Brief years of business training in a cement factory; liquidated factory and introduced new wife to Europe.
THE HOME TOWN, LANCASTER, PA., SEEMED MUCH CHANGED. It certainly was, but in me the change was greater. My sights had been raised, and my habits were not those of the old home town, not even those of Princeton University. For the first time, I became aware of the fact that I spoke English---English with an accent that raised eyebrows everywhere. Most of my friends were gone. Kenneth Appel was in London on a scholarship, and Phil von der Smith had moved to Cincinnati. The old closeness with Erle Brimmer and Harry Raub, which was disappearing rapidly when I went away to college, now received the final blow. Here I was, affecting an Oxford accent! Certainly, I had become a snob! My British accent had been acquired intentionally to fit my army life, but it was not long before I was speaking good American again, sometimes even tinged with the Pennsylvania Dutch of Lancaster.
My family did not seem to mind my accent. They were glad to have me back after three years; and in order to please them I soon found myself behind the "Gent's Furnishing Counter" in Watt and Shand's big store in Center Square, "Where the street cars stop and the crowds shop."
Waiting for customers could mean only one thing; boredom. There were interesting things to do in the town, and I soon found them. The Near East Relief was collecting funds for Armenians, at the time of the Turkish atrocities of 1919. I joined their ranks and was soon writing articles and making speeches, which took me out of the store when I should have been there.
All through the war, our rich little town had loyally supported the Bond Drives. Now it was time to forget about foreign parts and to rebuild the lagging resources of our town. The Near East Relief wanted to hold a fund drive, but those who had worked hardest supporting the war effort decided to clear the way to raise funds for the hospital. To organize public opinion, the leading men of the town formed a "Committee of One Hundred." Its purpose was to determine who should be allowed to raise funds. Very few were in favor of sending money to the Armenians. It seemed to me that the hundred were on one side and I was on the other. The New Era, our evening paper, provided the space for me to write a dignified surrender.
My brother Charles was the businessman of the family. He and the second generation of Shands were successfully developing the family department store. Each year the sales were greater as the town, and especially the county, grew richer and more thickly populated. For a member of one of the ruling families to be out of the store as much as I was, was clearly impossible. After a few months I was persuaded to go to Catskill, New York, where we had become the virtual owners of a faltering Portland cement plant, the Acme Cement Corporation. It was my brother Charles' decision to open the plant and try to make it pay.
Here was a job for a chemist, an engineer, and a businessman, and I was innocent of any knowledge in any of these fields. But with a title of Treasurer I did my best to become interested in something which interested me not at all.
The word Catskill might conjure up pictures of seventeenth century Dutchmen building a village at the mouth of Catskill Creek where the mountains push out a shoulder in the direction of Henry Hudson's river. When I arrived there, the town was sleepy enough so that Rip Van Winkle might have been its patron saint. Main Street in Catskill would hardly have been distinguishable from any one of ten thousand other Main Streets where the average American did his work.
Brother Charles drove me up from Lancaster, and in the Saulpaugh Hotel, just opposite the Dutch Reformed Church, I was introduced to the cement industry in the person of Charles Breerwood, who was from the cement-manufacturing region of eastern Pennsylvania. How Breerwood with his fastidious and proper person ever have become involved in one of the world's dustiest industries is one of those mysteries which will never be answered.
The Acme Cement Corporation's factory stood five miles downriver from Catskill, at a station called Alsen. Here the slow passenger trains of the West Shore Railroad had little reason to stop, but that station master took in more money than any other on the long and tiresome trip from Weehawken to Albany. It came from the constant flow of freight cars loaded with Portland cement, produced seven days a week by our neighbors, the Alsen and the Alpha Cement Companies and by ourselves.
The tall chimneys of these three factories poured their constant stream of dust twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, over the blighted countryside. Not that there was much to blight; the untended fields simply produced an annual crop of weeds.
Since this was my first contact with industry, I was not particularly shocked to hear that our men worked on two shifts, one thirteen hours a day and the other, eleven. One thing was certain; the men who worked for us were delighted that we were starting the plant again after a long pause during which jobs had been so scarce. One of them said, "I hate getting up in the dark and going to bed in the dark all during the long winter." But that was life in the cement industry in 1920. Whatever labor laws there were must have been ignored.
The plant lay near the Hudson River next to a long, broad ridge of limestone. Here, rugged men who had been born on the Adriatic shores of Yugoslavia, where stone had been their livelihood, dynamited the broad quarry face again and again. Then they loaded the stone on dump cars with a steam shovel to be pulverized. The mixture of ingredients was scientifically controlled by a staff of chemists and burned into "klinker" and pulverized again. The finished cement was stored in great silos.
Catskill would have been a cheerfully-forgotten phase of my life had it not been for the fact that one Sunday morning the Presbyterian minister's wife, Frances Riggs, ushered her sister Leslie into church for the morning service. The New England asters which grew in such profusion every fall around the factory had always been unappreciated, but the following Saturday, I called Mrs. Riggs to ask whether she would like some flowers to decorate the church. She said she would, and sent her lovely sister with the key to the church. Together we took a long time over this operation-opening the door, finding a large vase, filling it with water, arranging the flowers, and so forth.
Suddenly I became quite active in the church. At a Wednesday evening prayer meeting, attended for the first time, I gave a talk on Persia and how I had found Chowkhass. I also started carrying a bottle of Listerine in the car to eliminate any trace of tobacco from my breath; for, although I smoked only a rare cigarette, the lady was very much against either drinking or smoking.
Mrs. Riggs must have urged her sister to stay for a longer visit, and when she went home there was a satisfactory understanding between us. The only time I ever went into Tiffany's was with Leslie a few weeks later, when we went to choose the setting for a ring. On March twenty-second, 1922, there was a notable wedding in the Catskill Presbyterian Church. Friends and relations of the bride and groom from far and wide filled Hotel Saulpaugh.
The wedding trip was a long one, two months in Europe. It was fun introducing Leslie to Europe. Vienna in the springtime was gorgeous. The parks were filled with lilac blooms and the pyramidal horse chestnut blossoms. In painful contrast to our wonderful days, the citizens of Vienna, whose currency had depreciated to virtually nothing, were having a hard time keeping alive. Many were selling anything they could spare. With our future home in mind and with dollars whose purchasing power was tragically great, my craving for antiques was being satisfied. We bought furniture for a dining room and a living room, Persian rugs and, most exciting of all, some genuine masterpieces. There were two rare 17th century Japanese screens; a set of original impressions of a series of fourteen woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer, known as the Apocalypse, purchased for a song and duty-free because of their age.
Within the year there were two blessed events. One was the birth of Donald Watt, Jr., and the other was the sale of the Acme Cement Company. Charlie had been successful in his ambition to save the family investment, and I was now free to turn to graduate study of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Three years of graduate study in University of Pennsylvania and Yale; during one summer vacation, a month in a German home followed by a month of mountain hiking foretold the Experiment pattern.
NUMBER FIVE COLLEGE CIRCLE, HAVERFORD CAMPUS, Haverford, Pennsylvania, became our home. It was the house of a professor on his sabbatical. The Circle was a cricket green but since the elegant British tradition of playing cricket was dying here, the big lawn was seldom used and so provided a wonderful space for one-year-old Donnie to hunt for stones to see what was on the other side of them. It was especially agreeable to find Kenneth Appel interning at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Our old associations were renewed and our families became good friends---Kenneth's wife Madeleine quickly became an important and lasting part of our lives. She came to live with us while her husband was serving his internship at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.
The change from the intellectually and atmosphere of Catskill to the "Main Line" brought us back to the life to which we were accustomed. The area was full of friends and classmates, so the year we spent there passed all too rapidly; and though we were living on the campus of a famous Quaker College, our busy lives absorbed only a little of its unusual philosophy.
Baby Barbara arrived during the summer, and the fall found us located for what was to be a period of three years in New Haven, Conn., attracted by Yale University's Bureau of Appointments. By this time I had decided that the personal problems of college students were to be my field of study. The combination of practical work in the University Placement Office and theoretical background from the department of psychology was ideal professional training. My fellow students were there because the brilliance of their minds had been demonstrated elsewhere; I, because of my aspirations and the ability to pay my expenses. As the time for the preliminary examinations drew nearer, it became ever clearer that memorizing a series of fat tomes was not my cup of tea. The horrors of a week of examinations resulted as expected. I did not pass.
Arrangements had already been made to spend the summer in Germany to learn the language for my Ph.D. requirement. Now, in spite of the fact that there was no German requirement for a Ph.D. and because Leslie was willing to let me go, I held to my original plan.
Letters to Leslie, carefully preserved, describe the summer.
Wednesday, June 30, 1926
On board the S.S. Albert BallinDearest Leslie,
There was never a more surprised young man than one on board this ship last Thursday morning. Mother and Laura had come to New York last Wednesday evening, and we had dinner at Henri's Restaurant rather late and then walked up Fifth Avenue to the Roosevelt where they were staying. I had not been able to get a room at the Princeton Club, so since I noticed that it was permitted, I decided to spend the night on board ship with the intention of getting my German visa next morning and saying goodby then.
I went to bed having spoken to no one, as everyone seemed to speak only German. I slept fairly well and got up about eight o'clock. I was planning to go first to the German Consul for my visa, so I looked out the porthole to see if it was raining and to my astonishment could see only water. I rushed to the other side of the ship, but here, too, only water. Only then, I learned that the ship had sailed one minute past midnight. At the Yale Travel Office I had been told June 24th, Thursday, at 12: 01 A.M., and I had not stopped to figure out that that was when the day was one minute old. If the Princeton Club had been able to give me a room, I should have been left behind.
I am in a small third class stateroom with three roommates, only one of whom has reached the stage of culture of using night clothes. However, they are all clean and pleasant to live with. I am taking two hours of lessons in German per day. I looked around the first day and decided that the German wife of a music instructor was best qualified to teach me, and have been working steadily since the second day. I am paying her a dollar an hour, and believe she is worth it. She knows grammar and speaks good German.
The food is not regally served but is good. There is one waiter for a long table and there is little choice, but since there are five meals a day, no one need starve. This third-class crowd has a good time, noticeably more so than first class, which seems stiff.
We are having a fancy-dress ball, pretty swell for third class. I am wearing my Scotch cap brought by mistake, with my steamer rug as a kilt.
By the time the ship arrived in Bremerhafen, although I had not really made a beginning of speaking German, I had already begun to feel at home with German people and was observing German customs. Going directly to the university city of Göttingen, I settled down for the month of July in the home of a university professor.
July 7, 1926
Dearest,
I am all settled and hard at work, and I do not believe it would have been possible to have found a better place than right here. I am sitting in my room looking out over the garden and trees of a beautiful and quiet part of the ancient university city of Göttingen. I am a paying guest in the home of a professor, Dr. Kyropoulos, who in spite of his Greek name seems entirely German. His wife is also a Ph.D., and their home will give me a view of German life which I could not possibly have had in any other way. The only unusual thing about our second-floor apartment is that I am sharing it with seven Siamese cats.
My teacher is as satisfactory as my home, a charming lady, Fräulein Dr. Burger. She is about fifty years old, has developed a mustache, and is extremely homely. Her homeliness, however, is of a charming kind, a sort of cultured motherliness. I do not know in what subject she took her degree, but she is now earning her living by language tutoring. Here again I have the advantage of the excellent German of a cultured background. Thus far I have really made rapid progress. At the Ratskeller last night, when having my dinner alone, I spoke to a man who sat at my table and we talked in German for about half an hour.
My plan for the summer had been to spend the first month concentrating hard on German, then during the second month to find a student who knew no English and who loved the mountains to take a month's hike with me. He was Karl Snyder. We started with the famous, but not very high mountains of the Black Forest, then progressed to the higher mountains in Appenzell, eastern Switzerland, and finally reached the real mountains of western Austria where there was genuine climbing.
August 7, 1926
Dearest Leslie,
I awoke in the Römischer Kaiser Gasthof in Freiburg, and found that it was raining. Bad luck! Snyder was having breakfast. After breakfast we bought a map and went to see the Münster (cathedral). We climbed the beautiful Gothic tower and had an excellent view of the picturesque roofs and the thronging market. At lunch time we got out our map to plan the trip when a student offered to help us. He knew the country perfectly and planned a seven-day Wanderung. We caught the four-o'clock train, which carried us up the steep valley to the top of the mountains and the village of Hinterzarten, where we were greeted by a deluge of rain. So we had supper and at seven forty-five started off on a one hour's walk for Breitenau. The air was cold and fresh, but we were soon warm carrying our rucksacks, which are not heavy as we are traveling very light.
We found the Gasthof zum Kreuz and settled down over a friendly beer for an hour's study of German. There were several other parties in the large room with its low ceiling, whitewashed walls, wooden chairs, and scrubbed tabletops, talking merrily and spending a gemütlich German evening, story-telling and drinking. For a nightcap, we had a tiny glass of fiery Kirschwasser. We found our room clean and comfortable, and were soon fast asleep under the mountains of down which they give one everywhere for quilts.
It was eleven o'clock before we had breakfast and were on the way. The air was cold and the wind quite strong. The damp clouds hung so low that we had no long views. It was not actually raining. We were soon singing, which pepped up our pace, so that we walked about six kilometers an hour, which is faster than four miles. At one o'clock it began to rain quite hard, and by chance we came upon another Gasthof zum Kreuz and stopped for dinner. It was a real Bauern (farmer) inn, and the food was most primitive, but we were hungry enough to enjoy it. In Germany the waitresses are all called Fräulein (Miss), even if quite old. Their never-failing good humor, cleanliness, and attentiveness are appetizers at every meal. In this case, they wore Schwarzwald costumes.
Another hour and a half brought us to Sankt Peter, a village with a Catholic Seminary. Here we had coffee and pastry about four o'clock after the German custom, and a rest before tackling a two-and-a-half-hour climb to the Berghütte (mountain hut) on top. We kept up our brisk pace and, in spite of the steep grade, in two hours came just at sundown to the mountain top, called Kandel.
After a good supper of Wiener Schnitzel, boiled potatoes, and a quarter of a liter of the local white wine, Snyder picked up a guitar which lay in the large dining room and began to sing. It was not long before everyone in the room was singing---a party of five girls, and the people who ran the place. The evening was charming. The rest, after the hard walk, was in itself a delicious feeling; and with wine and song and our backs to one of the warm tile stoves, the feeling of well-being was enveloping. Everything had a rosy hue, and even the patter of rain on the windows added to our coziness. The group of girls was interesting to me. They traveled cheaply, carrying huge rucksacks containing most of their food, buying only hot coffee.
Next morning, after a hard walk in the sun, we lay down to rest for about fifteen minutes, as we did not feel so fresh as the first day. At one place we passed some Wandervögel---members of the famous German Youth movement. One of the boys was walking in bare feet and playing a violin at the same time, which over the stony fields was quite a stunt.
Then we stopped for the night at another bauern Gasthof near Sankt Martin's Kapelle. It was one massive farmhouse with a shingle roof starting from the ground floor and three stories high. The house and stable are all under the same roof. My feet were sore and tired by this time. The ball of each foot was tender from stepping on small stones, and the arches felt stiff and strained. My oxfords which looked so heavy at home were entirely too light for this kind of walking.
The next day our journey was comparatively short, to the largest lake in the Schwarzwald, called the Titisee. It did not take us long to find a room and then a bathing beach. A swim in the cold water made us feel ten years younger. The lake is beautifully situated in the wooded hills of the Black Forest, which are really mountains, much higher than the Catskills.
When we awoke in the morning the sun was shining, but soon the clouds walled up; and as the barometer was falling and a rain wind growing, we decided to take the Post-auto to Freiburg and say goodby to the Schwarzwald.
Next we climbed Mt. Sentis in Canton Appenzell, and then on to Austria.
August 18, 1926
Dearest,
Once again in good old Austria which seems as fascinating as ever. I am writing this from the village of Partenen in the mountains at the end of the railroad. We are in mountains higher than any we have seen so far. There is a massif called the Silvretta Gruppe, 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) high, on the border of Austria and Switzerland, where we are going to spend our last week.
With three weeks of training, we are in excellent shape and scarcely notice the forty-pound rucksack. Since changing from oxfords to regular mountain boots, my feet are giving no trouble.
The trip is comparatively cheap. Last night we had a room for two in a private house which cost six Schillings---the new Austrian coinage---a total of eighty-five cents. The food is also inexpensive, and as we always have a keen appetite, all meals are excellent.
Our last peak was the highest we tackled. It stands all alone and from its top are gorgeous views in all directions. With a three A.m. start, we conquered the snow-capped peak and, in the rare brilliant sunshine of eight o'clock, saw glistening peaks, white snowfields, and gray glaciers spread out to infinity. From the number of climbers we meet, one gets the impression that mountain climbing is the principal sport of this country.
Down from the arctic world of ice and rock into the high green valleys, it was good to see civilization again. I was utterly satisfied and exhausted through and through.
Seeshaupt
August 22, 1926Dear Leslie,
I am writing this letter from a quiet village on a fine lake called Starnberger See near München. I must confess that I am dead tired after the four-weeks' trip.
Showing a mixed group of college students the outdoor life of Europe was the final step of preparation. Freed from the academic orbit by the world depression, a volunteer job with The Inquiry led directly to designing The Experiment.
BEFORE THE YEAR WAS OVER, IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT I had failed my Ph.D. preliminaries, I received an offer to organize a student personnel department at Syracuse University. My wife's family lived near the suburbs of Syracuse, so I snapped up the offer with enthusiasm. Since I was always happy to make plans and execute them, the job seemed to have been made especially for me, and I plunged into it. During vacations, however, I was not on duty, and soon felt Europe and the Alps beckoning. I had enjoyed my mountaineering so much that I wanted to give some American students the opportunity to see how European students take outdoor vacations. The trip actually materialized because I did not have to charge the students for Leslie's expenses and mine, so the price was low. Leslie' sister Margaret was the only one who was not a Syracuse University student. There were five besides ourselves, three boys and two girls. I wrote an article for the Syracuse Alumni Magazine as follows:
Directly off the ship we broke in our walking boots, toughened the skin on our feet, and strengthened our auto-flabby leg muscles by a week in Brittany. Next came my beloved Schwartzwald where the mountains, though fairly low, gave us a hint of what to expect later. Finally came Switzerland and the real Alps. In Geneva we were joined by three Swiss students whom we met through the sister of one of them, an exchange scholarship student at Syracuse. He had selected the tour which we made, as one of the most beautiful and interesting which Switzerland affords. It was in the Canton of Valais, which is the site of the Matterhorn, one of the most dramatic peaks in the Alps. Leaving the train from Geneva at Sion, we went up by autobus as far as the road extended, and for those who had never been in the high mountains before, even an autobus can have its thrills. The road, which went only as far as the village of Hauderes, is just wide enough for one automobile and if one, by chance, should run off it, there is a drop of not a few hundred feet. I never wanted to get off a bus so much as when our omnibus endeavored to pass another, we being on the precipice side.
From the end of the road, the only transportation into the really high mountains was "shank's mare." We were well equipped for our walk, however, with large heavy shoes, large enough to allow us to wear two pairs of thick woolen socks at the same time. The shoes were so heavily studded with hobnails that those who had not seen mountain shoes before were certain that they could not walk farther than a couple of miles in them. However, a hard trip of five days with no sore feet or blisters proved to all of us that the Swiss know how to equip themselves.
Our first day was a short one. After four hours of steady climbing up the zigzag path, we found ourselves in the village of Arolla. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful spot. The place takes its name from a species of larch which grows in high altitudes only. Around us were snow-white peaks which seemed to float in the air almost above our heads. Just at this season of the year the fields, if one could name those steep slopes "fields," are filled with a myriad of flowers. Sitting down in one place, I was able to pick ten different varieties. During the second day of this trip, although we were not botanists, we identified seventy distinctly different flowers.
After this day of practice, we returned to the village of Hauderes and climbed up to a hut called Alp Bricola. This stone hut is dignified by the name of hotel and, while not large, is quite comfortable. Its altitude is about eight thousand feet, just above the tree line. Surrounded by gray rocks and the blackened faces of glaciers, the view from it is arctic. Had it not been for the light of a lovely bright moon on the snowy peaks, when we got out at three the next morning we would have been particularly impressed with the bleakness of the place.
What an eerie feeling to start off in the middle of the night, through the darkness, over trackless slopes which in the daytime are so steep as to terrify most plain-dwellers. Our guide had joined us the night before, and seeing him stride off into the enveloping blackness gave us all courage. It was quite cold, but soon we had all removed our gloves and sweaters and were still warm enough. Steadily we put one foot before the other, each time rising a little nearer to our goal for that day, the Col Dents Blanches. It gives me considerable satisfaction to be writing about this trip now, because when we were on one of the very highest points of the trip, both actually and spiritually, something happened which made us feel for many all-too-exciting minutes that we would not be seeing the United States again.
When we reached the glacier, we were roped together. During the night, the snow on the mountain top is quite hard, which is the chief reason for making the early start, since walking through the soft snow is frightfully exhausting and dangerous. As it became light enough to see any distance, we found ourselves surrounded by a panorama of peak after peak, ghostly in the half light of the early dawn. It is hard to describe the exhilaration which one feels in these high altitudes, with the air cold and crisp and the dazzling snow under one's feet.
It seemed like noon when we finally arrived at six-thirty on the top of the pass. The guide had us sit for our breakfast with our backs to a precipice, which seemed to be hanging over us. He said he picked the place to avoid the cold wind, but it seemed to me that he wanted to make mountaineers of us quickly by placing us in this awesome spot. Ordinary camping banishes formality and makes one perfectly willing to share his plate with his neighbor, but when mountaineers eat breakfast, clinging precariously to jutting rocks with five hundred feet of space directly below, everyone gulps from the same water bottle and fingers are in order when it comes to passing the ham and cheese. The pièce de résistance, a can of pineapple, was passed around for a drink after the slices were removed. There was much smacking of lips over the delectable juice; then that can went on a journey which gave those who wished to look down an extra sense of terror. Someone allowed it to drop from his hand and down it went, striking the rocks from time to time, bounding back and forth for what seemed an interminable fall, getting ever smaller and smaller until finally, about the size of a matchbox, it reached the snow below and continued on its way, bouncing down the steep slope until entirely lost from view.
But we, too, must bounce a little more rapidly over the next few days and come to the thrilling bout with the Alps. The next day's walk lasted about ten hours and found us glad to lie in the bright sun on the hard, flat rocks before the Alpine Club Hut of Muntet. On the fourth day, we had another high pass to go over to reach a hut from where we expected to climb the Matterhorn.
At about five o'clock on the evening of our arrival it began to snow. It was soft, wet snow mixed with rain. This looked bad for our climb. At three o'clock the next morning, when we should have set out, the guide reported the snow as very soft. At six, however, he decided that we should go, and at seven, tied together, we were plodding through the deep snow, sinking with each step about half way to our knees. It was hard going, but we kept on steadily for three hours, and now we come to our story.
If someone had told me that I was going to climb the outside wall of a skyscraper I could hardly have been more surprised to find myself clinging to the eyebrow of a perpendicular cliff of ice one hundred and fifty feet high. This was the last high pass over which we had to go in order to cross the Col Rund. I shall never forget that picture. Eleven people strung like beads on a string diagonally up the face of the cliff. The rope was fastened around our chests so that there was about ten feet of it between two people. The purpose of this may have been to pull everyone down into the abyss in case one of us fell. The guide went first, using his ice axe. He cut holes in the cliff about four inches deep. These were our hand holes and foot holes. How he did it, I was too busy with my own affairs to notice; and since then I have not been able for the life of me to figure it out. I only know that when I climbed up
I was standing perfectly perpendicular with my toes as far into the holes as they would go. For hand holes I had the steps higher up, but preferably I held onto my ice pick which I pushed as far into the cliff as it would go. In order to keep tension on the rope of the man next below me, I took a hitch on the pick handle. If he fell, there would be no rending jerk. The man below me happened to be Bill Mosher, and when it was his turn to move, I would keep the rope taut while he came up as close to me as he could.
Theoretically, this procedure increased the safety of the party greatly, but unfortunately the climber who preceded me was none other than Doc Davis, Syracuse 1930, known as the jocular member of the party, but so hard of hearing that my loudest shouts could not attract his attention.
The carefree manner in which Doc went up that cliff, doing none of the things which we had been taught, would have been amusing had it not been for the fact that I realized he could not possibly have helped me had I fallen. He was making no attempt to keep my rope tight. With motions, I was exhorting Doc to go slowly and carefully when suddenly the soul-trying moments were heralded by a soprano voice of one of the girls who was on the first rope with the guide. "The ice is cracking!" was the scream which sent shivers up and down my spine, and then, for the first time, I heard the low rumble of cracking ice such as one hears when skating. The rumble continued and grew louder. Looking on either side, I could see small cracks wriggling across the face of the ice, running both towards and away from us.
Immediately the last fellow of all, instead of sticking to his post, climbed up to the man ahead of him as though to pass and then saw it was impossible. Terrified, we all started to shout. The last man, getting hold of himself, let himself down to his place and all was quiet. There was nothing to do but stand still and wait. We could go forward only as fast as the guide could cut footholds. He seemed to acquire new skill at that art. It was lucky for all of us that each one kept his head and that no one attempted to jump.
The move upward, one step at a time, came faster now but still sickeningly slow. I wondered when the ice would open up and swallow us into one of those huge rivers which form underneath a glacier, or when the top of the cliff, still far away, would come down over our heads. There was nothing to do but stand still and keep quiet. Needless to say, although the cracking continued, it became less active when the people on the first rope reached the top. When all of us were removed from the face of the cliff, as far as I could tell, it stopped altogether. A short distance beyond the cliff top, we were over the pass and on a comparatively flat surface. It was only then that the guide expressed himself on the situation.
One of the Swiss asked him what he would have done if the ice had collapsed. He replied in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, "There was only one thing to do, and that was to die together."
THE CHANCELLOR OF SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY WAS THEN Charles Wesley Flint, and his words were definite and final. The work which I had been employed to do as Student Personnel Director couldn't be done. My department handled self-support work, loans, scholarships and finally placing the seniors in permanent jobs. The latter was my personal responsibility. Every year in the spring, large companies sent their representatives to recruit our students. But in the spring of 1931, no representatives came because their companies had no employment to give, for the world was wallowing painfully in one of the worst fluctuations of the business cycle.
The Chancellor's question was: Would I take a year's leave of absence? The obvious answer was, I would. For most people in the world of education this would have been a most serious matter. How to pay the rent? How to feed the children? Happily I'd had a father who was so successful in business that none of his six children had to earn a living. Moreover, I was also unusually lucky in having a wife who was much more concerned about saving a dollar than she was about spending it. For our family, unlike millions of families, the depression brought just the opposite of dismay, because we were in a position to profit from the greatly depressed prices. When jobs were scarce I had no trouble getting one, but of course, as a volunteer. And I had to go to New York City to get it.
The person I turned to was Sam Keeny with whom I had sweat through many a sauna-like day during the First World War in the port city of Basra, in Iraq. He always had interesting projects in mind, and 1931 was no exception. A group of sociologists in the YM and YWCA formed an organization called "The Inquiry." As students of the then unrecognized problem of human communication, they were in the forefront of initiating what has since become discussion method---or as it is also called, group thinking, or group dynamics.
This little group of philosopher-intellectuals and practical promoters in the field of education created The Inquiry as a way of developing their current pioneering venture in discussion, which had been initiated by Harrison Sacket Elliott. E. C. Carter, who had taken me to Mesopotamia, was now the leader. Sam Keeny was The Inquiry's prime mover. Lucy Gregg was the director of the organization; Elizabeth Watson and I were the working force.
Now that discussion method and group work have established themselves around the world in many walks of life, it is hard to remember a time when they did not exist. But before this group did its work, there was no established method for the effective meeting of minds, as there is now. The chief method of college education was the lecture, but in addition there was also the seminar, where advanced students gathered to discuss a scholarly paper. When it was a matter of finding solutions to political and social questions, parliamentary procedure was the normal method then, as it still is, in legislatures. Its principle is the debate where an existing statement is accepted or rejected by winning or losing a majority vote---a system which does not encourage compromise.
The Inquiry's principle was thinking together so as to provide the best solutions where minds meet to wrestle with a problem. Many aspects, both physical and psychological, of the discussion situation had been given consideration and try-out in many areas of life, but especially in international, race and industrial relations, the question of war and peace, and in the area from which it had taken its source, religion. In Elliott's book The Process of Group Thinking, written in 1928, he revolutionized study and thinking.
In the twenties, the YMCA had been the leading organizer of the then popular study of the Bible in the colleges, as an extracurricular activity. Like the rest of education, study was simply a question of learning what some authority had set down as a truth. As the divine inspiration of the Bible was being questioned, there was need for a new approach to Bible study if it were not to be abandoned. Elliott changed the emphasis away from memorizing an authority to a consideration of what the teachings of the Bible had to offer as guidance to individuals.
He pointed out that, in politics up to that time, the average man simply acted on the basis of tradition or on the authority of a leader. Group thinking provided an instrument for realizing democratic process. It made it possible for a group of people to think about and to create their own solution to a problem instead of simply following an authority.
Group thinking or discussion method made a contribution to education in general, the value of which does not seem to be recognized. As we have seen, discussion method freed education from the memorization of facts and replaced it with the possibility of thinking about matters which were of genuine interest. It is, therefore, necessary to explain the elements of group discussion.
The philosophy of John Dewey made the greatest contribution to the thinking of The Inquiry. His suggestion of learning by experience was unusual in the educational process. Discussion aimed at unanimity in a solution. The time-honored method of voting was abandoned, and with it was abandoned the disgruntled minority of any group whose desires were rejected. The idea of unanimity was discovered in the business meeting of the Society of Friends, where the members simply go on talking about a problem until they have formulated a plan which satisfies all the participants. It means that, instead of two ideas fighting for victory, all of the energies of participants can be thrown into the creation of one solution in which the hopes of all present are included. Instead of a debate, discussion provides for the meeting of minds.
The size of the group is also an important matter. Obviously, a large group of people cannot all contribute their ideas within reasonable time limits. Ten or twelve persons is probably the maximum size for the most effective discussion. It is said that in thinking, two minds are better than one; so correspondingly, ten are better than two. When ten people are discussing, there is a cross-fertilization of ideas and a fusing of attitudes which is impossible for the mind of the wisest individual alone. With a group of ten persons aiming at unanimity, the discussion must go on until a solution satisfactory to all is found. Sometimes this may mean adjourning the meeting until another time. An historic adjournment of a discussion took place when the Quakers tried to decide on their attitude toward the Civil War, and never came to a unanimous opinion.
Discussion method points out that attempting to deal with abstract principles may prove a frustrating experience; therefore, in formulating a question for discussion, it is helpful to describe the problem situation in which it exists at that moment. If in an Experiment group in a given country, some of the members were having difficulty adjusting to the domineering attitude of European parents, they should remind themselves that the situation with which they have to deal is how to get along with domineering parents since disrespecting them would only make matters worse.
Another requirement for discussion is that the participants should be able to speak from their own personal experience; or, stating the idea in a different way, the thinking should be confined to the area in which the participants are competent to produce action. That is, the passing of resolutions generally hands the responsibility for action to someone else, and more than likely this someone else will do nothing about it.
The more carefully arranged the setting of a discussion, the more fruitful it is likely to be. The members should sit in a circle so that each can face all the others. There should be a minimum of distraction, and a cheerful atmosphere should help to eliminate the building up of tensions.
The leader is the most important member of a group. Not only can he set the emotional tone as cheerful, interested and cooperative, but by following a number of well-recognized procedures, he can add materially to the effectiveness of a discussion. One of his chief objectives is to see to it that the thinking proceeds in a straight line; he must point out to the speaker that his contribution is producing a digression. He must make it his business to minimize distractions, and the most damaging distraction is definitely a conversation on the side. Until they are accustomed to using discussion method, many people do not realize how disturbing such a conversation can be. For some time it will be necessary for the leader to indicate who has the floor, which in this case is a misnomer because no one rises to speak. Neither is anyone allowed to bring in many ideas, because discussion can proceed only one point at a time. In order to encourage unanimity, no person should expect to speak a second time until everyone who wishes to make a contribution has been able to do so. Moreover, for the sake of unanimity, everyone should recognize his responsibility to speak, while those who are inclined to monopolize the discussion should be helped to listen. One group of thinkers on discussion method, in an attempt to perfect the creation of ideas, has invented "leaderless discussions." My experience has shown that the time which this method wastes cannot be afforded by most organizations.
In the spring of 1931, Sam Keeny interested Mrs. Frances Payne Bolton, the alter ego of the Payne Fund, in sending three members of The Inquiry to Geneva to study the methods used in the summer schools conducted by the International Association of League of Nations Societies, and to persuade them to use the discussion method.
The three representatives were Elizabeth Watson, Sam Keeny and I. We were unsuccessful, but when I came to design The Experiment, the ideas of The Inquiry became a chief influence on the plan which I worked out. I was well acquainted not only with the philosophy of the movement, but also with the technique of managing discussion.
Seen from the point of view of today, all of the things which The Inquiry contributed to The Experiment seem matters of simple common sense because they now have become to a large extent a part of public thought. It is hard to realize, in the 1960s, that what The Inquiry contributed were novel and new ideas. For example, the principle of learning by experience, of the meeting of minds, and of decisions taken by unanimity.
The group which interested the Payne Fund representatives most at Geneva were the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. Conducted by university professors of international relations, the programs arranged for these youngsters were little different from those of their elders. The same experts on political affairs spoke from the depth of their detailed knowledge. The young people listened to four technical lectures each morning, each of which, according to The League ruling, had to be presented in English, French and German. An exhausting program!
From our present knowledge of education, it is easy to point out that the professors could scarcely have devised a better method of destroying the young people's interest in The League. Apparently they never gave a thought as to whether their methods were educationally effective.
On the second day of the ten-day program, the three American adults were unanimous that, long before the morning's lecture series had been concluded, their brains had largely lost the ability to absorb the volume of new and strange technical terms and unaccustomed concepts. One of us asked how much of all this erudition these bright young students from twenty-one lands would take home. We all' agreed that it would be very little and that this exhausting and painful process would be largely a waste of their time.
The Americans took steps to find out to what extent their accusation was actually true. Even if the young people missed a great deal of the knowledge offered them, they did not feel disturbed, because they were trained to do as they were told, and under no circumstances would they think of questioning the wisdom of their elders.
These young people, from as far away as India, United States or Norway, lived in tight little national groups, each in a separate hotel or pension, and all with a minimum of contact with other nationalities.
If the young people were not critical, the advocates of the discussion method most certainly were, and they immediately set to work to devise a summer program which would lie within the intellectual capacity of the group members. They suggested that there be fewer lectures, and that small, internationally mixed discussion groups provide an opportunity to think about what they had heard.
Knowledge about The League was the only purpose of the school. The Inquiry group felt that this purpose should be supplemented so that young people could meet and know one another. We suggested that several nationalities should live in the same pension. For example, German and French should room together; so should Britons and Indians.
To the European professors of international relations it became clear that this study program could only be carried out at the expense of eliminating lectures. How silly we were to expect that people, whose only reason for existence was to give lectures, should willingly sacrifice them for a program of discussions, the value of which they could not appreciate. Our carefully written proposal must have found its way quickly into the nearest wastebasket. As the school ended it was perfectly evident to us that the International Association was not yet ready to give up its traditional lecture program.
The Inquiry representatives, feeling that they had so much to give to improve the students' knowledge of The League, were of course very sad. Our enthusiasm and our knowledge had been rejected! The only thing that we could do was to write a report destined to sit on library shelves. Leslie and I said goodby to Sam Keeny and Elizabeth Watson, who returned to their jobs. As a volunteer worker, I was free to do as 1 chose, and I chose to find someone with whom I could cooperate in carrying out the rejected plan.
From Geneva I wrote letters to youth leaders in France and Switzerland, trying to explain my interest. The one answer which came back was written by Captain Etienne Bach and his wife, who lived not far from Geneva in the village of Valangin. Borrowing a car from a friend, my wife and I drove to Neuchatel, found the medieval village of Valangin, and near it a large, old farmhouse.
Captain Bach and his wife, a Belgian, received us warmly. My French was nearly good enough to explain our mission. Madame Bach knew a little English, and when my French failed, she tried to come to the rescue. I proposed that we bring fourteen teen-age American boys to spend the month of July, 1932, with an equal number of European boys who spoke either French or German. The Bachs liked the idea, since the purpose of their organization, Les Chevaliers de la Paix (The Knights of Peace) was to create sympathetic understanding across national lines. Bach had founded this international youth organization, in which religion was to be the means of breaking down the hatreds which war had engendered. A deeply religious man, he had resigned his commission as Captain in the French Army to do this. He had seen the hand of God intervene in some difficult situations when he had dealt with German people during the French occupation.
The question as to whether the old farmhouse could hold the group, estimated at twenty-eight boys, in addition to the Bach family and the small staff, was settled by a trip through it. Underneath the ground floor, but too light and airy to be called a cave (cellar), was a room large enough for a dining room. In another room on this floor, as well as in the attic, we then found space for twenty-eight boys from France, Germany and the United States. So the Bachs extended an invitation to bring a group, and we accepted. We returned cheerfully to Geneva, happy to have met such delightful people and thrilled to realize that the first step in our program had been taken.
TODAY IS MEMORIAL DAY, 1965, AND SINCE IT IS AN unusually cool one, wife Leslie and I are sitting in the living room of our home on Dusty Ridge near the village of Putney, Vermont. There is a bright fire of three-foot logs blazing in the broad fireplace built about one hundred and seventy years ago. The house is a Cape Cod cottage, and the center of it is a ten-foot-square mass of masonry with fireplaces on three of the four sides. People have told us that on the fourth side there was a smoke room, but this has now been removed to build a stairway to the bedrooms on the second floor. Probably in earlier days they used a ladder to reach the floor above.
The house has been changed from time to time, each new tenant making it a little larger and more comfortable. Twenty-five years ago an ell had been added. Fifteen years ago our son Donald, Jr. excavated a cellar, and for the first time there was central heating to face the sub-zero days of our winter months.
The old house has few pretensions, except for the wainscoting of pine boards from floor to ceiling in the living room and, what is prized above all, the very broad boards of soft wood in the floor. In front of the fireplace, a two-and-one-half-foot brick hearth keeps the floor safe from spitting sparks. This is important because the floor is covered with two large Persian rugs inherited from my mother's collection. All over the house are beautiful reminders of our forty trips to foreign lands.
Today I made up my mind to start writing again. I never had literally done any writing because for years I have had such a shaky right hand that my writing is illegible. So when I started to "write," I actually dictated and most of the time I was not even composing but reading articles found in the well-kept files from the earliest days of The Experiment.
The time has now come to put down on paper a record of what happened during the period from September, 1931, when Leslie and I left Geneva, until the end of The First Experiment a year later, the time when The Experiment plan was designed and tested.
Leslie and I had returned from Europe and she was soon with the children in Syracuse. They had been living with their grandmother and Aunt Margaret during the summer. I went back to work with The Inquiry in the offices of The National Headquarters of the YWCA at 600 Lexington Avenue, New York City.
During the daytime I was writing for The Inquiry but in the evenings I gave all my time to planning a new type of European trip. First I made a thorough study of the literature of international activities of young people. I found that the library of the YMCA Headquarters, because of their widespread activity with international conferences and camps, had much appropriate material. I read all I could find but in reality the ideas I finally used came from my own experiences and especially the thinking of The Inquiry.
In attempting to write down now what I thought then, my files were of no help. There were almost no records of the winter of 1931-32; and the recalling is more difficult because I have been thinking about the same subject for thirty-two years. So I am writing as if all the planning had been done that winter, but some things are included which happened later.
While in Geneva I saw clearly the need for a new kind of study: "not of relations between states but of relations between individuals of different cultures." This was the first step.
The next step in working out this ambitious program must have come to mind after returning home, for then I had a clear picture of my aim: "to create a controlled human situation which would produce understanding and friendliness between people of different cultures in a limited period of time." While still in Geneva I had looked for a European representative and found the Bach family in Valangin. I had turned my back on cities and colleges and found a small isolated center conducted by idealists.
Moreover, in order to make the discussions of the various features of the plan intelligible to the reader, it is necessary to describe briefly what The Experiment came to be.
After a first experimental year, The Experiment was a trip to a foreign country of ten selected young people with a trained leader whose job was to prepare them for their experience and to lead them with a very loose rein during a four weeks' period when each member lived in a different home in the same town. Then the visitors repaid their families for their hospitality by inviting a family member of the same age and sex to take a three weeks' trip in their own country. The group, generally without their hosts, then spent the few remaining days in the capital of the country. On their homeward journey they attempted to evaluate their success in making friends.
As I started to look for influences which I thought would achieve my objective and which I called "controls," memories of several experiences which happened in Geneva influenced my thinking. For example, a conversation with a student from England---he was a member of the Zimmern School, a sort of graduate seminar held in Geneva on The League of Nations and on international relations. Here students from different countries attempted to defend the policies of their own governments in discussions carried on with just enough language competence to misunderstand each other easily. I was interested in the attitude of the English student toward the American students he had met and asked him, "Now that you have worked with them for a month, what do you think of the Americans?" I not only remember exactly what he answered but what is more important, I remember the cynical tone of his voice when he said, "Just about the same as I did before!" His ideas of Americans, previously low, were still lower because of the irritating arguments they had been through.
I investigated and learned that the damaging effects of superficial and unpleasant contacts were equally serious for students from the United States. They had come to Geneva full of youthful idealism. They went away disillusioned, having lost hope that the League of Nations was going to make international cooperation a reality. I said to myself: "If students cannot speak together constructively in their hypothetical conversations, what hope would there be for the representatives of nations, each motivated by the tremendous pressures of his own country's needs?" I felt that something should be done about this. Students and ambassadors of different countries should learn to understand and to trust one another before attempting to face political discussions. This observation was extremely important for the development of my aim because it made clear to me from the beginning that the study of international relations was not the concern of The Experiment. Many people have not been able to understand that its business is with human relations.
The results of this international school, as I saw them, were a warning to me that I was attempting to do an extremely difficult thing. How could I dare to try to persuade prejudiced people to like those whom they did not like---for example, the French and Germans? Out of these ideas grew a thought which had fundamental influence on designing The Experiment. "Making friends with the people of another country is so difficult that those who try it should be carefully prepared." From this principle grew The Experiment's insistence on selection and training.
My financial self-sufficiency was another strong factor in determining the original plan because I was able to be independent of both the travel bureau and the university. The influence of both would have been to do things in the traditional way. I was looking for a new plan. In 1931, travel abroad meant for Americans The Grand Tour, a rapid trip through Europe visiting many countries in a short time. Sightseeing was the purpose, and a stay in one city rarely lasted longer than a day or two. In order to accomplish my aim, I planned to have my travelers stay four weeks in one place and visit only a few countries. I realized that the public would not readily accept this break with tradition.
The Open Road was a travel bureau for students and their contribution had been to provide European students as guides and during the first year we used their services. Under their influence we visited three countries and found the contact with two of them so brief as to be superficial. When they tried to persuade me to follow their pattern the next year, I did not employ a travel bureau again and as a result spent all the time possible in one country. I was in a position to make my arrangements directly with my European friends who were in sympathy with my objectives. Likewise the Open Road tried hard to persuade me not to carry out my idea of selecting group members. To people in the travel business, it was pure madness to refuse the good money of anyone who wanted to go.
Avoiding the influence of the American college was even more important. Given my objective-understanding another culture---any college would have organized a course abroad in the anthropology or the sociology of Europeans. A group would have been isolated in a European university classroom and their contacts with the people of the country would have been negligible. (In the year 1966, universities of the United States are still creating enclaves of American students and faculty which they advertise as study abroad but which have minimal contact with foreign people.)
In the matter of sports, I also avoided the American tradition. The YMCA had found that international competitive games did not produce the understanding and good will which I sought. Instead, it created the opposite. From the beginning there were no competitions between national groups in The Experiment.
In the year 1931, service as a means of creating international understanding was being suggested. In Switzerland, Pierre Ceresole had organized the Service Civile which he proposed as a substitute for the universal military service of that country. His purpose was serve people who had suffered from, some catastrophe.
Having lived on the campus of a small Quaker college, Haverford, I was aware that the Religious Society of Friends was committed to two principles---Pacifism and Service. I found myself very much attracted to Pacifism. It seemed like the absolute solution to the question of war. On second thought, however, I realized that like the universal language Esperanto, both were solutions respectively to war and communication only if everyone in the world would adopt them. Human nature being what it is, universal adoption of either seemed most remote and today seems even more so. I felt that if I gave my energy to Pacifism I would have none left for Peace.
The suggestion that we use Service for making friendships was also attractive. I turned down the idea because I had seen how much energy was needed in a foreign land to say and do the right thing at the right time. The fatigue caused by a day of unaccustomed labor would be a great handicap in accomplishing my aim: moreover, Service to the unfortunate, Christlike as it may be, was not helpful either. The obvious superiority of the server makes it difficult for the served to love him. It seemed to me that we should attempt to interest people who are equals, to learn to understand and to respect one another. With the passing years I am convinced that making friends by living in their homes is not only more difficult but educationally more fruitful than Service.
A large proportion of the First and Second Experiments were Quakers. We lost most of them as soon as they started to organize work camps in 1934 in the United States and in 1947 in Europe. The two organizations approached the problem of Peace from entirely different points of view. The wisdom of our choice was clearly demonstrated in Mexico and in all other non-Protestant countries. One of our slogans was: "go to learn and not to teach," and we maintain this principle also in the field of religion. We were welcome in Mexico and later in Japan and Turkey when those people found that we were interested in learning about their religion but had no desire to change them. We learned that all religions had something to teach us.
There were other things, some perfectly good in themselves, that I rejected from The Experiment plan. In the short space of a summer vacation there were only a few things that could be done well. I tried to adjust the program to the two months' time so that the summer would not end with the frustration of an incomplete job.
On the positive side, I looked for "controls" which would probably help to achieve my objective. As the representatives of The Inquiry were studying the summer schools, we tried to find ways in which they could be improved. This led me to make a comparison between what was done in the League of Nations School and what Discussion Method suggested to improve their program.
It was natural now to list the characteristics of the summer schools and compare them with suggestions for my plan. In the school the members listened to lectures by authorities. According to my plan, the objective was to help people of different nationalities learn about one another through experience. If I had not broken away from schools and colleges, the application of this revolutionary idea in education, learning by doing instead of learning by memorizing, would not have been possible. The school consisted of several hundred students of about fifteen nationalities and seven or eight languages. My plan called for a limited group of about twenty-five persons of few nationalities and speaking few languages. Instead of a mass of students, discussion theory called for learning in small, face-to-face groups in which the thoughts and reactions of each individual could be taken into consideration. Twenty-three people were selected for The First Experiment but in later years ten became the standard number. (That it is wise to have a small number was shown by the fact that when the visiting group of ten invited ten hosts to travel with them during the second month there was always a tendency for the twenty to break into smaller groups and unfortunately, nearly always by nationality.)
In the League of Nations School the national groups lived separately in different hotels. According to my plan, the boys of different nationalities would live in the same rooms and eat at the same tables in order to get acquainted. Arranging for this close contact of members of small groups would be nearly meaningless unless the members were able to communicate. In The First Experiment the number of languages was reduced from seven to three and each member was supposed to be able to speak one other language. (Beginning with The Second Experiment, the number of languages was reduced to two with the ideal of speaking only the language of the hosts.) In other words, the language situation was simplified to one in which there could be genuine hope of learning and of communication. In a multiple language group there is no such hope.
The summer school lasted for ten days. In The First Experiment it was planned to have the members live five weeks together. (After 1932, the period was extended to seven or eight weeks.)
Discussion method makes an important point of talking together under conditions which would encourage the greatest amount of constructive thinking by eliminating distractions arising from the geography of the situation. Seeking ideal circumstances, instead of selecting Geneva or any other city. for the location of the camp, I chose a big country house near a village and far from the bright lights.
The duties which The Inquiry assigned to the discussion leader were suggestive of many functions of The Experiment leader. In a discussion, a leader is necessary to guide the thinking in a straight line so that it will not go round and round. When The Experiment leader is also the discussion leader, he helps each group member to get a clear idea of his own objective for the summer. This is done by letting the whole group thrash out exactly what they wish to accomplish both as a group and as individuals. The assumption is that if people of good will are selected to be members and if they make the decision as to what they want to do, the group can then operate as a unit and at the same time each member has considerable freedom of action to develop his own interests and think his own thoughts, The discipline and restrictions that are generally associated with groups are under these circumstances self-imposed; that is, the guidance comes from within each person and in general not from the leader. Relieved of the picayune details of supervision, the leader can observe the interesting process as his group members adapt to their families.
This means that one of the leader's important functions is to take over when things go wrong. In a discussion, if two people are disturbing the thinking of a group by having a private conversation, the leader has to call them to order. In the same way it is the leader's function to correct any little social difficulty before it becomes serious and damaging.
Discussion method suggests that the solution of a problem should begin with the description of a situation rather than with a question which is likely to be stated in abstract terms. Starting from the point where the group actually is helps to keep the thinking down-to-earth and down-to-earth means talking about matters with which the members are capable of dealing. In The First Experiment, a number of teen-age boys were setting out to "learn how French and German boys live and think." In the discussions which they would have on shipboard on their way to Europe the boys would prepare themselves for the summer by formulating the group's aim and deciding what part each individual would play in achieving it. Without this guidance, the group might well have discussed what many travel groups talk about; for example, the political situation in the country to be visited. However informative this might be, such a discussion would be of almost no help in achieving their group's aim. Just as in a good discussion every member makes his personal contribution, so in an Experiment group each member has the responsibility of working for the aims of the whole group.
One of the most exciting results that came from discussion was the discovery that it was possible to develop attitudes. When a group talked about the desirable relations of Experimenters with their host families, helpful attitudes were actually developed. (In later years we listed the different useful attitudes and showed how each would be of use in adaptation.) At this time when I was designing the "controlled situation" and for several years afterward, I was not aware that we had actually entered the field of emotional education.
For American young people, the plan which The Experiment provided was new and different, i.e., living in European homes, but even more novel was the opportunity to share the outdoor life of Europeans. Here I am not referring to the bicycle sight-seeing circuit which achieved somewhat the same superficiality as the normal tourist trip.
Since the age of ten, I had become more and more enthusiastic about camping, hiking and, finally, mountain climbing, In my earliest visits to Germany, I had come in contact with an organization known as the Wandervögel (wanderers). Idealistic students, revolting from the stiff artificiality of the current social customs, looked for a return to simplicity and to nature. They found it in the ancient custom of the German apprentice craftsmen, who, taking their tools and little other baggage, walked throughout Europe looking for jobs and practicing their trade. This was called a Wanderung (a walking trip) and thousands of German students spent their vacations in this way. It was not only the students and carpenters who walked. Before the days of buses and cars, the usual family holiday recreation was often an all-day walk in the well-kept and accessible forests. Walking as a sport was well organized. The lower forested mountains---the Schwarzwald, the Harz, the Türingerwald, and many others---were provided with trails and inns. Throughout the length of the Alps, simple huts located above the timber line made it possible to climb many peaks. Alpen Clubs of other countries---France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy---also maintained a network of trails and a service of guides.
When The Experiment came to Germany, the blossoming of the Wandervögel was past, but its place had been taken by the Jugenherberge (Youth Hostel) movement. Promoted by groups of volunteers, simple housing was provided at the expense of cities and towns which even the poorest could afford. In 1932, it was not unusual for hiking students to live on one mark a day (25 cents). when the Experimenters arrived in Europe, chains of Youth Hostels could be found in most of the countries. For The Experiment this meant that the ideal of traveling simply and cheaply could be realized. Although it has been difficult, under present conditions to maintain the delightful simplicity that the early groups experienced through hiking, some Experimenters still learn its charm and acquire a permanent interest in it.
The enemy which destroyed this exhilarating life was the automobile. Gradually in those countries where cycling had been important, The Experiment groups were driven off the roads because European parents were justly afraid of accidents. When the Experimenters first came to Europe, a family car was the exception, but after twenty years it was a rare family which did not own one. The customary Sunday walks through the forest in comparison to the old days have given way to a large extent to drives in the car, so that now (1966) walking and mountain climbing are quite rare.
Industrial psychology was included in my graduate work and from this study came another group of controls which proved to be very important. In order to produce as much as possible of a product in a factory, the workers are selected, then trained for their jobs and supervised by a foreman who sees to it that the production line runs according to a carefully designed plan. In our case, the product was learning to make friends and three original and important controls were: the selection of able and interested people; preparing their minds to get the most benefit from the experience; providing a trained leader to make sure that little human difficulties did not become big ones.
Another valuable contribution of industrial psychology was the use of handbooks in which the accumulated experience of the leaders and the results of group discussions were handed down from year to year. When I preceded The First Experiment group to Europe, I wrote suggestions on how to get the most from the summer. I also wrote instructions for the two leaders on what and how to discuss. (This material was the source of the Experimenters' Handbook and the Leaders' Handbook. Actually the first Leaders' Handbook was produced in 1937, when there were four leaders, while the first Experimenters' Handbook became available in 1939.)
Although the word evaluation was unknown to us, The Inquiry's idea of frank criticism was active from The Experiment's beginning. The boys were well aware that every effort was to be made to improve each aspect of the program and they cooperated freely with their criticisms. Finally we looked upon The First Experiment as a try-out of the plan. Important changes were made so that The Experiment method, not completed in the first planning, was supplemented with what we learned in Europe that first summer and is described in Chapter 12. Thus what is often called The Experiment Idea turns out to be a complex of at least twenty-nine ideas.
There were two couples in Philadelphia who were old friends and greatly interested in what I was doing. Moreover, since each held at least one advanced degree, they were qualified to advise. On the second Tuesday in February, 1932, I was still at work in the YWCA and I took the subway to Penn Station. On the train to Philadelphia, I put the finishing touches on the soon-to-be-printed prospectus.
Descending at Haverford from the Paoli local train on the Main Line in suburban Philadelphia, I was in familiar territory, for we had lived there for a year. Madeleine Appel greeted me with the usual friendly kiss at the door of her nursery school adjoining her home. This was to be an exceptional evening. Husband Kenneth, instead of working till midnight as usual, was coming home, and we were going to have dinner with Stuart and Emily Mudd who lived nearby. The dinner was excellent, and soon we were sitting around the living room fireplace.
I read my draft of the prospectus. The most essential part of it was as follows:
The trip has a number of purposes:
1 . To learn by living and thinking with them, how French and German boys live and think.
2. To make friends among them by being a friend to them.
3. To make a real beginning of speaking one of their languages.
4. To visit places of cultural and historical importance.
In a word, the purpose is to start an experiment in international living.
Then Emily exploded at one point, "My mother would be very much upset by that!" I had written that it would be good for young Americans to learn from Europeans how to drink in moderation. I defended my idea for a time, but finally had to admit that with the current attitude toward alcohol, making a point of having the young experiment with wine would be going too fast.
Although it could hardly be said at that time that I had an advertising policy, the first announcement was different from most advertising in its strong tendency to undersell. Good reasons were always given why a prospective customer should not join. For example, at one point the announcement said,
The food in Europe will be different! Goodby chocolate sundaes! On the trip when we live in the youth camps (Jugendherberge), the food will be plain. Softies better stay home!
The Appels and the Mudds did not object.
At the same meeting, it was decided that the fee to be charged would consist of the members' expenses only, with no overhead costs. The price of the ten-weeks' trip was three hundred and sixty-five dollars, about five dollars a day including trans-Atlantic transportation. In 1966, the price was about three times that figure.
Back again at the office of The Inquiry, I had five hundred copies of the flyer printed in large, modern type, with two illustrations, on lemon-yellow paper. They were sent to a list of friends, as well as to selected independent schools. In view of the fact that we were in the depths of a depression, and that many people would not be able to appreciate the idea, I was surprised and pleased when applications were received from twenty-three who met the requirements. In spite of the pamphlets sent to independent schools, all but three of the applicants had become interested through personal contacts, and half of the total were Quakers from Haverford and Germantown.
The next step was to send out instructions to the prospective members to help prepare them for the summer. The one thing which seemed most important was to work on the foreign language which they had been studying. Following my policy of feeding things to be done in small quantities, I sent suggestions on language learning separately. The full text of it will be found in Appendix A, page 325. Its interest lies in the fact that it was so different from the language teaching of 1932 and so similar to that of 1966.
On June 23, 1932, the S.S. General von Steuben sailed from New York with twenty-three Experimenters. In addition to the twenty-three boys, there were two assistant leaders, Ed Hogenauer and Ted Hartshorne, both well acquainted with Europe, and Leslie Watt and ten-year-old Donald, Jr. I was already in Europe completing arrangements.