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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published weekly by the
University of North Carolina
for its Bureau of Extension.
DECEMBER 4,1918
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. V, NO. 4
Sditorial Board ■ E. C. Branson, J. G, deB. Hamilton, L, K. Wilson, R. H. Thornton, G. M. McKie.
Satered as seoondKslass matter November 14,1914, At the 'Postofflce at Chapel Hill,
N, C., under the act of August S4, 1912.
PEACE TASKS ABROAD
’riie armistice drawn by Generalissimo
Focli was signed by the German autliori-
ties at2:45 this morning and all guns
were silenced at 6 a. m., Paris time, on
.this the 11th day of November. The kais
er and the crown prince have abdicated
and are seeking safety in flight. The
kaisftrlings in the little German states are
following suit in swift order. Peace is not
yet (wncluded in set terms, but the world
war is over—the war that cost the strug
gling nations 221 billion dollars, that slew
.8 million men killed in battle, and or-
(phaned 20 million children.
With peace in sight, it becomes possi
ble to look straight at the largest task
the Good Samaritans of the world have
ever had to contemplate in all history—
the healing of the wounds of Armenia,
Poland, Roumania, Serbia, Italy, France
and Belgium. These countries have fal
len among thieves, they are stricken be
yond words, and human hearts in happy
lands will not pass them by on the other
side.
Our prediction is that we are now about
to wdtness the greatest outpouring of
^Christian charity this old world has ever
■seen. Strange, but the fiendish purposes
•of Germany in four years of war have
brought humanity further along the road
toward the common brotherhood of man
and tlie comman fatherhood of God than
;all tlte civilizing agencies of twenty cen
turies have been able to do. So it is that
He maketh the wrath of man to praise
Him.'
Mighty agencies of rehabilitation and
merciful healing are girding up their
loins for gigantic tasks in the blasted re
gions of war. Five billion dollars will
barely cover the value of properties de
stroyed and stolen in France and Bel
gium alone, say the War Damage Commis
sions whose business it has been the last
three years to keep books against the day
of righteous reparation by the central
pow^.
A Distress Signal
Andre Tardieu, the French Minister of
War Affairs, hasjustlaid bare to the world
ithe wounds of France. Two and a half
million of her heroes are dead, or down
and out with wounds or disease—a full
fifteenth of her effective population. Her
maimed soldiers are to be re-made by the
magic arts of modem surgery, and train
ed to self-sustaining industries in endless
variety. Widowed mothers and five mil
lion fatherless children are to be cared
for tenderly. Three hundred and fifty
thousand homes are to be re-erected.
Hundreds upon hundreds of hamlets,
'towns and cities are to be rebuilt, indus-
diries are to be re-established, mines put
into working order, highways and bridges
reconstructed, railway trackage over
hauled,and equipped with rolling stock,
a merchant marine created anew, and so
on and on. Ten thousand square miles
of farm land are to be leveled, plowed
and harrowed for the spring seeding, or
chard spaces must be re-set with vines
and fruit trees, and shade trees are to be
re-planted along the streams and high-
-ways after the stately fashion of France.
The plans of reconstruction are baaed
'OU the five billion dollars of indemnity
that France may righteously demand of
Germany.
But they call for five billions more,
and the land of LaFayette and Rocham-
beau flies a distress signal to America for
assistance. And also they call for a fifty
percent credit on all purchases made in
America for restoration in France. They
■ call, too, for all the volunteers that can
be found in our armies—technical engin-
 eers of every description, industrial or-
;,ganizers and superintendents, business
. men, doctors, teachers, and ministers.
While-our soldier boys are waiting ship
■ during tl»e next twelve months for the
• return home, what nobler thing can they
•do than to lend a hand to stricken
•France and Belgium, now bowed down
and stmggling to stand erect again?
Peace-Time Jobs in France
General Pershing knows, as Mazzini
knew, that the morrow of peace is more
perilous than the eve; that idle minds are
the devil's workshop; that temptations like
the flies of Beelzebub for multitude will
Jttow be swarming about our boys abroad
i while waiting their return home; and that,
j if tliey are to come back to us stronger
I not weaker men, their brains and bodies
must be nobly employed every minute of
the time in peace projects overseas—in re
building the civilization of the stricken
war zone, and in learning all the lessons
that France and Belgium have to teach
America.
Hence General Pershing’s call for vol
unteer workers in restoration activities,
and for 2,000 volunteer soldier-teachers
to turn the Army Y Huts in France into
class rooms busy with lessons about the
agriculture and commerce, the industries
and finance, the history and civic life of a
glorious people whose bodies oft retreated
during four heroic years but not their
souls ever.
The educational end of demobilization
has been turned over to the Army Over
seas Education Commission headed by
Dr. John Erskine of Columbia, who is
now swiftly organizing the work he has
been drafted to undertake.
^The technical and vocational end of in
struction is headed by Dr. K. L. Butter
field, President of the Massachusetts
Agricultural College. His work covers the
agriculture, industries and commerce of
an unbeatable people. Professor E. C.
Branson, of the University of North Car
olina, has gone with Dr. Butterfield as
Commission Specialist in Rural Social
Science during the coming year. His ad
dress till next September will be 10 Rue
de I’Elysee, Paris.
OUR BOYS
Mary Elizabeth Sodhouse
God make us worthy of our boys.
Fearless and true as they must te.
Clear-eyed to face reality.
And blithe withal and glad of heart.
Help us each one to do his part.
With faith serene and spirit high
As they who teach us how to die.
God make us worthy of our boys.
• —Of the Vigilantes.
FRENCH LESSONS IN BRIEF
Professor Branson left on his desk be
fore sailing a sketchy memorandum of
some of the lessons that the 750 thousand
farmer-soldiers in our overseas armies
can profitably learn from the farm sys
tems, the farm activities, and the coun
try civilization of France. We give it to
our readers in the paragraphs that fol
low.
A Safely Balanced Life
Town and country life are in safe bal
ance in France.
A little more than half the population
of France is rural, in contrast with a third
in Germany and a tenth in England.
More than half the wealth produced in
France from year to year is derived from
the soil. In normal years France is a
self-feeding country—at least so far as the
standard staple foods are concerned. For
all the wonderful industrial development
of France since 1870, her civilization still
is rural, and wholesome at the core. Here
are fundamental facts directly related to
the physical hardihood of the French ar
mies and the power of the nation to en
dure the stress and strain of war.
A Land of Home Owners
France is a land of home-owning,
home-loving, home-defending farmers.
They are nearly four millions in num
ber. Only 13 French farmers in the hun
dred are leasehoMers, and only 7 in the
hundred are croppers or metayers. In
the United States, farm tenants are 36 in
the hundred, in North Carolina 42, while
in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
and Mississippi they are more than 60 in
the hundred.
Even before the French Revolution,
two-thirds of the soil of France belonged
to small peasant proprietors, and today
almost all of it is so owned.
England and America stand face to
face with the deadliest social peril of mod
ern times; landless, homeless multitudes
that steadily increase in numbers, intelli
gence, and restless discontent. In Great
Britain more than four-fifths of the peo
ple are landless, in the United States
more than half, and in the South more
than two-thirds—a fundamental fact that
these lands will have to reckon with in the
new era. Mexipo and Russia are ghastly
reminders of their significance. Land
without people is a wilderness, people
without land are a mob, as James J. Hill
once said.
But the wide diffusion of home and
farm ownership in France means social
contentedness, civic stability and national
security. The soul,of France craves these
things even more than it craves liberty
and equality.
Here is a large part of the explanation
why France has safely weathered the oft
repeated storms of domestic upheaval.
Widespread peasant ownership of land
has kept France on even keel for 100
years or so, and is like to do it till tlie
last chapter of her history. Private prop
erty in land is never likely to be abolish
ed by any brand of French socialism. The
well nigh universal ownership of homes
and farms in France is a mighty break
water against the rising tide of anarchy
that menaces the world today.
And here, too, is why France has been
an “edge of steel, a line of fire’’ against
the armies of invading autocracy. Her
poilus have been fighting to the last gasp
for the things that were their very own—
their homes and (arms and farm ani
mals, their little shops and small indus
tries, and for the land and country that
has given them the right to enjoy these
in freedom and abounding prosperity.
Balanced Farm Systems
The prevailing farm system in France
is a safely balanced system.
It is a food-crop, livestock, farm-indus
try system, with emphasis on self-support
on tiie one hand and on farm products in
finished form for final consumption on
the other—butter, cheeses, poultry and
eggs, bacon, hams, and shoulders, dried!
fruits, jams, jellies, preserves and the
like, for direct market sale. Crop-farm
ing alone is nearly unknown in France;
rarely is anything else known in the
the Southern states of America. No
French farmer markets anything on four
wheels that he can market on four legs,
and nothing on four legs that can be sold
on two.
Here is a type of farming that all-wheat
or all-cotton and all-tobacco farmers can
study with direct profit.
A Land of Small Farms
France is a region of small farms and
intensive farming.
Three million or three-fourths of all the
farms of France are less than IS acres
each; 600,000 are between IS and 240
acres each, and only 150,000 are more
than 240 acres in size. It is a kind of
farming that is possible to farm-owners
in a densely populated region with num
erous nearby market centers. Forty mill
ion people dwell in France, a little coun
try barely four times the size of North Car
olina. There are 200 people to the square
mile in France or five times the average
for our home state.
Small-scale farming can be profitable
if it is done by farmers (1) who own the
land they till, (2) whose farm practices
are re-enforced by agricultural science and
intelligent skill, (3) who own and use
labor-saving machinery in common, and
(4) who buy farm supplies, market farm
products, and finance farm activities co
operatively.
In the main we are small-scale farmers
in North Carolina (the average of culti
vated acres per farm is only 35) but we
have too many tenant farmers, too little
skill in farm systems and practices, too
few market centers, and too little co-op
erative enterprise for success.
But these conditions of prosperity our
farmer-soldiers will find everywhere in
France, if they look about with keen
eyes. Barring only Denmark, France is
far and away the best developed farm
civilization in Europe.
They have at hand for study the Na-
tionkl Agronomic Institute in Paris, five
great secondary agricultural schools, 100
or more local (agricultural schools, and
just as many farm-life vocational schools;
the National Agricultural Society com
posed of some 6,000 associations with
nearly a million members; the Central
Union of Agricultural Syndicate com
posed of 2,500 local societies for co-opera
tive enterprise; and the National Associa
tion for Co-operative Credit, with 2,400
member societies.
Without intelligent skill in production,
and group-loyalty in salesmanship and
farm credit, net profits per farmer can
nowhere keep pace with increasing gross
yields per a(;re in small-farm areas. Here
are vital lessons in farm prosperity for
the farm populations of America, and our
farmer lads in France are now to have a
chance to learn them on the spot face to
face with the facts.
Life in Farm Villages
Tlie country populations of France live
together in small villages.
Their little pocket-handkerchief farms
cluster around little farm centers. French
farmers live in little social groups. In
America our farm people dwell apart in
widely scattered homes in sparsely set
tled country regions. The social contrasts
and consequences are arresting.
It is easy for the country school in
France to be a good school. The teacher
is usually housed in a cosy school home
along side the schoolhouse,—sometimes
under the school roof itself. As a rule he
is permanently resident in the school
community, and contentedly settled down
in his profession. The vicar and the
school master are together the'pillars of
the village group. Social life is abundant
and has a chance to be efiective. Chorus
societies, glee clubs, village bands, cul
ture groups, holiday observances, social
recreation and co-operation will be found
more or less in evidence in these farm
villages. At home here, our country life
is crippled by farm isolation, raw individ
ualism, and social aloofness. The mani
fold differences between country life in
France ahd America ought to challenge
the interest and attention of the soldiers
from American farms.
Fitting Schools to Life
Another thing arrests attention in
France: the social values of the public
school, town and country.
It is common to find French schools
that take on the color of surrounding life
as faithfully as chameleons do, and just
as unconsciously. We’ve long theorized
in America about relating schools to life,
town schools to town life and country
schools to country life. Not so in France,
because the French have in very fact the
thing we only dream of in our philoso
phies. They have it and don’t know it
—have never stopped even to think about
it.
It is largely for this reason that France
is bare of originality in formulated peda
gogic doctrine. Rousseau is the solitary
peak in the dreary waste of educational
platitudes. But the elementary schools
of France are worth looking into or com
monly so, and our soldiers will do well to
miss nochance to study them at close range.
The secondary schools and the colleges
of France—both secular and cleric—are
hardly worth while; but, next to the
folkschools of Denmark, the elementary
schools of France are perhaps the best in
Europe.
Thrift and Prosperity
The ingrained thrift of the French far
mers, their well nigh universal owner
ship of interest-bearing state-securities or
consols, in small denominations from ten
francs up, and their evident prosperity
ought to set our farmer-soldiers to think
ing.
If they can puzzle out the secrets of
farm prosperity in France and transplant
them in America they will be worth bill
ions to the farm civilizations of the home
country. Among other things our South
ern farm boys will do well to note in
France is this: the French farmer lets no
money go for anything that he can easily
produce on his farm. If in the same way
the farmers of the South could hold down
their cotton and tobacco money year by
year they would be the richest country
population on the globe in a single gener
ation.
In an average year the farm wealth
with absolute certainty on the farmer's
saving around $16 out of this small sum
And $16 multiplied by 20
farm workers represents the investable
wealth created by the farmers of France
and added year by year to the total capi
tal of the nation.
Prosperity and Patriotism
There is no doubt about the prosperity
of the petty peasant proprietors of France.
It was the small French farmers who
for the most part pmmptly produced tlie
billion dollars in gold that Bismarck de
manded as an indemnity in 1871. And
just as they freely surrendered their gold
and their lives to save their beloved
home land in the Franco-Prussian war,
so have they freely surrendered their
lives and their all to save la belle France
in 1914-18.
The farmers of France are thrifty and
prosperous, but they are thrifty and
prosperous on the high levels of patriot
ism. French thrift, town and country,
is not—as we thought—a sordid trait of
character, but a consecrated quality of
soul.
It is the spiritual treasures of unbeata
ble, unbreakable, glorious France that
have thrilled the heart of the world dur
ing the four dark years of this war, and
that will live on in the minds of men till
the end of time.
But like every other spiritual treasure
of enduring sort, it is no disembodied
something; it is distinctly related to the
ownership of homes and farms, and the
craving of a home-owning people for so
cial security, eivic stability, and national^
integrity.
The Real France
France has been the surprise of the
world in this war. So, because the su
perficial popular notion has been that
Paris is France—Paris gay, effervescent,
irresponsible; hysterical—Paris fantastic,
bizarre, spectacular!
Somehow we expected the French ar
mies to have the qualities and character*
istics of Paris, and we were ill-prepared
to look upon the grim, grizzly multitudes
that silently swarmed out of the prov
inces of France—the petty peasant pro
prietors of the country regions, the own
ers of midget shops and industries in
the little towns and cities, “the little
people’’ as they are called in France—the
sober, undemonstrative, sturdy, self-re
specting, red-blooded poilus who are
France.
Napcfieon made no such mistake. He
knew that neither the populace of Paris
nor the idealogues of Paris clubs were
France—but that France was these same
poilus, and that they craved undisturbed
security for their little homes and farms,
shops and trades far more passionately
than they cherished the ideals of the Jac
obins.
These home-owning, home-loving,
home-defending poilus are still Fran.-e—
the real France of today. What they
have been fighting for with exhaustless
hope and courage has been France, their
France—theirs because they own it, al
most to the last inch of its soil and the
last sous of its capital.
If our soldiers in France miss this fun
damental fact in French life, they will
have missed the heart of the civilization
they’ve been steeped in these last fifteen
months.
NEW UNIVERSITY CHIEFS
On October 31, (ProfessorM. H. Stacy,
Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, was
appointed Chairman of the Faculty with
power to perform the duties of the office
of president of the University, made va
cant by the death of President Graham.
Dean Stacy is a graduate of the Uni
versity in the class of 1902, and spent a
year in graduate study at Cornell Univer
sity in 1905-06. He has heen a member
of the faculty since his graduation, hav
ing filled in succession the positions of in
structor in Mathematics, associate pro
fessor of Civil Engineering, and professor
of Civil Engineering. In 1913-14, during
the absence of President Venable in Eu
rope, he was appointed acting dean of the
College of Liberal Arts under Acting
President Graham, and upon the election
of President Graham in 1914, was ap
pointed dean, which position he was
holding at the time of President Gra
ham’s death.
By his appointment as Chairman of the
produced in France is only $136 or so per ^‘‘^ulty at this time, the University is as-
for.,, rri,„ « _ sured of the services of a leader who is
thoroughly familiar with the work of the
institution and who enjoys to the full the
bankers of France have long counted confidence and hearty co-operation of his
•-,—‘4.U . . on]1p5).crnna tlip -i :
-- — » '-J UJ. IIHS
colleagues, the student body, the alumni,
and the people of the State in general.
At the same meeting of the Executive
million Committee of the Trustees in Raleigh
• • Dr. H. W. Chase, Professor of Psycholcl
gy and member the School of Education,
was appointed acting dean of the College
of Liberal Arts in the place of Dean Sta
cy, who was promoted to the Chairman
ship of the University faculty.—The
Alumni Review,