Time for Culture

When Glenn Frank resigned as editor of the Century and became president of the University of Wisconsin in 1925, people told him what terrible hours a university executive had to spend on detail work. He, inexperienced, was no doubt expected to be at his desk from dawn until evensong. But, instead, he was found in his office about half as often as his predecessor. He wandered about the campus, made trips to Manhattan, continued to write for magazines. And the University of Wisconsin got along very nicely; it even progressed; Alexander Meiklejohn was brought out to form an experimental college; there was much talk of the "great work" Glenn Frank was doing.

His method is simple: decentralization of authority and detail work. Let the president of a university be the leader of a cultural squadron and not its water boy. Last week Glenn Frank applied this theory to the British Empire and suggested that H. R. H. the Prince of Wales be the leader. In The Club-Fellow & Washington Mirror, for 39 years a rival of Town Topics, Glenn Frank wrote:

"There is an aspect of the future of the Prince of Wales, aside from a possible improvement in his horsemanship, that interests me.

"Modern democracies overload their executive leaders with so many responsibilities and duties that they have little strength or freshness of spirit left for a creative leadership of the nation's life. . . .

"I mean a leader who will provide incentives to the creative energies of his people, combing the nation over for its creative brains, seeing to it that no atom of genius is allowed to wither in isolation or starve for lack of recognition. . . .

"But what a chance for the Prince of Wales when he becomes king!

"If, in the years between now and his accession to the throne, he studiously widens the range of his interests and information, and deliberately scans his empire for creative brains--brains in out-of-the-way places, brains on the make--he could bring together a sort of spiritual squadron that could produce an incredible advance in the intellectual, literary, artistic, scientific, and inventive life of his people. . . .

"I suggest, then, to the Prince of Wales that he assume as one of his roles that of discoverer and impresario of the latent genius of his empire."*

*"Not a line or a word, an innuendo or a criticism . . . that can offend or displease," is the new editorial policy of this society weekly.