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Louisiana State University (and Agricultural and Mechanical College), at Baton Rouge, La., in search of a president, singled out Major Campbell Blackshear Hodges, commandant of cadets* at West Point. Though the university is coeducational, this choice was not unusual, nor need foes of military training in the colleges have become excited. Louisiana State has long had a cadet corps. In 1911 Major Hodges commanded it, teaching Spanish at the same time. He is well-known in the state, having organized its militia (1915-17). Square-cut, with steel-grey hair and large brown eyes, he would doubtless be a president as popular with female undergraduates as with the cadets, whom he was to instruct in military science and tactics, in order to combine active service with the presidency.
But last week the War Department found it "inadvisable" to detail Major Hodges as a professor of warfare at Louisiana State. And not for two years will he round out the 30-year service that makes U. S. Army officers eligible for retirement by request.
Memorials
If you want to go to Heaven
When your time on earth is through,
You must be as Mr. Bryan—
You will fail unless you do.
—SOUTHERN HILLFOLKSONG.
Not by wind alone do disciples of the late William Jennings Bryan propose to keep his memory green. Ever since the "trumpet blast" that was "sounded for rallying the believing hosts of the world around their faith," i.e. the Scopes anti-evolution trial (precipitated by anti- Fundamentalists)—ever since the Great Commoner died "on the battlefield" (Dayton, Tenn.), hard-headed men have been promoting a Bryan Memorial University (TIME, Sept. 14, 1925). On a 26-acre tract across the road from the house in which Mr. Bryan breathed his last, this "sacred enterprise" is already under construction. It may be ready for 400 students next autumn.
F. E. Robinson, up-and-doing Dayton druggist, in whose historic store the Scopes trial crowds spent much time and money, is president of the Bryan Memorial University Association. And in Manhattan, last week, newsgatherers discovered one of many local "drives" that are to be held to raise $5,000,000. The quota assigned to New York City was modest in proportion to its size and wealth-$100 each from only 4,000 Fundamentalists. But the Bryanites were sure the metropolis must harbor at least that many. A Brooklyn undertaker and three clergymen were the first assistants engaged by one Malcolm M. Lockhart, onetime solicitor for the Near East Relief, who now styled himself "militant Fundamentalist" and headed the Manhattan drive. Driver Lockhart was prepared to issue certificates, each carrying a vote on the university's board of directors, to anyone with $100. He emphatically denied that he or his assistants, like solicitors for the Supreme Kingdom (TIME, Jan. 17), would receive commissions for each certificate sold, admitting only that they were on salaries which would fluctuate according to results obtained. He let newsgatherers see the neatly alliterated slogan of his organization: "Fifty Thousand Fundamentalists for the Faith of our Fathers."