To Yale, a Prince

Two widely separated offices-- that of the secretary of Yale University and that of Robert Woods Bliss, U. S. Minister to Sweden-- last week had bursts of activity preparatory to one and the same coming event. Minister Bliss straightened out his papers and left Stockholm for Washington. The Yale secretary prepared an announcement, because His Royal Highness, Gustaf Adolf, Crown Prince of Sweden and Duke of Skane, is this month coming to the U. S. to attend the unveiling of a monument to Viking Leif Ericsson* at the Capital. Minister Bliss must help President Coolidge entertain. Yale, which has not had a special convocation since Marshal Foch visited it in 1921, /- is going to confer upon the Prince, "archeologist, musician, athlete and religious leader," an honorary LL.D.

Prince Wilhelm of Sweden is perhaps more widely known throughout Europe than his elder brother, the royal heir, his dramatic productions having been received with enthusiasm that was by no means merely royalty's perfunctory due. Prince Gustaf, a quiet man, is none the less accomplished. His archeological work has been on the site of ancient Asine (Bay of Messenia, Greece). His music is in his own vocal cords. His athletic interests and abilities were demonstrated by his work on the Swedish Olympic Committee, and last winter when he plunged into a Stockholm canal and rescued a drowning U. S. jack-tar (TIME, Feb. 15). His religious militancy had scope last year in organizing and conducting the World Church Conference at Stockholm (TIME, Aug. 24 et seq.).

The Swedish prince will not cause the palpitations among Yale's fair young commencement-time visitors that his cousin, Edward of Wales, might occasion were he to be present. H. R. H. Gustaf Adolf is tall, handsome, but he has a son of 20, a second wife (the former Lady Louise Mountbatten).

Jew and Gentile

On the upper end of Manhattan Island there are arising some gorgeous, massive buildings in an Americanized Byzantine manner-- rigid facades; a squatty dome; ornate yet severe decoration. They represent the first independent stand on education ever taken by Jewry in the 2,000 years of its exile. Out of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary has grown the Yitzchok Elchanan Yeshivah, in which there will be the first Jewish college ever established in the U. S., equipped to grant "the same academic degrees as other American colleges in a background thoroughly Jewish and thoroughly American in spirit."

Such an institution has become more and more inevitable, for a reason implicit in remarks made last week by Gustavus A. Rogers, Manhattan lawyer, who addressed 60 prominent Jews at the Bankers' Club: "We will cater ... to the Jews who have been barred from Christian schools for non-scholastic reasons."

There was simple fact in Mr. Rogers' assertion that U. S. universities-- he named Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown and Princeton -- discriminate against Jews in accepting matriculants. Polite evasion by those institutions notwithstanding--except in Columbia's case -- Jewish undergraduates form an element in the undergraduate bodies which, if it has not occasioned official discrimination, is a subject for much restless discussion and action among Gentile undergraduates, and this constitutes, for the Jews, discrimination of a most definite sort--exclusion from clubs, preference in athletics, elections, etc. It has seemed to many Gentiles high time that the Jews, with their plentiful resources, relieve themselves of embarrassment by building their own colleges, just as they have their own churches, dwelling colonies (e. g., Long Beach, L. I.), and even hotels (e.g., the Hotel Libby, at Delancey and Chrystie Streets, Manhattan, which opened formally last week for Jews only).

Another speaker at the Bankers' Club gathering--met to discuss a music festival to be held this month in Madison Square Garden to raise a fifth of the five millions needed to build the Yeshivah-- was Adolph Lewisohn, one of the most intelligent and effective workers on human relationships in the U. S. He referred to the Yeshivah as "the salvation of Judaism," where Jews could acquire a college education in Jewish surroundings and without breaking the Sabbath and other holy days. He said that his own grandsons had been excluded "by one of the East's largest universities."

There was a tinge of irony in Mr. Lewisohn's position, whether the grandsons had been excluded for social or for academic reasons. He came to this country from Germany as a lad of 16, in 1865. His brother Leonard was already here and the two built up a big mercantile business, Lewisohn Bros. In 1868 they began specializing in metals, particularly copper, and soon led in world markets. Leonard died in 1902. Adolph, now 77, is one of the world's greatest mining and industrial potentates.

He sent his son, Sam Adolph, to Princeton ('04) and to Columbia Law School ('07), then took him into the firm, now Adolph Lewisohn & Sons. As wealth accumulated he entered philanthropy in the educational and artistic fields. He housed the Columbia School of Mines with a gift of $300,000. He assisted the College of the City of New York to form a German library, to build an athletic stadium. He collected paintings--Blakelock, Bellows and other moderns as well as Rembrandt, Titian, Duerer--and put them where they could be enjoyed by the people as well as himself.

Now his grandsons, because of the pressure of an affluent Jewish population, are uncomfortable in surroundings to whose peace and prosperity he has contributed much. He hears of requests from the colleges to the heads of preparatory schools to "leave the Jews out" when they fill their quotas of certificate scholars. But Adolph Lewisohn understands the nature of social irony, and instead of berating the Gentiles, he has simply noted their frame of mind and thrown his weight behind a movement to supply the people of his race and creed with an institution which, without in turn discriminating against other creeds, will put the children of Israel on an equal educational footing with their Gentile countrymen.

*Son of Eric the Red; Icelandic chief and settler of Greenland; also called "Leif the Lucky." Blown out of his course while returning from Norway in 1000 A. D. to Christianize Greenland, he reached a far-western land where "self-sown" wheat grew, and vines. He called it Vineland, later exploring it, wintering there--in southern Nova Scotia.

/-And only two previously: in 1902 for the late William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, "father of submarine telegraphy" in 1919 for Cardinal Mercier.