The First Commandment

FROM President Dickey's remarks at the recent meeting of the Alumni Council, it appears that he regards as the first and great commandment the duty to maintain and properly to reward the teaching staff of Dartmouth College, at the highest practicable level. The teacher is at least as important as the thing taught—and probably much more important. Mark Hopkins at one end of a log with an eager student at the other remains a fascinating picture. The more wonder, then, that so many institutions of learning seem to feel more interest in the "log" than in the human beings at either end of it—more concern for the plant than for the personnel; more care for the instrument than for the players on it; more solicitude for the things to be taught than for the ability and the remuneration of those who do the teaching. It may be time to stress the caliber and the pay of college faculties as really the most important thing of all.

Dartmouth faces some alluring possibilities in the matter of augmenting its plant

—extremely important possibilities, which require big-time financing. There is no need to whip up enthusiasm for such things as the long-needed auditorium, or for the provision of adequate quarters for the physical sciences. All that is suggested is that, in our zeal for such material adjuncts and our recognition of such as an enduring memorial to Dr. Wheelock, the founder, to President-emeritus Hopkins, who has brought Dartmouth to heights undreamed of, and to the Dartmouth men who served during the recent war, we shall not overlook the duty to insure the vitally essential element which underlies all thisthe men who do the teaching, whom, perhaps, we take too much for granted.

Instruction and training make up the real business of a college. The provision of facilities is imperative. We must indeed have the physical instruments on which to play. But transcending all else must always be the ability of those who do the playing thereon, and the retention of the best performers against eager competition to get them away from us. College professors are men. They make their living by teaching. Let it be a decent living, in dignified surroundings, and at proper pay.