THE KEY REPORTER THE PHI BETA KAPPA NEWS MAGAZINE VOLUME VIII NUMBER 2 This issue goes to the 85,000 members resident in the Americas, Great Britain, and Russia SPRING 1943 What's Wrong With Amer- image carried meaning. Even with the rise of free public education, the emphasis was upon the written or at least upon the spoken word. And certainly this has had much to do with ican Art Scholarship? the absence of a living impulse in our art scholarship. Yet paradoxically in the last 150 years we have had a con- siderable, and sometimes a challenging, art. Even the French JEROME MELLQUIST, Carleton College historians have had to devote some pages to a Benjamin West. Author of The Emergence of an American Art Yet our knowledge of him is confined for the most part to the Condensed from an article that will appear in the Spring issue of schoolboy legend that he made his first paintbrush by pulling The American Scholar hairs out of a cat's tail. We sanctimoniously admit that Gilbert Stuart worthily celebrated the Father CHOLARSHIP in American art has S of his Country - though we too easily no vitality. Academicians say forget that he did many another pic- that American art is a child not ture still worth looking at. Perhaps our yet grown up and that it is not the early 19th century painters were pro- province of august investigators to con- vincial and slight and too reminiscent descend to something lacking in ma- of European models. Yet by the middle turity. Almost equally common is the of the century we had a whole school objection that our art is unimpressive, of native genre painters who are only seldom above the ordinary, and by no now being appreciated again. means comparable with that of other (Continued on page 4) countries in the last century. Again, can it be - as certain pamphleteers have said - that American art is only War Service for a commercial thing, a promotion of clever dealers who whip up the public fancy and then dispose of their stock Members while the selling is good? Is it then the academic process? Do T HE Navy Japanese Course at Boul- we breed incompetents? Or is there der, Colorado, has drawn many insufficient attachment to our own of its December recruits from tradition? d BK ranks. Lieutenant Commander We do not have a single first-rate A. E. Hindmarsh announces that the history of American art. If we had no closing date for receipt of applications Cambridge History of American Lit- has been extended to February 15. erature, surely we would think it im- Young Lieutenant Colonel John F. Presnell, Fr., Information and application forms may perative to urge a body of scholars to Bowdoin 1936, whose fate at Bataan is "unknown," has be obtained from the Lieutenant Com- been honored in the naming of Camp Presnell, large Army produce one. Yet there has been no base in Africa, according to press reports. Following the mander, Room 3801, Navy Depart- such urging for our art. We have an completion of his course at Bowdoin College, Presnell was ment, Washington, D. C., or through Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences appointed to West Point where he won highest awards. THE KEY REPORTER. and group histories from various insti- The Army Japanese Language School tutions. Are we SO apathetic as not to be able to start some- at Savage, Minnesota, will admit a new class in June or July. thing of the sort in art? Don't we care? Army or civilian members who are interested should write Such an attitude suggests the trouble. We have always been directly to Lieutenant Colonel A. W. Stuart, the Military a literary people. The early settlers and even their descendants Intelligence Language School at Savage, who has stated that a of the 18th and 19th centuries were not a folk for whom the number of d members entered in January and that "they, In This Issue: Senate Meets-Postpones Council BK in England Reviews of Make this the Last War and Keep Your Powder Dry PUBLISHED BY THE UNITED CHAPTERS OF PHI BETA KAPPA in November, February, May and September, at the Rumford Press, Concord, N. H. Editorial executive offices, 12 East 44th Street, New York, N. r. Editor, Dorothy E. Blair; Consulting Editors, Marjorie Hope Nicolson and William Allison Shimer. Advertising rates upon application. Subscription 20 cents a year, $1.00 for five years. Entered as second-class matter at the post office at Concord, N. H., under Act of March 3, 1879. MARKED COPY See Page