1905-06 Volume 30 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

THE SCROLL. 123envy your opportunity which has come to you for impressinglives and adding to the greatness of the state, and we wishyou all usefulness and all the happiness that can be expressedin a song, with all the sincerity that can be expressed in aprayer."Following ' Prexy" Draper's touching farewell. PresidentJames delivered his inaugural address. It was an elaborateand scholarly exposition, and has attracted considerable attentionand aroused no little discussion throughout the country.In speaking of the necessity and the functions of thestate university, he said in part: "The state university is,therefore, to my mind necessary in order to help maintainthe democracy of education; to help keep education progressive;and finally in order to keep higher education closeto the people and make if the expression and outgrowth oftheii: needs. It is corrective rather than directive; it is coopera'tiverather than monopolistic. It is adapted for leadershipin certain departments and not in others. It should beas universal as the American democracy, as broad, as liberal,as sympathetic, as comprehensive—ready to take upunto itself all the educational - forces, and unifying, tyingtogether all the multiform strands of educational activity into,one grand cable whose strength no man can weaken or measure."Such was the installation as an interesting and instructivespectacle^-as a stranger dropping into Champaign or Urbanaon the-first day of the week might have seen and rememberedit. But this was not all that it meant nor all that was perceivedby the many members of the faculty whose bestefforts, whose noblest sacrifices, and whose most cherishedwishes are inseparably bound up in the upbuilding of the university;it was not thus that four thousand faithful studentswhose young lives are being moulded there, and whose ardentyoung hearts burn with love for every familiar spot and everyold building upon its broad campus, looked upon it. Northe thousands of loyal alumni who gathered back to theiralma mater, impelled by a reverent fpndness and a longing tosee the old familiar scenes, even as a child after wanderingafar eagerly hurries back to the old homestead—none ofthese, saw only the mere form, the brilliant gowns, the pompand glory of the military and academic pageants.To them it signified vastly more. An old alumnus whohad plunged into the stern struggle for existence soon afterE-raduation. and who had found no time to come back with