The Origins of the French Fellowships

If the paternal line of today's international AFS student exchanges stretches back to the first neutral adventurers on the battlefields between nations---Florence Nightingale, notably---the maternal line begins with cultural relations between two nations: France and the United States.

Apprenticeship abroad: Art and architecture in Paris
Hospitality for students abroad: The American Colony gets involves
The first exchanges: Professors from Harvard and the Sorbonne
Graduate study abroad: Attracting Americans to Paris
War: The Battle for the Mind

 

Apprenticeship abroad:

Art and architecture in Paris

 

"We need art students," wrote the critic James Jackson Jarves, "who will .... go on their hands and knees .... to read the soul language of the mightiest minds of Europe."

Whether such lofty purposes were always what they had in view, scores of American painters and sculptors were drawn to Italy in the midnineteenth century, not only from such traditional centers of culture as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, but from smaller towns and even villages reaching far into the midwest. For them Italy was the "museum of Europe," with its immense wealth of ancient sculpture and renaissance painting to be studied and copied, and this attracted them quite as much as that "dream of Arcadia" which so many travelers had discovered in the country's natural beauty, its never failing romance, and its pervasive charm. [...]

Rome and Florence remained the major centers for American expatriates until Paris finally took over this role in the last quarter of the century. Yet it has to be admitted that the painters and sculptors who lived so happily in Italy did not prove to be, in the eyes of later generations, artists of very conspicuous talent. Most of them, as Van Wyck Brooks has written in The Dream of Arcadia, were either obscure at the time and never better known, or famous in their day and since largely forgotten. Nevertheless, they set a pattern of study in Europe that would continue to draw American artists abroad; encouraged through their discovery of Italy's great masterpieces the collection of European art for America's future museums; and also gave a fresh impulse to the art schools that were slowly developing in the United States.

__ Foster Rhea Dulles. American Abroad. Two Centuries of European Travel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1964.

 

For all the gayer side of life in the German universities, however, the outstanding opportunities for study which they offered in science, medicine, philosophy, economics, and history were what attracted the American students. A host of young men who were later to have the most distinguished careers in education and scholarship owed an immense debt to their training abroad.

The more outstanding college presidents of the next generation were among them. Both James B. Angell and Charles W. Eliot studied in Europe. Arthur Twining Hadley attended lectures in economics at Berlin as a first step in a professional career that led to the presidency of Yale, and John Grier Hibben was a student at this same university before going to Princeton. Two other young men who went abroad together were Andrew White, later president of Cornell, and Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins. The famous scholars included, among so many others, Basil Gildersleeve, the great philologist; William Graham Sumner, economist, and Herbert Baxter Adams, founder of the American Historical Association.

Taken all in all, there is perhaps no other area where the experiences of Americans abroad have had a more direct or important impact on their country's life than that embracing the students in German universities in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. They returned to encourage the establishment of graduate schools on the German model, with a more systematic program of advanced studies and provision for granting the Ph.D. degree. An energizing center for this whole new development was Johns Hopkins University, and during the 1880's and 1890's it had scarcely a faculty member who was not German-trained.
 
The artists were once again an interesting group living and studying abroad. "My God," exclaimed William M. Chase, when first given such an opportunity, "I'd rather go to Europe than go to Heaven." Some among them still joined the older colonies in Rome and Florence, and a few went to London, Munich (where Chase himself studied) or The Hague. These years in the late nineteenth century, however, were the period when Paris first came into its own as the city of cities for painters. Here they now congregated as they never had before to work under the French masters and enjoy the romantic, carefree atmosphere of the Left Bank. They studied at such popular art schools as the Académie Julian, so crowded that the young novices hardly had elbow room; lived in cold, little attics which served as studio, bedroom, and kitchen; affected the flowing ties and broad-rimmed hats that were the accepted artists' costume; and gathered nightly at the Latin Quarter's restaurants, brasseries, and sidewalk cafés. This was the Paris of bohemian legend.

__ Foster Rhea Dulles. American Abroad. Two Centuries of European Travel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1964.

 

From the beginning the American Colony had settled in the fashionable neighborhoods of the Right Bank of the Seine. There were also Americans on the Left Bank: students and art students, most particularly. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris had become the Mecca for young Americans wishing to perfect their knowledge of the fine arts, be it painting, sculpture or architecture. Of course some Americans turned towards Italy, Germany or England, but by the end of the century, the preferred destination by far was Paris' Ecole des Beaux-Arts and its attendant ateliers.

Starting with the Second Empire and trickling down after the Second World War, there was a real flow of eager young men and women coming to France, and more especially to Paris, in order to study art. Strangely enough, such a rush is unknown in any other field than art. Various reasons should be invoked to explain such an attraction to France: the increasing prosperity of the United States, along with its desire to gain access to the international cultural arena; the promotion of arts in France under Napoleon III and the Third Republic; the urge to go transmitted by those back home who had had the experience.

The Salons existed well before Napoleon III. However, under his reign, the image of France changed dramatically to one of a modern country enjoying renewed luxury, a new home for the arts, and a land of plenty as far as art commissions were concerned. The prestige of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, especially after the reform of 1863, started to outshine that of the Academies in London, Munich or Düsseldorf. Moreover, the bustling building atmosphere in the air pervading Paris from Haussmann on, all the new monumental sculpture then rising from the earth, the respect the art professions enjoyed in France, the attention given to art exhibitions by the media and the public, the stimulation and fraternity existing between art students in schools, all these feelings and events unknown in America were instrumental in making studies in Paris a unique experience, bringing to maturation many young artists from the United States.

__ Véronique Wiesinger, "Some General Ideas", Paris Bound, Americans in Art Schools 1868-1918 ; Edited by the Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris 1990 ; pp 13-14.

 

The favorable exchange rate and the absence of school fees (except for a modest allocation for "external" studies located outside the Ecole) encouraged Americans to come to France. Nonetheless, a long stay abroad represented a sizable investment in time and money. Most of these young people thus came from wealthy families; some even belonging to the "upper crust", such as Lloyd and Whitney (1864-1943) Warren, cousins of the Vanderbilts.

__ Isabelle Gournay, "Americans Studying Architecture at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts", in Paris Bound, etc, op.cit., pp 48-49.

 

The enthusiasm for things French which then spread among Americans came not only from this desire to absorb European Culture, but also from the discovery of French culture as lived from day to day.

When I first entered the school I was the only American in the class, and it was owing to this that I gradually assumed French manners and ways. My friends were all French students and my habits of thought, artistic and otherwise, influenced by them. To get out of one's national skin is a great broadening of one's point of view, and on this I particularly congratulated myself as one of the advantages of living in France.

__ William Sartain (1843-1924), in a letter from 1873, quoted by Véronique Wiesinger, "Paris Remembrances", Paris Bound, etc, op.cit. , p. 27.

 

This tendency began to be institutionalized during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

A few scholarships were eventually created in the United States at the turn of the century (Alexander Phimister Proctor won the first Rinehart Scholarship in 1896, and Willard Dryden Paddock, the first grant from the Pratt Institute in 1895).

__ Véronique Wiesinger, "American Sculpture Students", Paris Bound, etc, p 61.

 

Many other American artists later to become very well known studied in Paris. A pioneer among them, even before the Civil War, was William Morris Hunt, of Brattleboro, Vermont, who on his return to the United States exerted a strong influence in persuading his fellow painters that the French capital was where they should study. Winslow Homer was briefly there in 1867. Before going to England where in the tradition of West and Copley he was to settle permanently, John Singer Sargent lived and worked in Paris from 1874 to 1885. He started painting at the age of eighteen in the studio of Carolus-Duran, a precocious pupil from the start, and in 1884 created a sensation when he exhibited his "Madame Gautreau" (now in New York's Metropolitan Museum) at the French Salon. The lady's decolletage was so shocking that both the critics and the public fell fiercely upon the artist, and the attack was so disconcerting that it was largely responsible for Sargent's moving to London.

The successful were always a mere handful in comparison with the hundreds of art students, poor and struggling, who lingered on in Paris without obtaining any recognition whatsoever. Spending more time at the café than they did at the studio, they could not tear themselves away, and stories of their supposed dissipation drifting back to the United States began to awaken the kind of concern that had aroused Jefferson over the temptations that European society offered to American innocence. Nowhere in the world, wrote a contributor to the Nation, was vice so open and flagrant as in "effeminate, sickly Paris." He worriedly felt that most of the American students living there had no other purpose than to experience "la vie de Bohème."

They also had their defenders. In a somewhat later article appearing in the Independent, the Reverend Sylvester Beach (father of the Sylvia Beach whose bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, was to become a literary landmark in the Paris of the 1920's) was to state emphatically that these young Americans were drawn abroad "by the pure instinct of art." They were serious and conscientious rather than "scatterbrained, rollicking, unconscionable Bohemians." Beach told the Independent's readers that he very well knew that the temptations of Paris were "peculiarly insidious and alluring," but he assured them that in spite of this, they need not worry about their young countrymen abroad.

__  Foster Rhea Dulles. American Abroad. Two Centuries of European Travel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1964.

 

THE Latin Quarter has been the Mecca of American art students since the coming of the painter Vanderlyn, who was the first American to exhibit in the French Salon in 1808, receiving the Napoleonic medal of honour. Since then many celebrities have received their inspiration under the dim gray shadows of the Luxembourg---Healy, Trumbull, Rembrandt Peale in the earlier years, then William Morris Hunt, John W. Alexander, John Sargent, Whistler, George de Forest Brush and a score of other famous painters. Among sculptors, Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Lorado Taft matured their powers in the studios of Paris.

Whistler used to say, "There is something in Paris which incites one to do beautiful things." The rarest voices of the concert and the opera, the greatest masters of musical instruments, have acquired technique and developed soul in this city of beautiful things. The Director General of the Paris Exposition of 1900 said that the ambition of American artists is to interpret the world of today and that they come to Paris to get their expression.
It is for this reason that thousands of aspiring young Americans crowd into the Latin Quarter every year. Most of them come with slender resources and are compelled to seek quarters that are cramped and unwholesome. They live amid surroundings not entirely conducive to physical and moral well-being.

It was not until the last decade of the 19th century that any particular attention was paid to these conditions by those who had the means to assist toward higher standards of living.

__ Joseph Cochran. Friendly Adventurers. A Chronicle of the American Church of Paris, 1857-1931. Paris: Brentano's, 1931.

 

Hospitality for students abroad:

The American Colony gets involved

 

During the second half of the 19th century, increasing numbers of Americans went to France: some to visit (on the Grand Tour), some to study (art and architecture), some to settle in a little business colony in west Paris. This latter group and their families formed their own social circles and gravitated around their own churches---the non-denominational Protestant "American Church" and the Episcopalian "American Cathedral."

It was through "church work" that the American Colony responded to its concern for the "Innocents Abroad"---students from the home country who had adventured far from the security of Boston and Peoria and who now, in their view, found themselves exposed to the moral dangers of Paris' notorious Left Bank! In short, the Colony took many of these young Americans "under its wing" by providing hospitality in apartments on the Left Bank.

During the fall of 1889, for example, the Reverend and Mrs. Newell, of the American Church, opened the doors of their apartment on Rue de Rennes for fellowship....and informal religious services. Another apartment was rented out to provide inexpensive rooms for young American women who had come to France to study art or music. Reading rooms were set up where young people could seek moral shelter from the temptations which surrounded them. And then a number of "homes" for young women were established, beginning with what today is known as Reid Hall:

The Girl Students' Club was now, on 16 October 1893, opened in the Institution Keller quarters on the rue de Chevreuse, with the avowed purpose of establishing a wholesome environment for English-speaking women studying art or music in Paris.

__ Cameron Allen, History of the American Cathedral, 1859-1918, 3 vol., (unpublished thesis, Rutgers University), p. 410.

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During the Ministry of the Hon Whitelaw Reid, [...] Mrs. Reid converted an old Louis Xlll property unto a students' hostel for women. Dr. Morgan erected on the grounds an ivy-covered chapel named St. Luke's in the Garden, but known affectionately throughout the Quarter as 'The Little Tin Church'. It was first opened for services in November, 1892.

__ Frederick W. Beekman, "A Centennial Day Address", July 6, 1947, p. 5 (Archives of the American Cathedral).

Reid Hall led to the creation of a second center for female students: the Trinity Lodge, (the American Cathedral was also known as the Church of the Holy Trinity) which itself spawned the American Center (for a long time on Boulevard Raspail and later, briefly, in Bercy.) A third center was founded by Grace Whitney Hoff, evolving from British-American YWCA to International Student Hostel (today functioning as the Foyer international des étudiantes of the University of Paris).

American Students' Clubs.---There are in Paris a number of clubs, which have been organized primarily by generous Americans, and provide admirably for the interests of American women students. Among these are the Students' Hostel, 93, boulevard Saint-Michel, which has a club-house admirably equipped in every respect, including an infirmary; the American Girls' Club, rue de Chevreuse, very comfortably situated in a retired street and provided with a beautiful garden; and Trinity Lodge, rue du Val-de Grace, under the auspices of the Anglican Church, very pleasantly installed. All these clubs offer homes to a limited number of American and English girls, as well as provide a complete social center with all the necessary equipment for a much larger number.

Hitherto there have been no similar clubs, adequately equipped for American men students. The old American Art Association, which played such an important role in the life of American students in Paris during so many years, has been allowed to die. But at the time of going to press a "Maison des Étudiants Americains" is being organized.

__ C.B. Vibbert, "Practical Suggestions to the Intending Graduate Student", Appendix III, Science and Learning in France, 1917.

As many of his fellow Episcopalians, Dr. Thomas W. Evans was concerned for the welfare of young American women who had come to Paris to study art. At the time when the St. Luke's work and Reid Hall were being established on the Left Bank, Evans himself founded Lafayette Hall near his own home on the Avenue de l'Impératrice.

The American Colony's various concerns for its student "charges" also brought initiatives which, five years later, would produce the American Hospital of Paris.

"A new and most interesting work in connection with our Church begins in the Latin Quarter on the first of this month. An apartment with studio attached has been taken at 70 bis, Rue Notre Dame des Champs, in the center of the Quarter, designed to be a Home-like gathering place for all English-speaking women living in the neighbourhood who may desire to use it. Rooms in the apartment are reserved for those who may be ill or require rest and nursing---in short, the beginning of an 'American Hospital'".

__ The Parish Kalendar, January 10, 1905, p. 4.

In practical terms, the American Colony represented a tight network of friends and business associates working through their churches as social activists. Their members--- the Harjes and Herricks, Bacons and Morgans, etc.--- would become prime movers in relief work as soon as WWI broke out....where they began with the creation of the American Ambulance!

 

The first exchanges:

Professors

 

The first exchanges of university professors were organized at the end of the 19th century and during the first years of the 20th. The first initiatives came from Harvard University. The French Club there, founded in 1886 for the production of French classical plays, began inviting French lecturers, thanks to a foundation created in 1898 by a wealthy and enthusiastic Francophile, former Harvard student James Hazen Hyde.

__ Y.H. Nouailhat, France et Etats-Unis, Août 1914-Avril 1917, Paris 1979, p. 62.

 

French Lecturers at Harvard University

1898-99   R. Doumic
1899-00   E. Rod
1900-01   H. de Régnier
1901-02   G. Deschamps
1902-03   H. Le Roux
1903-04   L. Mabilleau
1904-05   A. Leroy-Beaulieu
1905-06   R. Millet
1906-07   A. Le Braz
1907-08   A. Tardieu
1908-09   Vicomte d'Avenel
1909-10   A. Lefranc
1910-11   E. Boutroux
1911-12   C. Diehl
1912-13   E. Logouis
1913-14   F. Baldensperger
1914-15   H. Lichtenberger
1915-16   M. Caullery
1916-17   R. Blanchard
1917-18   C. Cestre

American Lecturers at the Sorbonne University

1904-05   Barrett Wendell
1905-06   G. Santayana
1906-07   A.C. Coolidge
1907-08   G.B. Baker
1908-09   H. Van Dykel
1909-10   Bliss Perry
1910-11   J.H. Finley
1911-12   W.M. Davis
1912-13   G.E. Wilson
1913-14   M. Böcher
1914-15   W.A. Neilson
1915-16   C.H. Grandgent
1916-17   W.C. Sabine
1917-18   J.H. Woods
 

In 1897, Ferdinand Brunetiere gave a course of lectures in French at Johns Hopkins University which were notable and besides attracted popular attention. He was invited to Harvard University, where he gave three lectures on Molière. The charm and magnetism of the man will not easily be forgotten by anyone privileged to hear him. Since that time the French lectureship fund provided by Mr. James Hazen Hyde of the Class of 1898 has made it possible for Americans to pass in review a long line of distinguished French men of letters; for not only have these gentlemen lectured at Harvard University, but after finishing their course there, usually have also lectured in many places in the United States and Canada. The distinction of the lecturers and the variety of the topics treated has naturally called attention to France, a country for which American sympathy has been strong and lasting from old colonial days. The following are the names of the eminent lecturers who have visited our shores and their subjects:

1898. René Doumic: Histoire du romantisme français.
1899. Edouard Rod: La Poesie dramatique française.
1900. Henri de Regnier: Poésie française contemporaine.
1901. Gaston Deschamps: Le Théâtre français contemporain.
1902. Hugues Le Roux: Le Roman français et la société française.
1903. L. Mabilleau: Idées fondamentales de la politique française.
1904. A Leroy-Beaulieu, de l'Institut: Christianisme et démocratic.
1905. René Millet, ambassadeur: La France et l'Islam dans la Mediterranée.
1906. Anatole Le Braz: La France celtique.
1907. Vicomte G. d'Avanel: Histoire économique de la France.
1908. André Tardieu: La France et les alliances.
1909. Abel Lefranc: Molière.

Nearly all of these men have, after visiting us, recorded their impressions of American life in books that students will have pleasure in familiarizing themselves with. This is likely to have a broadening effect upon their own point of view of a foreign country. Moreover, under the auspices of the Alliance Française, or possibly, at times, independently, Germain Martin, Jules Huret, André Michel, F. Funck-Bretano, Louis Madelin, Edmond Rossier, Bonet-Maury, Marcel Poete, and other Frenchmen of note have lectured in various parts of the United States and Canada. Distinguished Italians, Angelo de Gubernatis, Novelli, Guglielmo Ferrero, have also addressed many groups of the Alliance.

So much activity on this side of the water has initiated a reciprocal movement in France. In 1904-1905, through the generosity of Mr. Hyde, who has done so much to promote a good mutual understanding between France and America, Professor Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University, was invited to deliver a course of lectures on American literature at the Sorbonne and at the university towns in France. Students who intend studying in France will do well to profit from Professor Wendell's experience by reading his book, "The France of Today." He was followed by Professor A. C. Coolidge; and he in turn by Professor George Pierce Baker, also of Harvard University.

Of late years a number of French students have registered in our leading universities, and not only pursued courses, but given instructions and lectured in French at the university and outside. This idea of foreign students coming here to study in our institutions has been favorably received and encouragement is offered them to come. In 1896, for the first time, a fellow of the University of Paris, Charles Cestre, was sent to Harvard. An interesting contribution by him on the French Universities will be found in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine for December, 1897. About eight years later, in 1903-1904, a fellowship of the Cercle Français de l'Université Harvard with a stipend of $600 was offered by Mr. Hyde and has been since then continued annually. The French fellow is selected by the Minister of public instruction in France. According to the conditions of the fellowship, the young Frenchman is expected to give a certain amount of assistance to the department of French and other Romance languages. He is also to be admitted to any courses of instruction in the university he is qualified to pursue. These young men occasionally assist in the annual production of the Cercle Français play. The appointment of the American exchange fellow to Paris, to benefit by the fellowship offered in return by the French ministry of public instruction, is made on the recommendation of the president of Harvard University. The incumbents have been George Wallace Umphrey, 1903-4; Robert Bell Michel, 1904-5; Charles Marshall Underwood, 1905-6; Arthur Fisher Whittem, 1906-7; Warren Barton Blake, 1907-8; Samuel Montefiore Waxman, 1908-9. The same conditions govern the incumbent of this fellowship as those of the James Hazen Hyde fellowship offered by the Cercle Français. The"boursiers," or fellows from France at Harvard, have been Robert Dupouey, 1903-4; to whose article, Americans in French Universities, reference has here twice been made; Henri Baulig, 1904-5, now an instructor in French in Harvard College; Méderic Tourneur, 1905-6; Edmond Jean Eggli, 1906-7; Jean Marie Giraudoux, 1907-8; Maurice Chelli, 1908-9.

 __ James Geddes, Jr, "L'Entente Cordiale", in Science and Learning in France, 1917.

During WWI, some university professors and lecturers used their classrooms to promote the cause of the Allies---to encourage their students, for instance, to join the Field Service and drive ambulances for frontline French Army troops!

Notable among the names on the above list are: René Doumic (who translated Piatt Andrew's 1916 Friends of France into French); André Tardieu, a prime mover in the Franco-American Commission and "godfather" to the American Committee for Devastated France (which created the Blérancourt Museum); Charles H. Grandgent of Harvard who, while in the Sorbonne in 1915-1916 and in contact with the Paris-American University Committee there, actively promoted a movement---the Society for American Fellowships in French Universities---which would bring about the 1917 publication of Science and Learning in France and then create the fellowships themselves, after the war.

 

Graduate study abroad:

Americans in Paris

 

If, by the end of the 19th century, the majority of students from the New World apprenticing to the culture of the Old made the pilgrimage to Paris, it was another matter for university graduate students, who tended to look towards Germany.

Ever since that day of high ideals, when Goethe and Schiller talked in the quiet gardens of Jena or crossed the Alps to joint the literary colony of Rome, the universities of Germany have drawn to their hospitable halls the students of the United States. To these institutions we owe much of the regard for scholarship and much of the spirit of research that now characterize our own universities. Wolcott Gibbs at Harvard, in 1863, and Gilman at Johns Hopkins, in 1876, definitely fixed in our advanced courses the laboratory methods they had learned in Germany. Since their time, in a rapidly widening circle of universities, research leading to the doctor's degree has become universal, greatly to the advantage of American science. [...]

The influence of the German university on American education has thus been of incalculable value. It has taught the student to look beyond the bachelor's degree to the possibility of advancing knowledge by his own efforts, and to realize the high privilege of never-ceasing research. It has also taught him the advantage of foreign travel and experience, needed so imperiously in the midst of our slowly decreasing insularity. But, in working so much of good, it has almost inevitably involved an element of harm, by centering our educational ideals too exclusively in a single country. The time has surely come to look farther afield. And in widening our vision, the great debt we already owe to the Ecole des Beaux Arts is an ample assurance of the rich benefits we may reasonably hope to derive from the other schools of France.

__ George E. Hale, "The Intellectual Inspiration of Paris", in Science and Learning in France, 1917.

Another good reason that Americans were hesitant to pursue university studies in France was that, unlike Germany, there were no provisions for them there, no course of study open to them. This was finally taken care of:

A Franco-American Committee had been organized in Paris under the direction of the Ministry of Public Instruction, with the aim of creating university degrees for American students in Paris. In a meeting at the home of Dr. T.W. Evans, July 8, 1895, it was decided to form a local committee of Americans to promote this movement. This committee was named "The Paris-American University Committee", at a meeting held at Dr. Evans' Wednesday, July 19, 1895. Evans was named president of this committee, founded to cooperate with the Franco-American Committee, in order to help to extend French university privileges to American students and to promote their interests in their relations with universities in France.

[...]

Debate continued throughout the year 1896 and beyond. According to the American Register of December 26, 1896: "The University Council, at its meeting of last Monday [December 21] adopted a resolution that a committee be named to study the establishing of a diploma to be conferred to foreign students, more particularly to American students, which they might take away as proof of their studies and knowledge gained in Paris." All these discussions would lead to the creation of the Doctorate degree at the University of Paris.

__ Henri Mondor et Lloyd James Austin, La correspondance de Stéphane Mallarmé, Gallimard, Paris, vol VII, p. 307.

[NOTE: The owner and publisher of the American Register was Dr. Thomas W. Evans].

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Before the act of July 10, 1896, higher education was entirely under the control of the minister of public instruction. The act of July 10, 1896, did away with State control of the institutions for higher education, giving to them an independent existence of their own. [...]

The innovation that is of most interest to American students is one made especially to attract them, as well as foreign students in general, to the various French seats of learning, the fifteen universities in the different sections of the country. It pertains to degrees, and especially to the doctorate. Formerly the only possible way for a foreigner to secure a French diplome or degree from any educational institution was by undergoing the same training and passing the same examinations prescribed for a French student. [...]

The problem was to adapt the curriculum to meet the wants of foreign students while preserving intact the rights of French students. This the act of 1896 accomplished, by authorizing the universities to create titles of a different character from the ones conferring State rights or privileges. In no case can the former degrees be considered a substitute for the latter. These new degrees were known as "University degrees," instead of "State degrees." [...]

It may now readily be seen that the higher education in France is practically upon the same basis as that in the universities of Germany or at the graduate schools of the well-known universities in our own country. The system governing the reception of foreign students, the splendid advantages offered, and the bestowal of the doctorate by the universities in France, are all along similar lines that in Germany have long proved attractive to Americans. [...]

The act which has effected the great changes described in the organization of the French educational system, and particularly changed the attitude towards foreign students of all the institutions for the higher education in France, is so important that before going on to speak of the different universities it will be of interest to learn something of the prime movers who brought about modifications so beneficial and so far-reaching.

IV. ORIGIN OF THE RECENT CHANGES.

It seems a little odd that an American who, like many of his countrymen, after finishing his college course in America, had completed his studies in Germany by taking the degree Ph. D. at Halle, should have been the first to bring the matter of reorganization of the higher education in France to the attention of the French authorities. After having made, in 1895, quite a thorough examination of the principal schools in Paris, particularly the Sorbonne, College de France, Ecole des hautes études, Mr. Harry J. Furber, a graduate of the University of Chicago (1886), and for a number of years a student abroad and in foreign universities, came to the conclusion that the advantages which it might be possible for American students to procure in Paris were extraordinary. He then asked himself why it was that, notwithstanding, there were but thirty American students enrolled at the Sorbonne, while at the same time at the University of Berlin there were over two hundred. Moreover, if a count were made of all American students pursuing courses in the twenty-six German universities, the sum total of more than a thousand would offer a still more unfavorable and striking contrast for France to the total number of American students enrolled in the latter country's sixteen university centers. As regards the number of artists and sculptors studying in Paris, the sum total of Americans among them proved clearly the superior attractiveness of the French capital to them as an art center over all other places. Mr. Furber realized that if the figures showed in the domain of letters so marked a predilection on the part of American students for German university centers, the inducements offered there in science and letters must be far superior to those offered in France. He then found what has already been shown; namely, that the regulations in force, while doubtless well adapted to the needs of French students, were entirely unsuitable to the wants of foreign students, and particularly Americans. Mr. Furber then drew up a memorial stating the case clearly to M. Poincaré, the minister of public instruction. These ideas, of which a summary has here been presented, were given to the general public in an article published in the Journal des Débats, of June 7, 1895, by M. Michel Bréal, a member of the Institute and a professor at the Collège de France. Moreover, M. Bréal made a strong plea for the advantages offered outside of Paris by the provincial universities. Nowhere, he said, could French life in all its intimacy and purity be so well studied as in the different French provinces. As examples of admirably equipped institutions, he cited those of Lyon and Lille; while others peculiarly endowed by nature with a rare climate and superb physical attractions are Dijon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Montpellier. Were he to begin life over again, he would be a student nowhere else than at Grenoble, the great natural beauties of which are so familiar to so many of our tourists. Paris, he concluded, may well be kept for the last semester and fittingly crown the foreign student's sojourn in France.

The result of this article from the pen of so distinguished an educator as M. Bréal was the formation, about a fortnight later, of a committee composed of the best known and influential men in the educational world in and around Paris.

M. Bréal addressed the meeting, supporting by word what had already appeared in print. The discussion was participated in by MM. Bonet-Maury, Gréard, Lavisse, Maspéro, Paul Mellon, Paul Meyer, and Parrot. In the course of the discussion, the sympathy and encouragement of M. Hanotaux, the minister of foreign affairs, and of M. Poincaré, of public instruction, were clearly shown by their approval of the plan to form a Franco-American committee. On the other hand, Mr. Furber voiced the equally hearty support of His Excellency, the ambassador of the United States, for this movement towards closer intellectual affiliation. A commission was then and there (June 26, 1895) appointed to study into the question of how to facilitate the entrance of American students into French schools, and what inducements might properly be held out. So important and far-reaching have been the results attained by this commission that it must be of interest to American students to know who the men are who have been instrumental in securing for them such magnificent opportunities for study as are now to be had at a mere nominal cost in France. The members of the French commission were MM. Bonet-Maury, Professor in the Theological School; Michel Bréal, of the Institute, Professor in the Collège de France; Bufnoir, Professor in the Law School; Darboux, of the Institute, Professor in the Scientific School; Giry, then Professor in the Ecole des Chartes ; Lavisse, of the French Academy; Levasseur, Professor in the Collège de France; Maspéro, of the Institute; Paul Mellon, Secretary of the Commission; Paul Meyer, of the Institute, Director of the Ecole des Chartes; Gabriel Monod, Professor in the Ecole pratique des hautes études; Schefer, of the Institute, then Director of the École des langues orientales vivantes. The name of the French ambassador to the United States, at that time M. Jules Cambon, was afterwards added to the list.

__ James Geddes, "Educational Advantages for American Students in France; with a History of the Recent Changes in its University System", Appendix I of Science and Learning in France, 1917.

Henceforth, Americans could study in France---but would they? For the French themselves, the question was of minor importance, as their focus continued to be on their own students. But then the Great War broke out, the United States remained neutral----and the French Government began earnestly---if subtly--- to pursue a strategy of winning over the minds and hearts of the citizens of its Sister Republic in a War to Preserve Civilization.

American students, thinking to take advanced studies in Europe, have often in times past supposed the French to be an inconstant, pleasure-loving, materialistic people. They have now learned through the Great War that the French are an heroic people, constant to great political and social ideals, a people intelligent, fervid, dutiful, and devoted to family, home, and country. They have also come to see that the peculiar national spirit of France is one of the great bulwarks and resources of civilization, which ought to be not only preserved, but reinforced.

__ Charles W. Elliot, in his introduction to Science and Learning in France, dated May 4th, 1917.

 

The Battle for the Mind:

On the University Front

 

The Germans and the French pursued quite different strategies in their efforts to win over the American public to their cause. The Germans were straightforward, appealing to the assumed loyalty of the very large German-American population, appealing to the strong anti-British feelings of the many Irish-Americans.

Such tactics were denied to the French due to simple demographics: there were relatively few French immigrants of recent date in the United States. So the French pursued the policy of "soft sell"---painting the picture of themselves as victims of aggression, defenders of Civilization. The image of the bombarded Rheims Cathedral, displayed during the San Francisco World Trade Fair of 1915, became a symbol of the battle between sacred Gallic Culture and brutal "Hun" Kultur.

French policies worked hand-in-hand with British efforts to justify its adherence to the Allied Cause because of German violation of Belgian neutrality. German aggression was made all the more dramatic by a widely-reported number of "atrocities" committed by its Army in Belgium. In short, the Allied tactics in America were to present the Great War as yet another form of the age-old struggle between Good and Evil.

When the Great War broke out in Europe in midsummer, 1914, even far-sighted Americans failed at first to penetrate to the real causes and the possible consequences of German aggression. It is significant that, during the previous four years at Phillips Academy, Prussian Exchange professors had been regular members of the teaching staff; and even in 1914-15 another native German occupied a position on the Faculty without exciting any unfavorable comment. In its tolerance and totally unsuspicious attitude, Andover was not different from thousands of other communities.

In accordance with the terms of President Wilson's proclamation of August 18, 1914, surface neutrality, at least in the classroom and in public gatherings, was for some months sedulously observed. The clank of iron heels in hapless Belgium, however, together with the rapidly accumulating proof of Prussian atrocities, excited strong anti-German sentiment throughout New England. But no formal action of any kind was taken, and the abhorrence of German methods of warfare and of the wanton disregard of neutral and civilian rights was expressed only in homes,---although there vigorously and frankly enough.

__ Claude Moore Fuess. Phillips Academy, Andover in the Great War. New Haven: Yale, 1919.

American students were eager to assume the rôle of Knights in Shining Armor in this struggle---although slaying the Dragon was at first denied them. They joined the Field Service. They drove ambulances. They wrote home:

It was these boys in the Ambulance Service who first carried the war intimately to the Hill. They wrote back accounts of their experiences which brought home the reality of the horrors taking place on the fields of France.

__ Claude Moore Fuess. Phillips Academy, Andover in the Great War. New Haven: Yale, 1919

The reports from "our boys" were very effective in promoting the Allied Cause. From the French point of view, they were certainly as useful if not more useful than the actual driving of ambulances.

A. Piatt Andrew, in his overview, echoes this view:

THE actual. and direct service to France of these men, when measured by the monstrous task with which France had to cope during the first three years of the war, was of course insignificant, but they rendered an inestimable benefit to their own country, for they helped to keep alive in France the old feelings of friendship and of respect for us which had existed there since our earliest days and which otherwise might easily have disappeared.[...]

...approximately two thousand of the Field Service volunteers came from one or another of more than a hundred different American colleges, Harvard leading the list with three hundred and twenty-five of her sons. Scarcely a State in the Union was unrepresented on the Field Service rolls, and certainly no university or college of note. It was in fact because of this that the organization was able to render what was probably its most important service to France and the allied cause. For during the long years when the American Government was hesitating, and those in authority were proclaiming the necessity of speaking and even thinking in neutral terms, and while the American people were slowly accumulating the information that was to lead to the Great Decision, these hundreds of American youths already in France were busily writing and agitating in terms that were not neutral, and were sending to their families and friends throughout the Union, to their home papers, to their college publications, and to American weeklies and magazines the great story of France and her prodigious sacrifice. At a Field Service gathering in New York in September, 1916, Theodore Roosevelt summed up their service by saying:

There is not an American worth calling such, who is not under a heavy debt of obligation to these boys for what they have done. We are under an even greater debt to them than the French and Belgians are.... The most important thing that a nation can possibly save is its soul, and these young men have been helping this nation to save its soul.

By personal and published letters, by articles, by books, by lectures, by photograph and cinematograph, they were bringing the war ever nearer to those on the other side of the Atlantic and by the organization of committees in almost every college and university and in nearly every city and town in the United States, they were developing a deeper and more active interest in American participation. This was the aspect of the Field Service which in the thought of those of us who were privileged to direct it seemed heavily to outweigh all others. Herein lay by all counts the greatest contribution which the men of the Field Service could make and did make to France.

__ A. PIATT ANDREW, "The Field Service and American Neutrality" in History of the American Field Service in France, "Friends of France," 1914-1917, Told by its Members. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920. Volume I.

While the Field Service was recruiting its drivers on American college campuses, another appeal to college students was launched from France: Come study in France instead of Germany! This initiative, promoted by an outgrowth of the Franco-American Committee, began with an information campaign, a book:

"It may not be inappropriate to here recall the origin of the Society for American Fellowships in French Universities. Late in 1915, Dr. John H. Wigmore, Dean of Law in the Northeastern University of Chicago, a widely known educator, laid the foundation of the Society, which from now on will bear the name of American Field Service Fellowships for French Universities. In correspondence with Professor C. H. Grandgent, then exchange Professor at the Sorbonne he learned that the project would be cordially welcomed by the French authorities. The French Ambassador at Washington, M. Jusserand, also expressed to Dr. Wigmore his deep interest in the movement. A meeting of scientists was then called at the Northeastern University, and also at the University of Chicago, and at the same time Professor Grandgent convened a similar meeting at Harvard University. At these meetings preliminary selections of authors of the book "Science and Learning in France" were made. Through the zeal and energy of Dr. Wigmore, who devoted himself to the preparation of the book "Science and Learning in France" during the year 1916, the manuscript was completed early in the year 1917. About one hundred authors, distinguished members of the faculties of American universities and colleges contributed to its preparation. The manuscript was then brought to New York by Dr. Wigmore, and largely through the activities of Mr. Dwight W. Morrow, the necessary funds for printing an edition of 5,000 copies of the book were secured. The book was published in June, 1917, and copies were sent to about 700 universities and colleges in the United States, and to hundreds of leading periodicals and clubs throughout the country. A large number were also forwarded to the Ministry of Instruction in France. The great service rendered by Dr. Wigmore and his associates in the preparation of this book constitutes a notable contribution to the cause of educational relations between France and America. Had this not been done, the Fellowship Society which the American Field Service now honors by its support, would not have been created.

__ Charles A. Coffin, Chairman of the AFS Fellowships for French Universities. Remarks at first AFS reunion, as reported by AFS Bulletin, July 1920.

The editor of this book, John Henry Wigmore (1863-1943) had taught American law in Tokyo for three years before becoming professor of law at Chicago's Northwestern University. In 1915, he was dean of the law faculty. By the time he edited Science and Learning in France, he had published numerous books, including his monumental work, Treatise on Evidence (4vol., 1904; 3d ed., 10 vol., 1940; suppl. 1964). Wigmore interest in comparative law later produced Panorama of the World's Legal Systems (3 vol., 1928; repr., 3 vol. in 1, 1936).

By the time Science and Learning in France appeared in May of 1917, it was of little more than academic interest---literally. The minds and hearts of American students---and the population as a whole---had already been won over to France by efforts such as those put forth by the Field Service drivers. However, the book proved as significant in the long term picture as AFS's contributions had been to the immediate cause: it announced a new Cause around which the American Field Service could rally after the War.

"The French people during the war won our warm admiration for their spirit, their devotion to high ideals, their strength of character, and their efficiency," one member wrote. "The people of the United States should know them better in the future, should strengthen the bonds of friendship between the two nations, and should increase their co-operation in the advancement of civilization according to their common ideals."

In this spirit, during the first year after the war, members of the AFS held many consultations to consider ways to continue the work they had begun in 1914.

__ George Rock, "The Fellowships for French Universities" in The History of the American Field Service, New York: Platen Press, 1956.

During the year since our demobilization, we have consulted with the French Ministry of War, the heads of various other departments in France, and with individuals whose position and experience qualified the worth of their judgment, both there and in this country. The consensus of opinion was that our effort be academic, and for the establishment of scholarships between French and American universities. Inasmuch as the personnel of the Field Service consisted so largely of men chosen for their character and standing in colleges and universities here, it seemed especially qualified, in all sections of the country, to use its energy and influence in the accomplishment of such an aim..

On returning to America last summer, we found that an association had already been formed for American Fellowships in French Universities. Founded and sponsored by Mr. Myron Herrick, formerly Ambassador to France, Mr. Charles A. Coffin, and others, it had among its trustees and on its Advisory Board, a number of distinguished citizens, both civic and academic, representing many sections of the United States. The details of its administration had been most carefully prepared, and the organization was in every way too well-established for us to consider duplication. Almost immediately, however, Mr. Herrick advised us that having heard of our interest in a similar project, his committee would be glad to confer with us in regard to a possible alliance. At this conference it was explained by our trustees that they felt that the time and the way in which the members of the Field Service had done their part, justified the perpetuation of their identity, as well as their powers of administration, in whatever their future effort might be. The response of Mr. Herrick and his associates was perhaps as broad a tribute as our Service has received. They not only expressed understanding and approval of our viewpoint, but out of respect for the achievement of the Field Service they offered to give up their own identity, and rename the whole organization the American Field Service Fellowships for French Universities, to include the trustees of the Field Service on their Board, and to entrust to our Service responsibility in the administration of the work, and in the selection of fellows, etc. They offered, moreover, to give us the benefit of their influence and co-operation wherever possible.

__ "The Future of the Field Service", AFS Bulletin, April 1920.

[1920 – The adoption of the movement]