Initial Gesture

Ten months ago, some 30 distinguished luncheon guests of Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt puffed cigars in the Bankers' Club, Manhattan, came to the conclusion that the time had come for the U. S. to have a college of diplomacy (TIME, May 12). They agreed that it would be most appropriate to dedicate such a college to that eminent international servant, the late Walter Hines Page, U. S. War-time Ambassador to England, and to establish the college as an adjunct of his alma mater, John s Hopkins University. Plans arose, went forward.

Last week, Owen D. Young, lately Reparations Commissioner, prefaced the launching of an appeal to the country for an endowment with a statement of aims:

"We contemplate an institution where professors of distinction will gather facts about international trade, racial psychology, commercial and military geography, diplomatic usage and experience, effects of artificial economic barriers upon international amity, effects of new inventions to expedite communication and all the hundreds of things that enter into contact of nation with nation."

Mr. Young's co-Trustees are: Julius H. Barnes, Tasker Howard Bliss, Edward K. Bok, John W. Davis, Carter Glass, Mrs. Herbert Hoover, Adolph S. Ochs, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George W. Wickersham, Charles W. Eliot, W. H. P. Faunce, John H. Finley.

Edward W. Bok has guaranteed the expenses of the college for its first year..

Protest-Law

Governor Austin Peay of Tennessee received from his legislature a bill. The legislators of Tennessee saw fit to make it unlawful for any teacher in the universities, normal or other schools of the State which obtain state funds "to teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."

Governor Austin Peay read this bill with pleasure. He took up his pen, affixed his name in such a position as to make the bill a law, then wrote a letter to the legislators: "Right or wrong, there is a deep and widespread belief that something is shaking the fundamentals of the country, both in religion and morals. It is the opinion of many than an abandonment of the old fashioned faith and belief in the Bible is our trouble in large degrees. It is my own belief."

To some who came inquiring, the good Governor added later: "After a careful examination, I can find nothing of consequence in the books now being-taught in our schools-- with which this bill will interfere in the slightest manner. Therefore, it will not put our teachers in any jeopardy. Probably the law will never be applied. It may not be sufficiently definite to permit of any specific application or enforcement. Nobody believes that it is going to be an active statute . . . but ... a distinct protest against an irreligious tendency."

*A Tennessee statute has long required: "At least ten verses from the Bible shall be read or caused to be read without comment at the opening of each and every public school upon each and every day by the teacher in charge, provided the teacher does not read the same chapter more than twice during the same session."