Speeches on Professorial Exchange

A conference on the new provision for the interchange of professors between the universities of the United States, and Germany and France, was held at the Twentieth Century Club, Boston, last evening. Mr. Edwin D. Meed, president of the club, introduced the speakers. The first speaker was Professor F. G. Peabody '69. He emphasized the fact that the plan of the interchange of professors has passed the experimental stage. Now two American professors, one from Harvard and one from Columbia, are lecturing in Berlin. The supplementing of the interchange of professors by an interchange of students is gratifying. By agreement with the French and Prussian ministers of education, Harvard University will remit tuition of five students of each country during a period of 10 years, and it is hoped that the bond of friendship produced by these provisions will strengthen as the years go on. The trouble between England and Germany today is that no spiritual relations exist between them.

Professor Eugen Kuehnemann spoke next. He said substantially that in these days of liberal views it is necessary that we have interchange of both professors and students. It has become an essential part of a liberal education to visit other countries and to become members of foreign universities. By the new system ideas of American freedom and of German veneration are exchanged. The American tariff may not be revised, but a new generation of scholars will arise which will look upon such artificial barriers as ridiculous.

President Meed expressed his regret at the absence of Professor G. P. Baker '87, who was to have spoken. The conference closed with addresses by Judge Walter Neitzel, who spoke upon Teutonic law, and by T. C. Yeh 1L., of Sunkiang, China, upon the Cosmopolitan Club, of which he is president.