formed him that it was the permanent policy of the reestablished George Washington University never again to permit one group of men to approach one-half of the board, and I called his attention to the nonsectarian significance of the name George Washington University."

The CHAIRMAN. Has any protest ever come to you or any other friends of the university, from any of the contributors either to current or to permanent funds, on account of the change in the charter? Doctor HARLAN. I do not know of any protests. If there have been any, I am not aware of it. I do not know whether Doctor Needham knows of any or not.

Mr. LEVER. I should like to ask Doctor Harlan when this charter was changed.

Doctor HARLAN. Six years ago. The board of trustees was immediately reorganized on this broad, nonsectarian basis, and this university, which is represented to you to-day as being tainted with sectarianism, as being controlled altogether by one church, has on its board of trustees 5 Episcopalians, 5 Presbyterians, 1 Methodist― and we hope to elect another very shortly-4 Baptists, 1 German Reformed, 1 Unitarian, 1 Swedenborgian, and 1 Hebrew.

Mr. LEVER. How long has it been since this movement started to have George Washington University participate in the Morrill funds? Doctor HARLAN. It began about a year ago, and this change in the personnel of the board was made six years ago. I understood the gentleman to say that we changed just about the time this bill was introduced. That is a mistake. This change was made all at once, when we reenacted that old clause in the charter, when we reorganized the board and committed ourselves under the name of George Washington University to a platform on which men of all creeds and no creeds could unite in the District of Columbia.

Mr. BEALL. When this reorganization occurred did you have in contemplation at that time any appeal to the Federal Government for the benefits of the Morrill acts?

Doctor HARLAN. I was not here six years ago, but I do not believe the possibility of our becoming eligible to do this work for the District of Columbia had peeped above the horizon at that time, so far as I know. The change was made because we realized that the only platform upon which we could build up a great institution in the District of Columbia was one upon which all men could stand.

Mr. HAWLEY. I got the impression from what Doctor James said that the resources of the George Washington University were under the control of some particular sectarian communion.

Doctor HARLAN. Not at all. We are under no bonds whatever with the Baptist Church. Let me read you here the farewell which the Baptist Church in its organized capacity made, most sorrowfully, to this institution. Let me read to you from the report of the committee of the Baptist Association.

Mr. HAWLEY. Your funds are administered by your board of trustees, as at present constituted?

Doctor HARLAN. Absolutely. There is not a bond that connects us with the Baptist Church at the present time.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not recognize any moral obligation to any previous donors to continue to work along denominational lines?

Doctor HARLAN. That is implied in a statement that has been made to you with regard to the funds that were contributed by the Baptists. That was before I came here, and I would rather Doctor Needham would answer that question, if he will, either in that connection when he comes to address you or now.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you answer that question in just a few words, Doctor Needham?

Doctor NEEDHAM. It will take me just a little time to explain that reorganization.

Doctor HARLAN. I think you had better do it.

Doctor NEEDHAM. It will take me five or ten minutes to explain the reorganization leading up to that.

The CHAIRMAN. Then I think we had better have Doctor Harlan continue with his statement.

Doctor HARLAN. Here is a report of the committee on education of the Columbia Association of Baptist Churches, which was held in Washington in November, 1904, shortly after the board of trustees of the old Columbian University had taken the steps to make the institution thoroughly nonsectarian. In this report, as I say, they take their solemn and sorrowful farewell of this university, and it emphasizes most eloquently the fact that the bonds that connected this institution with the Baptist Church-I emphasize the word "church" purposely-has been cut forever. We hold the bonds of love and gratitude to the devoted men of that church, and will always hold them, but the bond connecting the university with the church in any way was cut, and anyone who knows anything of the tendency in that direction knows that that was forever. In this report the Baptist association of this region says:

The most striking occurrence to the Baptist denomination during the past associational year in educational matters is its loss of the control and ownership of the Columbian University, the oldest Baptist educational institution, with the exception of Brown University, in America.

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On the very day on which, one year ago, this association was considering the report of its committee on education, a bill was introduced in Congress to amend the charter of the university by repealing the amendment of 1898, and thus to restore" the charter to the original form in which it was enacted in 1821. While, in form, an amendment to "restore," the board of trustees had, by a very large majority, declined to concur in a proposed accompanying resolution offered by a small minority of the Baptist members of the board, that, in thus returning to the original terms of the charter, it was not proposed to alter the relation which the institution, since its foundation, had borne to the Baptist denomination, by which it had been founded.

As a matter of fact, the immediate purpose and object of the amendment was to enable the board of trustees to remove the institution from denominational ownership and control, and to transfer it, with its franchises, equipment, and property, and by a changed name, also authorized by the amendment, to the control of an undenominational and purely secular organization, the basis of which transfer had been for some time previously under negotiation and consideration, and which transfer was consummated shortly after the passage of the amendment.

The minority of the board wished to have that declaration that in returning in form to a nonsectarian university we did not propose to cut our connection with the Baptist denomination. That motion was lost, and we find that fact here recorded sorrow fully and regretfully by the Baptist Church itself.

As a matter of fact the immediate method and object of the amendment, which was carried through, was to enable the board of trustees.

to remove the institution from denominational control and transfer it, with its franchises, its equipment and property, and with a changed name also, to the control of an undenominational and purely secular organization, the basis of which transfer had been for some time previously under negotiation and consideration, and which transfer was consummated shortly after the passage of the amendment. Could anything be more eloquent of the absolute change in this institution? Mr. Chairman, is it possible that men coming here from outside, coming from a thousand miles distant from the city, can suggest to your minds that we men here, whom you know, have something up our sleeves in reference to this denominational idea? Whom will you believe, the men who make these insinuations and these reckless guesses? In Doctor James's memorial he said that possibly the majority of the board of trustees were still Baptists. He did not know, but he just threw that wild guess out into print; and at the very moment when he wrote it the board was constituted as I have described, with four Baptists out of twenty-one members of the board. Will you believe, I say, the reckless guesses and insinuations of men who know nothing of this institution, or will you take the word of the trustees of this institution, and its officers, most of whom are known to many Members of Congress, that they will faithfully carry out the nonsectarian provision of their new charter and be true to that name, George Washington, which is suggestive of the broad Americanism of this institution, from now to the end of the chapter? Whom will you believe? We do not doubt the answer to that question. Take the professors of the institution. Often, though you may have a nonsectarian plan and a broad board of trustees, the president could fill the faculty-he or his predecessors-with members of his own church, and give a certain subtle atmosphere to the institution. When this question came up I went to Doctor Needham and asked him how many Baptists there were on our administrative and teaching staff, and he said: "Well "-counting in his mind and on his fingers and when he got to the fifth finger he halted, and he said: "Well, I know there must be more than five or six; there probably are more, but I do not recall." I went to the two or three men in the building who were in constant touch with the life of the institution and asked them the same question. They were as ignorant as the president was of the denominational relationships of our faculty. That fact was eloquent proof of the fact that it was of no interest to the men in charge of that institution, so I made up my mind I would find out myself, and I sent out a little inquiry to the members of our administrative and teaching staff, with this result, shortly. Here are the facts shown by replies received:

And yet gentlemen come here and have the face to insinuate to the people of Washington that there is a trace of sectarianism in the George Washington University. The gentleman must be very hard put to it in his efforts to defeat the only possible plan for getting this appropriation locally effective if he is willing at this late date to make that charge. Mr. Chairman, Tennyson somewhere says:

A lie that is all a lie

Can be met with and fought outright;

But a lie that is half a truth

Is a harder matter to fight.

The half truth in this case is that the old Columbian University, which is dead, was under denominational auspices; but the untruth is that the new reorganized George Washington University, flying his name at its head, is in any sense sectarian. It seems extraordinary that so much time should be necessary to refute such a baseless and reckless charge or insinuation as that. There is no feature in our charter which calls for the creation of denominational colleges. The word is not used in our charter.

In conclusion, let me refer to two points that Doctor James makes. The whole attack upon this bill proceeds upon a misunderstanding or a misstatement of the terms of the Morrill acts and the method of their local application. The very phrase that has been used several times, of "making a grant of money to the George Washington University," shows that the acts are not correctly described, at leastwhether they are correctly understood is not for me to say, but they are not correctly described. The money is a grant of money to the District, not to the institution, and the District legislature chooses its instrumentality to make that appropriation locally effective. Now, a good illustration of the difference between a grant of money to an institution itself and the choice of this particular institution as the instrumentality of making this appropriation effective is seen in the case of Howard University.

Howard University does get a grant of money from the Federal treasury because it needs it, because the nation is under special obligation to this institution at the apex of the educational institutions for the colored race, to raise it up and to raise up teachers for it; but the Federal Treasury makes no grant of money to the Illinois University, nor would it make a grant to George Washington University. The grant is made to the State of Illinois and to the District of Columbia, and as there is no state university for the District of Columbia, in order that these young men may have the education that these acts provide for, you would utilize us for the time being as your local instrumentality. "But," says Doctor James, "if you once let the George Washington University be appointed for this purpose, if they once get their hands on this money, you can not get it away." Well, under what circumstances would Congress wish to change its policy? How would it change its policy in this regard? In only one way. We may push aside as absolutely irrelevant all this talk about Georgetown University and the Catholic University

of America and the Methodist University asking for a similar appropriation.

Under the law there is only one appropriation for the District. If you chose to split up that appropriation and to fritter away its effectiveness; if all these four institutions were now doing this kind of work, which I deny, you could divide this appropriation if you chose to; if the Congress of the United States at any time should think it was to give one-fourth to each of these three denominational universities, after all we have heard about sectarianism through the public prints, and to give only one-fourth to the one nonsectarian institution in the District, Congress could do that; but it could not under any possibility give a like appropriation to any of these institutions. There is only one territorial entity.

But, coming back to the point I was on, under what circumstances and in what way would the Congress ever wish to change its relations to George Washington University? Only when the District legislature is ready to create a state university for the District of Columbia. Do you suppose that we would lift our fingers to prevent such a policy? If the time becomes ripe in ten years or in fifteen years for such a consummation, what do you suppose the Congress of the United States will do? Will it spend a million dollars or two million dollars for sites and buildings to create, de novo, a state university for the District of Columbia? I think not. If I am not hoping too much for the George Washington University, in the next ten years I see an institution that has several million dollars at least of assets, well-developed work, with 7,000 or 8,000 graduates, with a history reaching back for ninety or one hundred years. You can not get those things in a day.

Do you suppose this great Government, when it could have this university with its three or four or five or six millions of dollars of assets, with its history of one hundred years behind it, with its name, and with the good will of its 7,000 or 8,000 graduates, is going to waste two or three millions of money in creating a new institution when it would know, as it would know very quickly, that it could have George Washington University at the drop of the hat? It is absurd to imagine a condition under which George Washington University would stand in the way of a development of a state university; and it is not for us to suggest, it is for Congress to move in that matter, but I do not think I am going beyond my orders in the matter when I say that if Congress wants to do that it can have our university to-morrow. Do you not suppose that the trustees of the George Washington University to-day, or any day between now and the crack of doom, would not be delighted to have the District of Columbia make this university the university of the District of Columbia? We are not suggesting that, but as he has drawn this picture of our getting this money and in some way blocking the development of public education, I have thought it proper, on the spur of the moment, to speak what I know to be the facts on that point.

Mr. Chairman, it is said this is a private institution, and with that point I will close. We have seen that the Congress of the United States has permitted different States, until they were ready to establish state institutions, to utilize the services of institutions already xisting on private foundations to do this public service. The Morrill