WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN IS COMING TO UNIVERSITY

William Jennings Bryan, well known politician and anti-evolutionist will come to the University on May 15 to speak on "Evolution."

Mr. Bryan, whose talk will be given in the New Lecture Hall under the auspices of the Christian Association of Phillips Brooks House, has long been a well known figure in public life. He has thrice been the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and made a notable record as Secretary of State for the first three months of Wilson's first administration, when he negotiated 30 treaties with foreign governments, representing three fourths of the world's population.

"I admire Mr. Bryan," said Professor Earnest A. Hooton, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and a well known authority on evolution, in an interview granted to the CRIMSON last night.

"I believe," continued Professor Hooton, "that Mr. Bryan is a sincere and up right man, and he is certainly one of the greatest living orators. Every Harvard man ought to hear him. I remember hearing him when I was only a child, and I was as much thrilled by his speaking then as I was when I heard him in later years.

"Evolution is not a religion: it is simply an interpretation of a body of facts. It makes no difference in regard to the facts of the case whether you or I or any one else believes the Battle of Waterloo to have never taken place or the world to be flat. I am not at all impressed with a desire to make people believe in evolution. It is not a mode of life or an ethical concept, and it does not draw forth any emotional reactions nor should it.

"I do not regard evolution as a religious dogma or as a political theory. One does not believe in facts: one accepts them. I think Mr. Bryan is worth hearing on any subject, regardless of whether he knows anything about it or not, Intellectually. I have the same interest in Mr. Bryan's ideas of evolution as I have in Henry Ford's ideas on the prose of George Moore or Mary Pickford's ideas on the theory of relativity, or for that matter, what Queen Victoria thought about the procession of equinoxes.

"If Mr. Bryan thinks evolution is a pernicious social influence. I think he is right in combatting it, even if it is the truth.

"On the whole, his attacks on the teaching of evolution has had a stimulating effect in arousing interest in our subject persecution as always a general advertiser.

I have no desire to induce Mr. Bryan or any one else to believe in evolution. The only people Mr. Bryan will ever convince of the harmfulness and falsity of evolution are people already predisposed in that direction and whose opinions are not of any particular importance.

Mr. Bryan does not seem to be inp09sscession of the facts as far as I can sec. I cannot understand how a man's belief in evolution can interfere with his being a Christian if he wants to believe in Christianity. It seems to me that whether a man prefers to believe that his original ancestor was made out of mud or whether he thinks in the other hand that his ancestor was an ape he ought in either case of appre- ciate the social value of the teaching of Christ. I am not in the least discomposed by Mr. Bryan's attitude toward evolution, nor do I like him the less for it.

'I put evolution and religion in two different categories: one is an interpretation of facts, the other a belief in certain super-natural phenomena, an emotional reaction to that belief, and a philosophy of life.

"If I though; a wide dissemination of the facts of evolution would remove the fear of held tire in the popular mind, than perhaps I should agree with Mr. Bryan. It must be admitted that evolution will not teach a man to be good, whereas the element of fear in religion may intimidate him into behaving him self.

"After all," said Professor Hooton in ending. "It is apparent that the majority of the people require some sort of a system of rewards and punishments to he operative in a future life in order to induce them to conduct themselves with decency and humanity in the present life.