Book Given to Eliot Today Is Full Record of Last Year's Celebration

"The Ninetieth Birthday of Charles William Eliot" is being published today by the University Press. Intended as an enduring record of that memorable occasion, a year ago today, it is as complete as could be possible within the scope of about 300 pages. A record of the complete proceedings of that day, together with every tribute that was printed throughout the world, would form an almost unlimited amount of material, and hence the book has been limited to the recording of only those tributes most intimately connected with the University.

Follows Order of Events

In form the book follows step by step the events of the day's celebration. Beginning with the initial address by Jusace Sanferd in Sanders theatre and ending with President Eliot's response and the singing of "Fair Harvard," it chronicles each speech and action of the brilliant assemblage. The expressions of appreciation and affection by all the illustrious men who spoke to the gathering are published in full, and the written greetings of Harvard Clubs, Legislatures, and other representative societies are included in their original form.

Took Him by Surprise

After an inauspicious invitation to attend a small celebration to be given in his honor, President Eliot was first made aware of the huge assembly which had gathered to pay him tribute, when he saw the procession which was forming in front of Memorial Hall. This assembly, which a year ago this afternoon conducted the President Emeritus to Sanders Theatre, included many nationally-known figures. Representing the public in the conduct of the celebration were William Howard Taft. Governor Channing H. Cox, and the Premier of Canada, W. L. Mackenzie King. Justice Edward T. Sanford '85, President of the Alumni Association, together with Charles T. Greve '84, President of the Associated Harvard Clubs, represented the alumni body.

The speech of Justice Sanford, who was the first to address the participants at Sander's Theatre, expressed the dominant note of all the speeches that were to follow. Addressing himself to President Eliot, he said, "Of your services to Harvard, to education, to scholarship, to the higher life of men, it will be the privilege of others to speak today. Yet I may give voice to one feeling in all our hearts: the joy that, as the advancing years have given you so richly of their wisdom, they have endowed you also with continuing strength."

Taft Calls Him Leader and Prophet

Tributes to President Eliot's 40 years of untiring service in the cause of Harvard and the advancement of education were necessarily many. Of his service to the nation: "Dr. Eliot is a leader and a prophet of the people in the true sense. His primacy in all educational reform, his interest in adjusting the equities of the laborer and the capitalist, and the useful candor with which he points out the shortcomings of each, his abiding enthusiasm for the promotion of municipal governments in which the welfare of the citizen is most intimately bound up, his yearning for the enlargement of the lungs of congested cities in parks and playgrounds, his activity in the husbanding and preservation of the National resources, his patient, persistent, consistent advocacy of the reform of the Civil Service, his earnest labor in the cause of international peace, have prompted his lay sermons and made men harken to him."

Of all the incidents of that day, probably one of the most significant, at least to President Eliot, was the presentation which was made to him by the Alumni Association. Justice Sanford, on the behalf of that body, presented him with a copy of the "Alumni Directory", bound in Crimson leather, as a symbol of that "living force" of 43,000 men of Harvard of whom he was the leader. This presentation is equally significant today as another year has added its increase to the swelling list of graduates.