The natural history of the racial or professional joke is easily written.  At the outset it is crude and cruel, wholly at the expense of the group represented.  In time the world wearies of an unequal contest, and we have a new order of jokes, in which the intended victim acquits himself well.  This, too, gives way to a higher order, in which race, nationality or profession is employed merely as a cloak for common humanity.  The successive stages mark the progress in assimilation, induced, in large measure, by laughter.  There is no other social force so potent in creating mutual understanding and practical fraternity of spirit; in establishing the essential unity of mankind underneath its phenomenal diversity.  Setting bounds to laughter:  why, this is to indenture the angel of charity to the father of lies and the lord of hate.

A Post Graduate School for Academic Donors

At a recent meeting of an University Montessori Club the case of donors to colleges and universities was reported on by a special committee.  The majority report drew a pretty heavy indictment.  It was shown that the givers to colleges and universities seldom considered the real needs of their beneficiaries.  Donors liked to give expensive buildings without endowment for upkeep, liked to give vast athletic fields, rejoiced in stadiums, affected memorial statuary and stained glass windows, dabbled in landscape gardening, but seldom were known either to give anything unconditionally or, specifically, to destine a gift for such uninspiring needs as more books or professors’ pay.  The result of giving without first considering the needs of the benefited college or university, was that every gift made the beneficiary more lopsided.  Certain universities were almost capsized by their incidental architecture.  Others were subsidizing graduate students to whom the conditions of successful research were denied.  Still others were calling great specialists to the teaching force without providing the apparatus for the pursuit of these specialties.  Others preferred to offer financial aid to students who were poor—­in every sense.  Donors apparently without exception had single-track minds.  They saw plainly enough what they wanted to give, but never took the pains to see the donation in its relation to the institution as a whole.  The majority report, which was drawn by our famous Latinist, Professor Claudius Senex, concluded with the despairing note Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.  The minority report was delivered orally by young Simpson Smith of the department of banking and finance.  He “allowed” that everything alleged by the majority report was true, but saw no use in dwelling on such truths, since donors always had done and always would do just as they darned pleased.