Former P. B. K. First Marshal Traces History of Organization

In this brilliant review of the famous society's history, R. H. Phelps '30, former first marshal, continues his article in connection with the coming celebration.

In Phi Beta Kappa, too, "extemporaneous disputes" and carefully prepared papers in opposite composition" were the regular fare at the fortnightly meetings. Even in those days college students had considerable aversion to doing unnecessary work, and there are many reports of meetings containing such statements as "Brother -- being absent the extemporaneous dispute was omitted," and "Brothers -- & -- being absent there were no performances." Yet most of the discussions scheduled were apparently held; and the subjects treated at these meetings have a particular interest, for they include current affairs, speculative questions, potentially humorous topics, debates on academic subjects; and a number of these are matters that are still live themes of argument in colleges.

Colonial Extracts

The following extracts are taken from a list compiled some years ago: 1778--October 23--Whether it would be for the usefulness of ministers to have their salaries increased.

1793--November 26--Whether the civilization of the American Indian be practicable.

1796--May 10--Whether the excise law be advantageous to the public.

August 30--Whether any government have a right to restrain emigration.

1798--April 4--Whether a treaty with Great Britain, offensive and defensive, would be advantageous to the United States.

May 29--Whether French politics be more injurious than New England rum.

1798--December 4--Whether the possession of the West Indies would be of advantage to the United States.

More general topics included:

1787--August 28--Whether mankind be happier in a state of Nature or in Society.

1791--July 5--Whether the fair sex conduce to the improvement of ours.

1792--December 18--Whether literature flourishes more under monarchy than under democracy.

Annual Meeting Held

The Anniversary Meeting became early the great annual event on the Phi Beta Kappa calendar. The date of the first regular meeting, September 5, was at first selected for celebration; from 1792 until the present the annual gathering has been held during Commencement Week, though the more recently initiated Winter Meeting, on or about December 4 (the date of the granting of the charter) is, precisely speaking, the anniversary. From the first the celebration has comprised a business meeting, literary exercises, and a dinner. Until about 1817, the business meeting took place in the college room of some member, and the dinner was provided at Warland's or Porter's where there was much toasting, and as the records say, "the society partook of an elegant repast which added energy to social entertainment, and ... smoaked awhile the Calumet of friendship".

Famous Orators

During the early years, active members of the chapter were chosen to be orators; often two Seniors, whose subjects were noticeable for indefiniteness: Friendship; History; Industry; Happiness; Man (this last led to an entry in the diary of the Reverend Dr. John Pierce, indefatigable guest at anniversaries during a period of forty years: "The oration of Br. Pipon on Man consisted of miscellaneous and severely critical remarks on man.") By 1796, however, the custom of inviting one poet and one orator to take part in each anniversary had been initiated; and the list of great Americans who have accepted this honor, and made the gatherings memorable by their words, began to grow. About one hundred and forty orations have been delivered, and over one hundred poems have been written to celebrate these occasions. Among the orators have been John Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, Henry Ward Beecher, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips (whose address "The Scholar in a Republic" delivered at the one hundredth anniversary of the chapter, in 1881, ranks with Emerson's "The American Scholar" among the greatest orations of its type); Carl Schurz, Charles William Eliot, Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson, Josiah Royce, Charles Evans Hughes, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The names of the poets include Everett, Emerson, and Holmes; William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Francis Brot Harte, Owen Wister, Barrett Wendell, Robert Frost, Bliss Carman, Alfred Noyes, and Stephen Vincent Benet.

Foreign Visitors

Many a famous foreign visitor has been present at the chapter's meetings, as a guest of honor, or to be received into honorary membership, or himself to act as orator or poet., As early as 1788 the records tell of "a very respectable audience consisting of his Excellency John Hancock Esq., Governour of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Monsieur Senneville Commander of his Most Christian Majesty's Squadron at Boston and other officers of the fleet." In 1824 the Harvard Chapter was host to Lafayette. The orator of that year, Edward Everett, closed with "an address to La Fayette exceeding anything we have heard, and drew tears from almost every eye"; and to the gracious toast of Judge Story, who presided afterward at the dinner: "Our most distinguished guest La Fayette--He reads his history in a nation's eyes", the famous guest replied with equal grace and spirit; "This Antient University: this Literary Society. This Holy Alliance of Learning & Virtue & Patriotism is more than a match for any coalition against the rights of mankind." Since then, among many other foreign scholars and statesmen, Sir Leslie Stephen, James Bryce, Eugen Kuhnemann, and George Walter Prothero have been chosen to honorary membership; Jean Jules Jusserand was orator in 1912; Alfred Noyes, poet in 1915. The roll of men who have joined the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa in honoring these occasions is as distinguished as it is long.

First Fifty Years

During its first years, the Society, as has been indicated, hardly differed from most contemporary literary clubs. Its prestige as the oldest Greek letter society, and its expansion to a number of colleges, did, indeed, give to it a higher reputation than that of its fellows; but in its organization, purpose, and activities it resembled them. Thus at Harvard, the fortnightly meetings (until 1819) with their sociability and their discussions; the complex forms and ceremonies of initiation, taken over from the William and Mary chapter; the secrecy in which the meetings and laws were clothed, the use of cipher in official communications; all these are typical of the fraternities of the time. The ritual of initiation was pompous: in referring to meetings, it stated "everything transacted within this room is transacted Sub rosa, and detested is he that discloses it"; an oath had to be taken to "keep, hold & preserve all secrets that pertain to your duty"; a special fraternity "grip" was employed; the symbolism of the name PBK the three stars, and the letters SP on the medal, was kept scrupulously guarded.

Secrecy Discarded

The Harvard chapter never suffered, the indignity of the Yale and Dartmouth groups, whose secret records were stolen, "base conduct" of which this chapter naturally expressed disapproval. But the necessity, and even the advisability, of such secrecy, was called into question before many years had passed. The anti-Masonic agitation of the eighteen-twenties and thirties did not pass by Phi Beta Kappa, which was attacked for binding its members by oath not to disclose its secrets. In 1831, the President of the Harvard chapter, Edward Everett, wrote a letter to Mr. Justice Story, in which he stated: "Several friends with whom I have conversed, think it expedient wholly to drop the affectation of secrecy. . . One gentleman thinks the Society useless, & that it would be best to abolish it altogether; & I should be of this opinion, unless such a liberal change can be made in the terms of admission & membership as to made it a comprehensive fraternity of the children & friends of the College. . ." At the special meeting which followed, John Quincy Adams moved "That in the admission of all future members of the Society, no oath shall be administered, and no secret shall be disclosed to or imposed upon or required of the member admitted." This, and a subsequent motion by him at the time of the presentation of a new Constitution (August 11, 1831), were lost; but finally, on September first, the new Constitution was adopted, permitting election to the chapter by three-fourths vote, instead of requiring unanimous consent, and incorporating as Article 4: "No oath or form of secrecy shall be required of any member of the Society, and all injunction of secrecy heretofore imposed by this branch of the Phi Beta Kappa Society shall be removed."

Single Purpose

By this liberalization of policy, the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa escaped once and for all the possibility of becoming merely one of many undergraduate social clubs. It made itself definitely free to choose its members on merit, and to devote itself singly to the purpose of scholarship.

The Society had accomplished much in its first fifty years at Harvard: it had by no means forgotten the noble words of the William and Mary brethren in the preamble to its charter, "Whereas it is repugnant to the liberal principles of Societies, that they should be confined to any particular place, men or Description of men, and as the same should be extended to the wise & virtuous of what ever degree." It had brought as concrete results, an inter-change of ideas with other chapters; the institution of Anniversary Meetings in which the greatest of Harvard's graduates brought new and vital thoughts to the University; the establishment in 1785 of a library for the use of the Society; the foundation in 1797 of a fund "to relieve those members of our brotherhood, whom fortune may distress, to accomodate those who may wish for assistance, and in general, to extend the advantages which result from a connection with PBK." From the year 1831, the best of these early creations of the chapter were retained, and a new, more mature point of view was added.

Growing Size

Such has been the fundamental attitude of the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa for the past century. As the college has grown, the maximum number to be elected to the Society from each class has been increased--not always with corresponding rapidity--from a normal membership of sixteen from each class, until 1866, by stages of thirty, forty, and forty-five, to the present maximum of sixty-five (about one-tenth of the number of men in each graduating class). Traditionally, eight men are chosen in the fall of their third year, as the "Junior Eight"; thirty-two Seniors are elected in the autumn, and twenty-five at graduation, when the final allotment of degrees with honors is known.

Meetings of the undergraduate members are now held only for the election of new members. The only other activity of these "immediate members" (except for the recently revived baseball game with the Yale chapter) is the undergraduate tutoring bureau, founded in 1914-15, through which students who need help in their studies are advised free of charge. Thus the present status of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard is that of an all-but-honorary society. Because each year some of the twenty-two seniors elected in the fall receive their degrees only cum laude, while a number of men who are awarded a magna cum laude at commencement cannot be taken into the fraternity on account of its limited numbers, the suggestion has been made that the proportions of men elected in the fall and the spring should be altered, to allow the election of the largest number possible on the basis of four years' work instead of three. The Harvard faculty has come to stress more and more, in awarding honors, the work done in the Senior year, when students by means of theses and general examinations, have the opportunity to show how well they have digested, and how maturely they can employ, the facts acquired from their first three years' study in twelve or thirteen separate courses. If Phi Beta Kappa should join the University in withholding its judgment of students until as much evidence as possible is available, it would complete its century-long growth away from college social club to honorary society. It would be recognizing officially what has long been the situation at Harvard: that the nature of Phi Beta Kappa does not permit it to compete as an activity for the interest of undergraduates, with the fraternities and clubs of avowedly social or semi-social character; that the significance of the Society to Harvard and to America can at present best be realized through a mature organization, mainly of graduates, most of them chosen after their intellectual ability has had a chance to prove itself through the full four years of college, and made them riper and more responsible as members of Phi Beta Kappa. To the chapter, to the Society, and through it, to the colleges of the country, there opens after this third half-century of life a broader vists of national influence, in the faith that clear thinking, on the foundation of serious preparation and training in the colleges, must in the end replace half-understood slogans and the easy acceptance of pseudo-truths.