suits to his peers, but should also be free to involve a university in partisan conflicts. At Stanford the question is complicated by the fact that Mrs. Stanford has so recently given to the university the vast fortune—twenty-seven million dollars—collected by the late Senator Stanford. Professor Ross's teachings being repeated to her, perhaps in a distorted form, she is reported to have said: 'He calls my husband a thief.' Now, it is evident that a university cannot be a proprietary institution, controlled by a rich man or a group of rich men, who dictate the teachings of the professors. But it is equally true that the university professor must work in harmony with certain well-defined traditions. When people unite to accomplish any end, each must sacrifice something of his own freedom. When Mr. Gladstone appeared to be suddenly converted to the advocacy of Irish home rule, his opponents read his thousands of speeches to convict him of inconsistency. Nothing was found in favor of home rule, but neither was there found anything against it. For thirty years, apparently, Mr. Gladstone had been considering the subject, but had been careful not to give rise to dissensions in the Liberal party until he was prepared to make home rule the issue. This is simply an illustration of the fact that the more responsible the position of a man, the more careful must he be in giving expression to views which the man without authority may proclaim on the street corners. When Professor Ross says that teachers are unproductive laborers retained by the idle enjoyers of a parasitic organization to intimidate, beguile and cajole the exploited majority, it seems evident that this is no longer academic freedom of speech, but simply a statement of unfitness for an academic position.
While the troubles at Stanford University are being widely discussed in the United States, English men of science are disturbed by the dismissal of a number of professors from the Royal Engineering College at Coopers Hill. This institution trains engineers for the Civil Service in India, and is under the control of the India Office. The president is an army officer who does not take part in the teaching, and is supposed to act under the direction of a board of visitors. The teaching staff, it appears, has no control of the curriculum or of the general conduct of the college. Under these circumstances, an unsatisfactory state of affairs was reported by a board of enquiry and more than half the teaching staff was somewhat curtly dismissed. Their request for an enquiry having been refused by the Secretary of State for India, a number of leading men of science united in a memorial asking for such an enquiry, and a deputation waited upon Lord George Hamilton to urge it. This deputation, which included Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister, Lord Rayleigh and other leading men of science, called attention to the fact that the college was self-supporting and that there was no need, on the score of economy, for such sweeping dismissals, whereas the abolition of professorships of physics and chemistry would greatly weaken the scientific standing of the college and the training it could give to students of engineering. Lord George Hamilton's reply does not appear to have satisfied the deputation or the English scientific press, and the matter has been called up in Parliament.
The second annual meeting of the Association of Universities was held at Chicago on February 26, 27 and 28. This association is composed of fourteen leading American universities and holds an annual meeting for the discussion of problems of common interest, it being expected that the president of each university, or his representative will be in attendance. All the universities were represented at the Chicago meeting. Reporters and the general public are excluded from the sessions, and there is consequently opportunity
