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At Belmont Hill, a prep school founded by Harvard professors mainly for their children, Kingman settled for Bs on his report cards. "He had a tremendous brain, but there was so much else he wanted to do," recalls his Latin teacher. He edited the school newspaper, played the First Lord of the Admiralty in H.M.S. Pinafore. A star at debate, he helped beat a loquacious Groton team consisting of Franklin Roosevelt Jr. and William and McGeorge Bundy, taking the affirmative side on "whether capitalism is more conducive to war than socialism."
Deadly Vassar Girls. Kingman spent his summers sailing off Martha's Vineyard, became so skilled that in 1935 and 1937 he scored clean sweeps to win the Prince of Wales Cup in "Acadia"-class international competition in Nova Scotia. He is still an enthusiastic boat man who, notes a friend, "minimizes his tacks by coming closer to the white water than other sailors will" and is co-owner of a 30-ft. ketch, Auriga, with Williams President John Sawyer. Brewster sees a link between sailing and running a university, contends wryly that "there is always the infinite capacity for anticipation at the start and rationalization at the finish."
Before the start of his freshman year at Yale, Brewster asked advice on courses and teachers from a Martha's Vineyard neighbor, Yale History Professor A. Whitney Griswold. It was the start of a long friendship that grew closer when Brewster became chairman of the Yale Daily News, found Griswold a stimulating source of information about the university and a spirited conversationalist on politics. "We had a common sense of the ridiculous and the absurd," Brewster says.
Among the things that Brewster found absurd were Yale's secret societies and fraternities. Rebelliously antiEstablishment, he turned down a tap from Skull and Bones, declined the presidency of Zeta Psi fraternity, and attacked those institutions of privilege in Daily News editorials. He also wrote that Vassar girls are "the world's most deadly bicycle riders" and that girls should not wear slacks: "The women of Wellesley, Smith and Vassar must be deprived of their pants." Foreshadowing his present concerns, he noted that Yale had operated in the red by $133,588 in 1940 and warned: "No institution can long afford to carry a deficit or cut into capital resources."
Without Fair Hearing. Brewster also became deeply interested in politics. He opposed U.S. entry into World War II, joined the isolationist America First movement, even testified before a congressional committee against U.S. aid to Britain. He also argued—as some of his New Left students do today—that students should be permitted to attend peace rallies. Looking back, Brewster sees his position as defensible at the time, since, he thought, F.D.R. was pushing the U.S. toward war without a "fair hearing and popular debate."
Pearl Harbor and the passage of the Lend-Lease Act turned Brewster into a dedicated internationalist. After graduating cum laude in 1941 (selected by his class as the member who "had done most for Yale"), he joined the State Department as an aide in Nelson