she listened in tying some flowers she had gathered into a bunch, and not
doing anything so foolish as to interrupt.
Every now and then as I warmed and drove my different points home, she
just looked at me with thoughtful interest. It was delightful. I forgot the
annoying horse, the heat of the sun, the chill of the wind, the bad breakfast,
and all the other inconveniences, and saw how charming a caravan tour can
be. “Given,” I thought, “the right people and fine weather, such a holiday is
bound to be agreeable.”
 The day was undoubtedly fine, and as for the right people they were
amply represented by the lady at my side. Never had I found so good a
listener. She listened to everything. She took no mean advantage of one’s
breath-pauses to hurry in observations of her own as so many women do.
And the way she looked at me when anything struck her particularly was
sufficient to show how keenly appreciative she was. After all there is
nothing so enjoyable as a conversation with a thoroughly competent listener.
The first five miles flew. It seemed to me that we had hardly left Grip’s
Common before we were pulling up at a wayside inn and sinking on to the
bench in front of it and calling for drink.
What the others all drank was milk, or a gray, frothy liquid they said was
ginger-beer—childish, sweet stuff, with little enough beer about it, heaven
knows, and quite unfit one would think for the stomach of a real man.
Jellaby brought Frau von Eckthum a glass of it, and even provided the two
nondescripts with refreshments, and they took his attentions quite as a matter
of course, instead of adopting the graceful German method of ministering to
the wants of the sterner and therefore more thirsty sex.
The road stretched straight and white as far as one could see on either
hand. On it stood the string of caravans, with old James watering the horses
in the sun. Under the shadow of the inn we sat and rested, the three
Englishmen, to my surprise, in their shirt-sleeves, a condition in which no
German gentleman would ever show himself to a lady.
“Why? Are there so many holes in them?” asked the younger and more
pink and white of the nondescripts, on hearing me remark on this difference
of custom to Mrs. Menzies-Legh; and she looked at me with an air of grave
interest.
Of course I did not answer, but inwardly criticized the upbringing of the
English child. It is characteristic of the nation that Mrs. Menzies-Legh did
not so much as say Hush to her.
On the right, the direction in which we were going to travel, the road
dipped down into a valley with distant hills beyond, and the company,
between their sips of milk, talked much about the blueness of this distance.
Also they talked much about the greenness of the Mereworth woods rustling
opposite, and the way the sun shone; as though woods in summer were ever
anything but green, and as though the sun, when it was there at all, could do
anything but go on shining!
 I was on the point of becoming impatient at such talk and suggesting that
if they would only leave off drinking milk they would probably see things
differently, when Frau von Eckthum came and sat down beside me on the
bench, her ginger-beer in one hand and a biscuit, also made of ginger, in the
other (the thought of what they must taste like together made me shiver) and
said in her attractive voice:
“I hope you are going to enjoy your holiday. I feel responsible, you
know.” And she looked at me with her pretty smile.
I liked to think of the gentle lady as a kind of godmother, and made the
proper reply, chivalrous and sugared, and was asking myself what it is that
gives other people’s wives a charm one’s own never did, never could, and
never will possess, when the door-curtain of the Elsa was pulled aside, and
Edelgard, whose absence at our siesta I had not noticed, stepped out on to
the platform.
Lord Sigismund and Jellaby immediately got up and unhooked the steps
and held them for her to come down by. Menzies-Legh also went across and
offered her a hand. I alone sat still, as well I might; for not only am I her
husband, but it is absurd to put false notions of her importance into a
woman’s head who has not had such attentions paid her since she was
eighteen and what we call appetitlich.
Besides, I was rooted to the bench by amazement at her extraordinary
appearance. No wonder she was not to be seen when duty ought to have kept
her at my side helping me with the horse. She had not walked one of those
five hot miles. She had been sitting in the caravan, busily cutting her skirt
short, altering her hair, and transforming herself into as close a copy as she
could manage of Mrs. Menzies-Legh and her sister.
Small indeed was the resemblance now to the Christian gentlewoman one
wishes one’s wife to seem to be. Few were the traces of Prussia. I declare I
would not have recognized her had I met her casually in the road; and to
think she had dared do it without a word, without asking my permission,
without even asking my opinion! Her nice new felt hat with its pheasant’s
wing had almost disappeared beneath a gauze veil arranged after the fashion
adopted by the sisters. Heaven knows where she got it, or out of what other
garment, now of course ruined, she had cut and contrived it; and what is the
use of having a pheasant’s wing if you hide it? Her hair, up to then so tight
and inconspicuous, was loosened, her skirt showed almost all of both her
boots. The whole figure was strangely like that of the two sisters, a little
thickened, a little emphasized.
What galled me was the implied entire indifference to my authority. My
mind’s indignant eye saw the snap her fingers were executing in its face.
Also, one’s own wife is undoubtedly a thing apart. It is proper and delightful
that the wives of others should be attractive, but one’s own ought to be
adorned solely with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit combined with
that other ornament, an enduring desire to keep the husband God has given
her comfortable and therefore happy. Without these two a wife cannot be
regarded as a fit object for her husband’s esteem. I plainly saw that I would
find it impossible to esteem mine in that skirt. I do not know what she had
done to her feet, but they looked much smaller than I had been accustomed
to suppose them as she came down the steps assisted by the three gentlemen.
My full beer-glass, held neglected in my hand, dripped unheeded on to the
road as I stared stupidly at this apparition. Rapidly I selected the first few of
the phrases I would address to her the moment we found ourselves alone.
There should be an immediate stop put to this loosening of the earth round
the roots of the great and sheltering tree of a husband’s authority.
“Poor silly sheep,” I could not help murmuring, those animals flashing
into my mind as a legitimate development of the sheltering-tree image.
Then I felt there was a quotation atmosphere about them, and was sure
Horace or Virgil—elusive bugbears of my boyhood—must have said
something that began like that and went on appropriately if only I could
remember it. I regretted that having forgotten it I was unable to quote it, to
myself as it were, but yet just loud enough for the lady beside me to hear.
She, however, heard what I did say, and looked at me inquiringly.
“If I were to explain, dear lady,” said I, instantly responding to the look,
“you would not understand.”
“Oh,” said she.
“I was thinking in symbols.”
“Oh,” said she.
“It is one of my mental tricks,” I said, my gaze however contracting
sternly as it fell on Edelgard’s approaching form.
“Oh,” said she.
Certainly she is a quiet lady. But how stimulating. Her solitary oh’s are
more packed with expressiveness than other women’s hour-long tirades.
 She too was watching Edelgard coming toward us across the sun-beaten
bit of road, her head slightly turned away from me but not so much that I
could not see she was smiling at my wife. Of course she must have been
amused at such a slavish imitation; but with her usual kindness she made
room on the bench for her and, without alluding to the transformation,
suggested refreshment.
Edelgard as she sat down shot a very curious glance at me round the
corner of her head-wrappings. I was surprised to see little that could be
called apology in her way of sitting down, and looked in vain for the red spot
that used to appear on each cheek at home when she was aware that she had
done wrong and that it was not going to be passed over. She was sheltered
from immediate steps on my part by Frau von Eckthum who sat between us,
and when Jellaby approached her with a glass of milk she actually took it
without so much as breathing the honest word beer.
This was too much. I threw back my head and laughed as heartily as I
have ever seen a man laugh. Edelgard and milk! Why, I do not believe she
had drunk it pure like that since the day she parted from the last of her
infancy’s bottles. Edelgard becoming squeamish; Edelgard posing—and
what a pose; good heavens, what a pose! Edelgard, one of Prussia’s
daughters, one of Prussia’s noblemen’s daughters, accepting milk instead of
beer, and accepting it at the hands of a Socialist in shirt sleeves. A vision of
Storchwerder’s face if it could see these things rose before me. Of course I
laughed. Not, mind you, without some slight tinge of bitterness, for laughter
may be bitter and hearty at the same time, but on the whole I think I did
credit to my unfailing sense of humour in spite of very great provocation,
and I laughed till even the horses pricked up their ears and turned their heads
and stared.
Nobody else smiled. On the contrary—it cannot be true that laughter is
infectious—they watched me with a serious, amusingly serious, surprise.
Edelgard did not watch. She knew better than that. Carefully she concealed
her face in the milk, feeling no doubt it was the best place for it, and unable
to leave off drinking the stuff because of the problem of how to meet my
eyes once she did. Frau von Eckthum regarded me with much the same
attentive interest she had
 Edelgard posing—and what a pose; good heavens, what a pose!

shown when I was explaining some of my views to her on the march—I

mean, of course, my views on wives, but language is full of pitfalls. The
Menzies-Legh niece (they called her Jane) paused in the middle of a banana
to stare. Her friend, who answered to the singular name (let us hope it was
merely a sobriquet) of Jumps, forgot to continue greedily pressing biscuits
into her mouth, and, forgetting also that her mouth was open to receive them,
left it in that condition. Mrs. Menzies-Legh got up and snap-shotted me.
Menzies-Legh leaned forward when I had had my laugh nearly out and said:
“Come, Baron, let us share the joke?” But his melancholy voice belied his
words, and looking round at him I thought he seemed little in the mood for
sharing anything. I never saw such a solemn, dull face; it shrivelled up my
merriment just to see it. So I merely shrugged one of my shoulders and said
it was a German joke.
“Ah,” said Menzies-Legh; and did not press me further. And Jellaby,
wiping his forehead (on which lay perpetually a long, lank strand of hair
which he was as perpetually brushing aside with his hand, apparently
desirous of not having it there, but only apparently, for five seconds with any
competent barber would have rid him of it forever)—Jellaby, I say, asking
Menzies-Legh in his womanish tenor voice if the green shadows in the wood
opposite did not remind him of some painter friend’s work, they began
talking pictures as though they were as important every bit as the great
objects of life—wealth, and war, and a foot on the neck of the nations.
Well, it was impossible to help contrasting their sluggishness with a party
of Germans under similar conditions. Edelgard would have been greeted
with one immense roar of laughter on her appearing suddenly in her new
guise. She would have been assailed with questions, pelted with mocking
comments, and I might have expressed my own disapproval frankly and
openly and no one would have thought it anything but natural. There,
however, in that hypocritical country they one and all pretended not to have
seen any change at all; and there was something so depressing about so
many stiff and lantern jaws whichever way I turned my head that after my
one Homeric burst I found myself unable to go on. A joke soon palls if
nobody else can see it. In silence I drank my beer: and realized that my
opinion of the nation is low.
It was chiefly Menzies-Legh and Jellaby who sent down the mercury, I
reflected, as we resumed the march. One gets impressions, one knows not
how or why, nor does one know when. I had not spoken much to either, yet
there the impressions were. It was not likely that I could be mistaken, for I
suppose that of all people in the world a Prussian officer is the least likely to
be that. He is too shrewd, too quick, of too disciplined an intelligence. It is
these qualities that keep him at the top of the European tree, combined,
indeed, with his power of concentrating his entire being into one noble
determination to stay on it. Again descending to allegory, I can see Menzies-
Legh and Jellaby and all the other slow-spoken and slow-thoughted
Englishmen flapping ineffectually among the lower and more comfortable
branches of the tree of nations. Yes, they are more sheltered there; they have
roomier nests; less wind and sun; less distance to fly in order to fetch the
waiting grub from the moss beneath; but what about the Prussian eagle
sitting at the top, his beak flashing in the light, his watchful eye never off
them? Some day he will swoop down on them when they are, as usual,
asleep, clear out their and similar well-lined nests, and have the place to
himself—becoming, as the well-known picture has it (for I too can allude to
pictures), in all his glory Enfin seul.
The road went down straight and long and white into the flat. High dusty
hedges shut us in on either side. Across the end, which looked an
interminable way off, lay the blue distance the milk drinkers admired. The
three caravans creaked over the loose stones. Their brown varnish glistened
blindingly in the sun. The horses plodded onward with hanging heads,
subdued, no doubt, by the growing number of the hours. It was half-past
three, and there were no signs of camp or dinner; no signs of our doing
anything but walk along like that in the dust, our feet aching, our throats
parching, our eyes burning, and our stomachs empty, forever.
 CHAPTER VII

A MAN who is writing a book should have a free hand. When I began my
narrative I hardly realized this, but I do now. No longer is Edelgard
allowed to look over my shoulder. No longer are the sheets left lying
open on my desk. I put Edelgard off with the promise that she shall hear it
when it is done. I lock it up when I go out. And I write straight on without
wasting time considering what this or that person may like or not.
At the end, indeed, there is to be a red pencil,—an active censor running
through the pages making danger signals, and whenever on our beer
evenings I come across its marks I shall pause, and probably cough, till my
eye has found the point at which I may safely resume the reading. Our guests
will tell me that I have a cold, and I shall not contradict them; for whatever
one may say to one friend at a time in confidence about, for instance, one’s
wife, one is bound to protect her collectively.
I hope I am clear. Sometimes I fear I am not, but language, as I read in
the paper lately, is but a clumsy vehicle for thought, and on this clumsy
vehicle therefore, overloaded already with all I have to say, let us lay the
whole blame, using it (to descend to quaintness) as a kind of tarpaulin or
other waterproof cover, and tucking it in carefully at the corners. I mean the
blame. Also, let it not be forgotten that this is the maiden flight of my Muse,
and that even if it were not, a gentleman cannot be expected to write with the
glibness of your Jew journalist or other professional quill-driver.
We did not get into camp that first day till nearly six (much too late, my
friends, if you should ever find yourselves under the grievous necessity of
getting into such a thing), and we had great difficulty in finding one at all.
That, indeed, is a very black side of caravaning; camps are rarely there when
they are wanted, and, conversely, frequently so when they are not. Not once,
nor twice, but several times have I, with the midday sun streaming vertically
on my head, been obliged to labour along past a most desirable field, with
just the right aspect, the sheltering trees to the north, the streamlet for the
dish-washing loitering about waiting, the yard full of chickens, and cream
and eggs ready to be bought, merely because it came, the others said, too
early in the march and we had not yet earned our dinner. Earned our dinner?
Why, long before I left the last night’s camp I had earned mine, if exhaustion
from overwork is what they meant, and earned it well too. I pity a pedant; I
pity a mind that is made up like a bed the first thing in the morning, and goes
on grimly like that all day, refusing to be unmade till a certain fixed evening
hour has been reached; and I assert that it is a sign of a large way of
thinking, of the intellectual pliability characteristic of the real man of the
world, to have no such hard and fast determinations and to be always ready
to camp. Left to myself, if I were to see the right spot ten minutes, nay, five,
after leaving the last one, I would instantly pounce on it. But no man can
pounce instantly on anything who shall not first have rid himself of his
prejudices.
On that second day of dusty endeavouring to get to Sussex, which was
and remained in the much talked of blue distance, we passed no spot at all
except one that was possible. That one, however, was very possible indeed in
the eyes of persons who had endured sun and starvation since the morning—
a shaded farmhouse, of an appearance that pleased the ladies owing to the
great profusion of flowers clambering up and down it, an orchard laden with
fruit suggestive of dessert, a stream whose clear waters promised an
excellent foot bath, and fat chickens in great numbers, merely to look on
whom caused little rolls of bacon and dabs of bread sauce and even
fragments of salad to dance delightfully before one’s eyes.
But the woman was cross. Worse, she was inhuman. She was a monster
of indifference to the desires of her fellow-creatures, deaf to their offers of
payment, stony in regard to their pains. Arguing with her, we gave up one by
one our first more succulent visions, and retreating before the curtness of her
refusals let first the camp beneath the plum trees go, then the dessert, then
the chickens with their etcaeteras, then, still further backward, and fighting
over each one, egg after egg of all those many eggs we were so sure she
would sell us and we wanted so badly to buy.
Audaciously she swore she had no eggs, while there beneath our very
eyes walked chickens brimful of the eggs of the morrow. Where were the
eggs of the morning, and where the eggs of yesterday? To this question, put
by me, she replied that it was no business of mine. Accurséd British female,
—certainly not lady, doubtfully even woman, but emphatically Weib—of
twisted appearance, and a gnarled and knotty age! May you in your turn be
refused rest and nourishment when hard put to it and willing to pay, and after
you have marched five hours in the sun controlling, from your feet, the
wayward impulses of a big, rebellious horse.
 She shut the door while yet we were protesting. In silence we trooped
back down the brick path between rose bushes that were tended with a care
she denied humans, to where the three caravans waited hopefully in the road
for the call to come in and be at rest.
We continued our way subdued. This is a characteristic of those who
caravan, that in the afternoons they are subdued. So many things have
happened to them by then; and, apart from that, they have daily got by then
into that physical condition doctors describe as run down—or, if I may alter
it better to fit this special case, walked down. Subdued, therefore, we
journeyed along flat uncountrified roads, reminding one, by the frequent
recurrence of villas, of the outskirts of some big town rather than the
seclusion it had been and still was our aim to court, and in this way we came
at last to a broad and extremely sophisticated bridge crossing a river some
one murmured was Medway.
Houses and shops lined its approach on the right. On the left was a wide
and barren field with two donkeys finding difficulties in collecting from the
scanty herbage a sufficiency of supper. In the gutter, opposite a public house,
stood a piano-organ, emitting the sounds of shrill yet unconvincing
joyfulness natural to those instruments, and mingled with these was a burr of
machinery at work, and a smell of so searching a nature that it provoked
Frau von Eckthum into a whole sentence—a plaintive and faintly spoken
one, but a long one—describing her conviction that there must be a tannery
somewhere near, and that it was very disagreeable. Her plaintiveness
increased a hundredfold when Menzies-Legh announced that camp we must
at all costs or night would be upon us.
We drew up in the middle of the road while Lord Sigismund made active
inquiries of the inhabitants as to which of them would be willing to lend us a
field.
“But surely not here?” murmured Frau von Eckthum, holding her little
handkerchief to her nose.
It was here, however, and in the field, said Lord Sigismund returning,
containing the donkeys. For the privilege of sharing with these animals their
bare and shelterless field, exposed as it was to all the social amenities of the
district, including the piano-organ, the shops opposite, the smell of leather in
the making, and the company as long as the light lasted of innumerable
troops of children, the owner would make us a charge of half a crown per
caravan for the night, but this only on condition that we did not turn out, as
he appeared to have had the greatest suspicions we would turn out, to be a
circus.
With a flatness of which I would not have