7a MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

is not unknown in other democratic countries;
one finds it, for example, in the blazing contempt
of Carlyle for the British Parliament as it func-
tioned in his day. But, as characteristic of the
educated classes in general, the American
exhibition of it seems to be unique; and this is
the more remarkable since the American form
of democracy, as Alexander Hamilton saw
(though perhaps Jefferson did not) is the one
which, of all others, demands the leadership of
the best minds the country can produce. Cer-
tainly the American colleges, in which, presumably,
the finest specimens of the nation's youth are
gathered, have no parallel to offer to the type
of young man familiar in Oxford—the type
represented, say, by the young Gladstone or
Asquith—who, after winning the highest univer-
sity distinction, proceed to find their vocation in
national politics; nor could the British univer-
sities produce a parallel to the abstention from
politics revealed by the record of the Rhodes
Scholars,

For social service in other forms and aspects
there is no lack of enthusiasm among the picked
youth of America, whether Rhodes Scholars or
not. My impression is that the spirit of social
service, as a general ideal, is more active in
American colleges than in British. I have heard
or read the allocutions of many college presidents
addressed to the graduating classes at the annual
" Commencements/* but never one in which