1912–13 Volume 37 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

THE SCROLL 417their aims. Between the two * K ^ and AKE and presently A T steered theirbarks, extended by accident only, and talked "conservatism"—in the age ofEdison, Dolbear, Marconi, the Wrights, Roentgen, Cure, Pasteur, the age ofRockefeller and Sam Dodd, of Morgan, Harriman, Hill, Nicholson, an epochin which Germany and Japan, and the Standard Oil and the Steel Trust becamefirst-class powers and Wisconsin America's foremost university.Over twenty years ago the writer was lonesomely dining at a Roman pensionone winter Sunday evening. A beautiful American girl and her parentstook the seats at his right, and across the table (evidently recent additions toher conquests) followed two attractive looking and attentive young fellows whowore •^ T pins. The girl wore a B 9 II pin at her throat. Said Mr. Psi U,"You should not wear that old badge. That society has a chapter in everycountry schoolhouse." The young lady leaned forward in eager thoughblushing championship of her absent friends. "If your little old fraternity hada few chapters in country schoolhouses, maybe you would have some real menin it," was the Parthian arrow she winged across the table. I thought then,and I still think, it was the best speech that has been made in Rome sinceMarc Antony's, and I'll bet that girl's oldest boy is a Beta right now.In A K E for a while the stangnators obtained power and actually cancelledthe charter at DePauw. Beveridge, Joe Ibach and the rest declined to befired, and stayed in anyway. But Americans with warm blood in their veinstook the lead soon and AKE became more American. The AKE Quarterlyfor November, 1910, says: "Our forefathers made A K E a national fraternity,unbounded by geographical limitations and unfettered by sectional prejudices,and as such we have grown and thrived. AKE stands for worth and progress,not for snobbishness and stagnation. We are not a so-called 'exclusive*fraternity and do not claim to be."In 1871 * K -^ had an opportunity to plant a chapter at California University.If "conservatism" had not interfered, we would now have behindour boys there forty years of graduates. Doctor Smith organized a petitioningbody at Lehigh, which was turned down by the vote of one chapter, andpromptly taken by '4' X with good results. A fine body of fellows at Texas,backed by Peyton Brown, sought a charter just a quarter of a century ago,and it was refused, because forsooth "Texas was not up to our standard."Just think what our chapter could do now with the backing of twenty-fiveyears, and that university as rich as Croesus. For years Nebraska and Missouriwere actually kept out of fhe fraternity on the plea that it "would injureus" with societies which had chapters at Kenyon, Middlebury, Hobert,Hamilton and Union! The X •*• fraternity entered the University of Minnesotain 1874, seven years before any other and fourteen before * K '4'. Minnesotais now among the six first schools on this continent. There are noweight state institutions in the South and twelve in the West which easily outrankthe Minnesota cf 1874, and in none of the twenty has $ K "^ ever had achapfer. Any of them is readily superior to the Williams of 1880, for instance.# K ^ must lean toward one of the two methods.Those who have felt like taking A A and "^ t and A * as their patterns,should note the heroic effort being made to modernize those societies. Among theregenerators has been Doctor Moss, a professor at Illinois who founded "^ T'sIllinois chapter. His fraternity not being able to sustain a journal, his excellentarticle on "The New Spirit in our Universities" was kindly publishedin the Crescent of F $ B two years ago and sent among his brothers. He saysof "conservative:" "The word is chiefly a confession that the machinery ofthe organization is not capable of working beyond a certain little limit alreadyreached." In his appeal he adds: "The country, and with it thecollege world, is growing with such bewildering swiftness that any organizationthat stands still must seem like a railway train disappearing in the distance.It grows less and less because the other facts are enlarging."Our own fraternity must learn from fhe stagnation of others to keep pace