OCTOBER 22, 1896

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ing illuminations of Nassau Hall and the orange lanterns strung through the campus elms, closed the day.

The exercises of October 22, the anniversary day, were of especial dignity. On the platform of Alexander Hall sat the President of the United States, the Governor of New Jersey, and beside the distinguished delegation from the Old World a press of scholars and dignitaries representing all the leading universities of America. The supreme moment was reached as President Patton rose to announce the endowment and the assumption of the university title. Thanking the delegates and visitors for the honor they had done the College by their presence, he stated the amount of the gifts that had been received and named the high purposes to which they were to be directed, and after brief allusion to the further hopes and plans he entertained for the College, he came to the chief significance of the day and the object and inspiration of the entire event, ending his brief address by proclaiming "that from this moment what heretofore for one hundred and fifty years has been known as the College of New Jersey shall in all future time be known as Princeton University."

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Princetonians who were present will never forget that moment. Every word fell clear and was heard in the remotest corners of that densely crowded hall. One common tide of emotion swelled and rose in the hearts of the alumni of the old College of New Jersey while the President's utterance grew louder and his voice was thrilled with deeper feeling as he approached the climax, when on a sudden, with one magical phrase, he called to the floods and they obeyed. Men who loved Princeton as the home of their hearts, as the field of their ideals and their hopes, trembled with enthusiasm as the moment approached the moment of moments; and when it came

they leaped to their feet spontaneously and a great shout went up to Heaven." Honorary degrees were then conferred, after which President Cleveland, who received a magnificent ovation, delivered an address of impressive dignity and noble inspiration, a plea for more earnest participation by educated men in the political affairs of the nation, which, coming as it did only a few days before the national election and at a crisis in the national history, was universally considered as a direct message to the American people.

The spring term of 1898 took on a martial tone on the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, which reminded older men a little of Civil War days. A military company formed of undergraduates was drilled by Colonel William Libbey (1877) of the faculty, but never saw service as a body. A few men left College to volunteer and a number entered service after commencement. The record subsequently prepared by Colonel Libbey and published by the University, entitled "Princeton in the Spanish-American War " (Princeton Press, 1899), shows that one hundred and sixty-seven Princetonians from classes ranging from 1856 to 1901 served their country at this time in various departments of the army and

navy.

In Dr. McCosh's plan for the higher development of the College he had intended the graduate department to be the flowering of the undergraduate course, a department devoted to liberal arts and sciences as distinguished from technical and professional studies. We have seen that regulations for the higher degrees had been more definitely systematized and formulated in 1886, and also that in 1892 the conditions leading to the

'G. M. Harper, in "Memorial Book of the Sesquicentennial Celebration," p. 150.

GRADUATE SCHOOL

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master's and doctor's degrees were strengthened. In 1901 the graduate department was organized as a graduate school and Professor Andrew F. West (1874) was appointed dean. Professor West had become secretary of the faculty committee on the course of study at the time of Dr. McCosh's last revision in 1886, and had not only taken a leading part in each subsequent improvement of the curriculum and the standards of scholarship, but had also been prominent in faculty deliberations looking toward the organization of graduate work on an increasingly higher plane.

The Princeton attitude at this period toward higher degrees was stated in February, 1901, at a meeting of the Association of American Universities in substantially the following language: in regard to fellowships the aim was to give them to men sufficiently rounded in their general culture to be likely to prove of more than ordinary usefulness as teachers as well as original investigators; in regard to the doctorate in philosophy the prerequisite was a bachelor of arts degree from an institution whose academic course was equivalent to that of Princeton, with the further condition that the candidate should have studied a sufficient amount of Greek and should also offer as one of his subsidiary subjects a subject in philosophy, the conception of the doctorate in philosophy being that it implied in its possessor a certain amount of general culture which had continued beyond the time at which he was graduated with the bachelor of arts degree, and which was shown in the character of the special work he was pursuing for the higher degree as well as in the subsidiary subjects offered. It was believed that a far higher type of teacher and investigator would be developed by emphasizing the elements of education which make for general