independent institutions to step out in front and give us ideals and courage. We must look to the men and women who come to these institutions and receive training and who go out and demonstrate and make the challenge to multitudes of men and women to enlist in the great cause of education.

Recently in these years of interpretation of the times, the artist, Innis, has painted a great picture, which is now being taken about to institutions and unveiled in the presence of ambitious young students in the hope that there may be made a challenge to them. He calls his masterpiece "The Only Hope." In the foreground of the picture is a great desolation, the result of the years just passed; but in the background, where there is a gray shadow, there appears a light, and that light presently comes to be the face of the Christ, and that face is interpreted by the artist as that of a great teacher. Likewise, George Peabody in another time, when interpretations were being sought and when means of coming to a better understanding were being set up, also found in the education of the teacher the solution. He, being a great constructive thinker, saw it, not in a picture on canvas, but in an institution on a campus, and for that we thank him. There is, as the years pass, rising in each generation a new interpretation-a new incarnation, if you please-of the great creative human spirit which lifts us up as teachers and lets us look into the ambitions of youth and challenge them to our profession as a great creative agency in progress. It is to this College grown up in the world through gifts of life and skill and contributions of philanthropy, through the high ideals lived up to and made real, that we turn to-day to get our courage to proceed on the routine and details of our work. So far as these different teacher-training schools are concerned, it is true that they are passing through a great crisis. They are passing out of the time when, with minor appropriations and small faculties, they prepare a few teachers for places financially able to employ them, into that great day foreseen by George Peabody when we shall really prepare adequately all the teachers needed in the universal service of the public schools. Time is short. The most precious human life is the life of little children, and it is for them that we must work. We must learn every sympathetic interpretation that will inspire their hopes, define their ambitions, and give permanence to their highest purposes. Only thus can proof be made of the sincerity of our praise of the great Peabody.

I, thanking you from my heart in the name of the section from which I come and congratulating you on the past, the dynamic present, and the even greater future, give you Godspeed.

RESPONSE FOR THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE UNIVERSITIES

FRANK LEROND MCVEY

President, University of Kentucky

Fifty years is a long time in the life of any man, but a short period in the history of an institution. Like any human event, the educational institution is born an infant. Only now and then does it begin its history in full bloom. Peabody College was established in 1875, in the city of Nashville, through the beneficence of the Peabody Education Fund. This was but ten years after the close of the Civil War, in the midst of a great national depression and at a time when the training of teachers was little appreciated either North or South. A more important development took place in 1903 to 1909, when, through the coöperation of city, county, state, and the Peabody Education Fund, the plant and facilities were enlarged by the added funds of more than two million dollars. In the years following other steps forward were taken, and George Peabody College for Teachers, with enlarged endowments and greater vision of its work, went at its task with new vigor. For twelve years past its progress has been notable, giving incentive to kindred institutions and maintaining the standards of a profession.

Such, briefly stated, is the history of the institution whose fiftieth anniversary this notable assembly has come together to celebrate. And it is fitting that a half century of highly effective service should be marked by appropriate ceremonies.

Education as a factor in the development of democracy grows more important as the decades pass. Life-social, intellectual, and industrial-is more complicated, requiring a constantly revised program of studies and closer approximation to life than ever before. The business of education is to keep abreast of national and world growth. This means that the teacher is the all-important element in this great change in national life. The teacher must, in order to meet the heavy responsibilities, have a professional attitude toward his work and bring to it personality, enthusiasm, judgment, and training. If this be taken as true, the importance of a great college for teachers, such as the one founded by the munificence of George Peabody, needs no new emphasis by any speaker of to-day.

I am, however, not here to tell in detail the character of the work done by this college. As representative of the state universities, I

7. Rear of academic procession leaving Social-Religious Building, with Mr. Justice Edward T. Sanford and Mr. Whitefoord R. Cole (left), Sir Esme Howard and President Bruce R. Payne bringing up the rear.

8. Middle section of the academic procession passing down the walk toward the terrace of the lower campus, with Industrial Arts and Home Economics Buildings on the right.

have pleasure in conveying the good wishes and congratulations of the National Association of State Universities. This organiation, formed by a small group of notable men, such as James Angell, Charles Kendall Adams, Cyrus Northrup, and George A. MacLean, held its first meeting thirty years ago. It now has a membership of forty-six universities in the United States and three in the colonial possessions. Fifty years ago they were struggling institutions; now they have great possessions, large faculties, many buildings, and extensive bodies of students. In all of them the courses for preparing teachers for the public-school system are well organized. The problem of training teachers is still one of the great difficulties in our national life. George Peabody College for Teachers, in dealing with these questions, has an opportunity for leadership both in research and instruction. Its contribution in these fields has been notable and of high order. Enthusiastically and cordially the National Association of State Universities extends congratulations and good wishes for the growth, prosperity, and increasing influence of George Peabody College for Teachers.

RESPONSE FOR PRIVATE AND DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES

HENRY N. SNYDER

President of Wofford College, Spartanburg, S. C.

In responding for what are called the "private institutions" on this significant occasion, I somehow feel that there is a sort of kinship of service between them and George Peabody College for Teachers. Both they and this noteworthy educational enterprise are products of a spirit and purpose that is characteristically American. From the very beginning of the history of the republic, long before the state accepted the duty of higher education by the method of public taxation, the individual initiative and coöperative effort of private citizens established and maintained colleges to keep burning the light of sound learning in the growing nation. Such institutions repeated themselves everywhere in the developing expansion of the republic; and while in a sense they might be called "private," the spirit and purpose that brought them into existence and has kept them alive was that of a liberal and enlightened sense of public service; and in this they are the expression of something that is peculiarly and essentially American in the field of higher education.