Three on the Line

From time to time, NATIONAL RE VIEW publishes statements on the nature of conservatism by reflective and literate Americans. We publish this week excerpts from an address recently delivered at Bowdoin College by Mr. Willmoore Kendall, of NATIONAL REVIEW’S staff. Mr. Kendall was at Bow doing to explore the question, “What is the conservative approach?” with Mr. Theodore Kaghan, who is a well-known Liberal journalist.

If Bowdoin College keeps good archives, it has in. its possession somewhere an application for admission that I sent to it in 1924 from a small town in Oklahoma named Idabel; just as I have in my possession somewhere a courteous but definitive letter telling me that many were called to Bowdoin but few were chosen, that I was not among that year’s few, and that Bowdoin’s good Wishes—or perhaps, in those remote days, it may have said Bowdoin’s prayers—would follow me to any more daring institution that might see fit to admit me. There was some mention of Bowdoin’s strong preference for young men who had just completed their secondary education; but the Dean was too honest a man to let it go at that, so there was also some mention of Bowdoin’s need to maintain standards, and of the undistinguished grades I had received at another college I had attended. I was very unhappy about the letter; I strongly felt that the college’s “approach” ought to have been less conservative; I felt —as Mr. Kaghan and his friends do— that the good things of life should be distributed as freely to those who have not earned them as to those who have earned them; I felt, in a word, as the foolish always feel when their appetites run up against the hard and unpalatable truths of conservative wisdom.

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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From time to time, NATIONAL RE VIEW publishes statements on the nature of conservatism by reflective and literate Americans. We publish this week excerpts from an address recently delivered at Bowdoin College by Mr. Willmoore Kendall, of NATIONAL REVIEW’S staff. Mr. Kendall was at Bow doing to explore the question, “What is the conservative approach?” with Mr. Theodore Kaghan, who is a well-known Liberal journalist.

If Bowdoin College keeps good archives, it has in. its possession somewhere an application for admission that I sent to it in 1924 from a small town in Oklahoma named Idabel; just as I have in my possession somewhere a courteous but definitive letter telling me that many were called to Bowdoin but few were chosen, that I was not among that year’s few, and that Bowdoin’s good Wishes—or perhaps, in those remote days, it may have said Bowdoin’s prayers—would follow me to any more daring institution that might see fit to admit me. There was some mention of Bowdoin’s strong preference for young men who had just completed their secondary education; but the Dean was too honest a man to let it go at that, so there was also some mention of Bowdoin’s need to maintain standards, and of the undistinguished grades I had received at another college I had attended. I was very unhappy about the letter; I strongly felt that the college’s “approach” ought to have been less conservative; I felt —as Mr. Kaghan and his friends do— that the good things of life should be distributed as freely to those who have not earned them as to those who have earned them; I felt, in a word, as the foolish always feel when their appetites run up against the hard and unpalatable truths of conservative wisdom.