Morley to Haverford

Only U. S. college with a varsity cricket team is Philadelphia's 107-year-old Haverford. An English gardener, who landscaped the college's trim, stately campus back in the 18505, introduced the sport, and up to 1925 Haverford regularly sent teams to compete on England's playing fields. By English standards, Haverford's cricket has never been of a very high order. When the British cruiser Exeter (conqueror of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee--TIME, Dec. 25) put into Philadelphia last spring, its tarry cricketers bowled over the Haverfords with ease. The Haverfords consoled themselves by trimming a motley team from Princeton.

Nestled in the heart of Philadelphia's "Main Line," Haverford is the oldest U. S. Quaker college -- 31 years older than near by Swarthmore, but only half as big (313 undergraduates, 63 professors).

Although less than 17% of Haverford undergraduates are Quakers, attendance is compulsory, except for those with conscientious religious objections, at Fifth Day Meeting on Thursdays in the 100-year-old Friends Meeting House. Rhinies (freshmen) wear dinks (caps), name cards on their lapels, say "sir" to privileged upperclassmen.

Longtime advocate of the honors system of teaching and study, Haverford, with an excellent reputation for scholarship, is especially proud of its freshmen's record.

For seven consecutive years during the last twelve they have stood No. 1 in the I. Q. test that the American Council on Education gives annually to some 130 U. S. freshmen classes. Tuition and expenses at Haverford run from $725 to $850 yearly. There is one professor for each five students.

"Uncle" is the undergraduate monicker for Haverford presidents. Present uncle is genial, cricket-playing William Wistar ("Uncle Billy") Comfort, highbrowed classicist and devout Quaker, who can, with equal facility, trace a word to its Sanskrit root and a piece of undergraduate mischief to its only begetter. Haverford graduate (1894) and son of a graduate, in his 23-year presidency he has doubled the college's teaching staff and endowment ($4,500,000), kept the student body and intercollegiate athletics* down. Says he: ". . . The country needs an exhibit of quality, rather than quantity in education. ..."

Over the protests of undergraduates and Board of Managers,"Uncle Billy" Comfort, 65, announced last spring that he would resign his office at the close of the current college year. Last week his successor was named.

For the job the Board chose another Haverford graduate (1915), born on the campus during President Comfort's senior year: Felix Muskett Morley, Phi Beta Kappa, Rhodes Scholar, foreign correspondent, author and able editorial writer of the Washington Post. His father, Dr. Frank Morley, taught mathematics at Haverford and Johns Hopkins. His two brothers, Author Christopher (Kitty Foyle) and Book Publisher Frank, were also Rhodes Scholars--an alltime U. S. record for one family.

Tall, portly, auburn-haired, Editor Morley has the ruddy complexion, the tweedy cut of a friendly English squire. A colossal after-dinner wit and classical punster, he plays bad tennis, smokes good pipes violently. On singing terms with a vast repertory of German drinking songs, he is reputedly the most difficult man in Washington to see.

For the last six years Editor Morley has made the Washington Post's editorial page required reading for the 531 U. S. Congressmen. How he could give up such a job, at the onset of a Presidential campaign, was a mystery to his newspaper colleagues. His explanation: "Personally I have the feeling that I have been spending intellectual capital and discovering that it is difficult to replace. So, in a curious way, Haverford's need is my opportunity."

* Of six football games played last year, Haverford won none.

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