University Loses Noted Scholar in Death of A. C. Coolidge Saturday

Last Saturday afternoon Professor Archibald Cary Coolidge, a member of the class of 1887, died at his home in Boston after many years of service to the University as one of its greatest scholars and teachers, and to the Political world at large as a clearsighted and sound adviser.

Professor Coolidge, who became professor of history in 1908, was born in Boston on March 6, 1866, the son of the late Joseph Randolph Coolidge. A pupil of the late William Everett in his preparatory school days at Quincy, he was prominent as an undergraduate in the scholastic and social life of the University, being a member of the Dickey, the Pudding and the Fly clubs as well as the Phi Beta Kappa Society and taking his degree summa cum laude in History.

The six years following his graduation Professor Coolidge spent almost exclusively in Europe, travelling widely and studying at the University of Berlin, L'Ecole des Sciences Politiques, in Paris, and the University of Freiburg in Baden. It was a Freiburg in Baden that he received his Ph.D. In 1892. During this period he was also active in political affairs, being acting secretary of the American Legation at St. Petersburg in 1890 to 1891; secretary to his uncle, T. J. Coolidge '50, United States Minister to France in 1892, and in 1983 several as secretary of the American Legation at Vienna.

On his return to Harvard in the autumn of 1893 as an instructor in History, Professor Coolidge took over History 1, which had been under the direction of Professor Edward channing '78, and conducted it until 1905.

His stay at St. Pertersburg had awakened in him a keen interest in the history and politics of Slavic Europe and the Near East, and it was largely due

to his influence that the study of Eastern Europe was developed in this country. At the University he conducted courses on the history of Russia and Near Eastern questions and built up the great collections on these subjects in the University Library.

It was not, however, only as a teacher and scholar that Professor Coolidge was prominent at Harvard. In 1909 he became Director of the Harvard College Library, and it is largely due to his great interest, and gifts as an administrator that the University has achieved its recognized primacy among similar institutions the world over in this respect. It is due to his instrumentality that Harvard acquired great collections on France, Latin America, the Near East. Prussia and Slavic Europe; and to him is also due the acquisition of a splendid collection of books connected with the Great War. Throughout, his administration of the Library was marked by great foresight and sound policy.

Few men have shown during their lives the versatility with which Professor Coolidge was so richly gifted. Not only was he prominent as a professor and librarian, but also he was well known in diplomatic circles as an adviser on political questions. Soon after his entrance into the Harvard Faculty, he became recognized as an authority on contemporary politics all over the world. In the year 1905 to 1906 he was a member of President Taft's party which visited the Philippines, and four years later in 1908 to 1909 he was the United States and Harvard University delegate to the Pan-American Scientific Conress at Santiago, Chile.

This political phase of his activity led him to found and conduct during the last five years of his life "Foreign Affairs", the periodical which strives to treat adequately and impartially the neglected subject of this country's foreign relations.

He served the United States brilliantly and effectively as a special agent of the State Department in Sweden and Russia, and as chief of the inter-allied missions in Vienna and Paris attached to the Peace Conference in 1919. In 1921 he became attached to the American Relief Administration in Russia where he dealt largely with the authorities in the direction of far reaching relief.

Funeral to be Held Tomorrow

Professor Coolidge's funeral will take place at 12 o'clock tomorrow in Appleton Chapel.

Among the last acts of his life was the writing, for Foreign Affairs, of an article dealing with the present relations between France and England. In referring to it, Raymond Potheare, President of France, summed up Professor Coolidge's scholastic eminence in the following words:

"There is no mistake either of fact or emphasis in the whole article. It seems in fact the perfect type of historical writing. The knowledge on which it is based is so broad and so mature that Professor Coolidge never had to stop the flow of his reader's thought by introduction of small facts as so many modern historians feel that they have to do."COOLIDGE IN 1887