President Frank?

Last winter, Dr. Edward Asahel Birge besought his Board of Regents to relieve him of the presidency of the University of Wisconsin, where he has been in service for the past half century. The Regents pondered, invited Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard University Law School. Dean Pound accepted, then lent ear to Harvard entreaties and changed his mind (TIME, Feb. 2, 9).

More pondering at Wisconsin. Advices from Madison, seat of the University, told, last week, that at a special meeting Regent Michael Olbrich arose to nominate "one of America's great men," a college president's onetime secretary, a noted merchant's onetime associate, now a distinguished editor, thinker, liberal reformer in Church and State. Regent Olbrich nominated Editor Glenn Frank of The Century Magazine, salting his eulogy with the pertinent fact that Editor Frank, only 38 years old, should have much life left in him to give to the University of Wisconsin at $12,000 a year.

Regent Zona Gale was instructed to ask the Madison, Wis., telephone operator to connect her with Editor Frank in Manhattan without further delay. A deputation of the Regents was appointed to pack suitcases, entrain and wait on Editor Frank in person.

Awaiting these advances, of which the press advised him, Editor Frank must have reflected on his position. He knew that his four-year secretariat in Northwestern University had furnished him with a practical background in pedagogical administration. He recalled three active years with Edward Filene of Boston in commercial research and organization. He well knew that, since 1921, he had spurred the Century out of dry-as-dust respectability to a commendable, if not commanding, place in the magazine field ; had buttressed the prestige of its editorial page with able leaders on large issues.

He must have been conscious that the time had arrived when the embrace of an editor's chair was too constricting for powers and ambitions such as his ; that an audience of some 30,000 readers was hardly sufficient for the voice that he felt was in him. A long time now he had been in the habit of roaming over the country 'to lecture, now to business men, more often before educators.

It was this latter fact (if not some private understanding) that had encouraged the Wisconsin Regents to call Editor Frank. They, and many another, were quite confident that he would accept.

For some of the educational policies and conceptions they might expect from Editor Frank, Wisconsin had but to hark back to a speech he made, last summer, at the University of Michigan : "I dislike to speak of education, religion and politics as if they were three distinct fields. They are, or should be, an indivisible unity. . . . The professor, the parson and the politician are at work on the same job . . . the achievement of 'the good life' for the citizen and for the Nation."

Last January, he had written in the Century: "The politics of the future ought to be simply humanity's technique of bringing the world's knowledge to the service of the world's life." And in the Century for May: "Politics should be the point at which knowledge meets life and becomes socially effective. . . . Theoretically, at least, a state university should be the rallying ground and repository for the knowledge needed for the wise management of the life of the state. ..."