FREDERIC SCHENCK '09 DIED EARLY YESTERDAY

Mr. Frederic Schenck '09, A. M. '14, Ph.D. '18, died of pneumonia at his home on Brattle street early yesterday morning. Mr. Schenck was a member of the Faculty, an instructor and tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics, chairman of the Committee on Degrees with Distinction in History and Literature, secretary of the Committee on the use of English.

He was born on October 10, 1887, at Lawrence, Long Island, and after finishing his preparation at the Groton School he entered the University in 1905. In 1909 he received the degree of A.B. cumlaude, with distinction in the History and Literature of the Middle Ages. He then spent two years in Oxford University and received there in 1912 the degree of Litt.B.

Returning to the University he received the degree of Ph.D in 1918.

Mr. Schenck was especially intimate with the undergraduate body, and spent much time and effort in earnest co-operation with them. As an undergraduate he had himself been president of the Advocate, and he was ever its staunch supporter throughout his connection with the University.

The following appreciation was written for the CRIMSON by Professor R. B. Merriman '96.

"Names, dates, and official titles, however essential for historic record, are likely to convey but an inadequate idea of a man's real life and work. In the present case they are even less significant than usual. The key to the characters and career of the man whom Harvard mourns today was his overflowing. human sympathy. It enabled him to vitalize everything to which he set his hand, to turn the most perfunctory and mechanical bit of drudgery into an interesting and important task. It was the source of his success as a teacher and administrator. It made him a host of friends, young and old, who flocked to him for help and advice on every conceivable subject.

Self-Sacrifice Always His Watchword.

"It was the excess of this quality that prevented him from gaining the scholarly reputation to which his brilliant abilities entitled him. He was really too unselfish to become a specialist, too much interested in his fellow-men to concentrate on a single field. His friends often used to remonstrate with him about this, and urged him to devote himself to productive scholarship, as the surest road to academic promotion. He would invariably admit the force of their arguments, and occasionally make an heroic effort to get started on a monograph; then some 'chore' would turn up, which others might regard as a burden to get rid of, but in which he would discern an opportunity for important service,-and the book or article would be set aside, and the job that was immediately necessary performed in its stead. Harvard was invariably the gainer by his self-sacrifice. No university can go on without the sort of devotion that he gave. It is only too rarely that such devotedness can be found.

A Lover of Fair Argumentation.

"Intolerance was utterly detestable to him. Himself a man of strong opinions, he was always ready to listen to those of others. He fairly revelled in a stiff argument, provided his opponent would 'play the game.' He was never guilty of 'talking down' to anyone, and fiercely resented it, if anyone tried to 'talk down' to him. He was sure to see the force of both the Faculty and the undergraduate points of view, and was in himself a solution of the perennial problem of 'how to bring about a closer relation between teacher and student.' Throughout his life he had struggled heroically against the galling restrictions imposed by a physical infirmity, and achieved results which would have been impossible for a spirit less gallant. When the great war came, and it was evident that he could not go to fight he manfully stuck to his post at Harvard, devoting all his energies to maintaining the continuity of instruction, and to keeping alive the undergraduate organizations with which he was most closely identified. This was his contribution to the common cause, and it were difficult to imagine a finer or more useful one