In Paris

Nicholas Murray Butler, President for 23 years of Columbia University, 17 times Doctor of Laws, 5 times Doctor of Jurisprudence in European universities, Oxford Doctor of Letters, Prague Doctor of Philosophy, Grand Officier of the Legion of Honor, recipient of five decorations from crowned heads, member of every U. S. learned society of any note and of several European hierarchies, publicist, moralizer, politician, pedagog, Bohemian, philosopher, will look upon this 64th year of his life as not the least satisfactory. In Paris, last week, with much ceremony, he was inducted to the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, to which he had been elected in 1923. Only two U. S. celebrities had entered that august company before him--Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The chair he received was that vacated in 1922 by the late Viscount James Bryce, English statesman-historian.

It was upon Lord Bryce's life and works that Dr. Butler dwelt in his assumptive address, not forgetting many fine courtesies to France, ringing references to Franklin, Jefferson and La-Fayette, fitting eulogy of the French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose writings on the U. S., the speaker implied, were quite as able as Bryce's, if not more so. "A nation," proclaimed Bryce's successor, in lofty conclusion, "must believe in itself as a moral as well as a political entity . . . eager pursuit . . . grave problems . . . powerful aids . . . national security and national satisfaction . . . lasting international peace."