HUGHES PLEADS FOR SERENITY OF THOUGHT

Secretary of State Hughes delivered the principal address at the convocation of Brown University yesterday afternoon, when President Angell of Yale was presented with an honorary degree of LL. D. Before the meeting the half million dollar Jesse Metcalf Laboratory was dedicated in the presence of the leading chemists of Eastern universities.

Secretary Hughes took as his theme the waste of national energy and the duty of American universities to develop a desire for serenity, reflection, sobriety of reason, and calmness of judgment, saying: "To the extent that the University merely reproduces the rush, the hustle, and the rapid give and take of life, to the extent that it fails to yield serenity and reflection, it sacrifices its great capacity for service in a tumultuous world."

Secretary Hughes first spoke of the waste of time in official circles through unnecessary contrasts and went on to mention the thrist for sensation and relentless need of motion that has permeated the whole country.

"We find ourselves", he continued, in the age of the motor, the movie and the radio, which with freedom of locomotion, novel and easy intimacies, and the everpresent and constantly expanding enterprise of the press give us a delusive facility in acquiring information. It is the day of fleeting vision. Concentration, thoroughness, the quiet reflection that ripens the judgement are more difficult than ever."

He then spoke of the overcrowded conditions in American universities today saying: "In some way America must continue to provide the opportunities of liberal education for the average man. We must train leaders, we must give the best to the best, but democracy needs not simply a chosen few but the elevation of the standards of life and thought among the masses of the people to the fullest extent practicable." Mr. Hughes suggested no changes in the present educational system but asserted that teachers should be careful not to obtain notoriety by "sensational methods and by purveying hasty generalizations and imperfectly considered observations." He closed with a strong appeal to the cultivation of serenity and reflection.