1903-04 Volume 28 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

40 THE SCROLL.columns with stylobate and entablature pierced by five entrances andits ends forming two massive pylons. The theater proper is semicircularin form and 254 feet in diameter, and is divided into twoconcentric tiers of seats. The first series of these are built around alevel circle fifty feet in diameter and five and one-half feet below thelevel of the stage, corresponding accordingly to the portion of Iheancient Greek structures devoted to the choruses and orchestra.Without this circle the seats slope up gradually until the stage levelis reached at a circle corresponding in dianjeter to the terminal pylonsof the stage walls. This line is marked architecturally by an aisle,anciently called the diazoma, extending around the semicircle of seatsbetween the orchestra and the topmost circle.'—The Literary Digest.At a meeting of the British Association for the Advancementof Science, held in Southport, England, on September9, Sir Norman L,ockyer, in delivering his presidential addressentitled ' The Influence of Brain Power on History,*said :' Our position as a nation, our success as merchants, are in perilchiefly—dealing with preventable causes—because of our lack of completelyefficient universities and our neglect of research.' We in Great Britain have eleven universities competing with 134state and privately endowed in the United States and 22 state endowedin Germany. The German state gives to one university morethan the British government allows to all the universities and universitycolleges in Bngland, Ireland and Wales put together. Theseare the conditions which regulate the production of brain power inthe United States, Germany and Great-Britain, respectively, and theexcuse of the government is that this is a matter for private effort.' Do not our ministers of state know that other civilized countriesgrant efficient state aid, and, further, that private effort has providedin great Britain less than 10 per cent, of the sum thus furnished in theUnited States in addition to state aid ? In depending in our countryupon this form of endowment we are trusting to a broken reed. If wetake the twelve English university colleges—the forerunners of universitiesunless we are to perish from lack of knowledge—we find thatprivate effort during sixty years has found less than ^4,000,000 ; thatis ^2,000,000 for building and ^'10,000 a year income.'This gives us an average of ^166,000 for buildings and ^3,300 foryearly income. What is the scale of private effort we have to competewithin regard to the American universities? In the United Statesduring the last few years universities and colleges have received morethan ^40.000,000 from this source alone ; private effort supplied nearlyi;7,COO,000 in the years 1898-1900.'