THE N-VINCE FURLIC LIBRAR ASTOS, LENOX 4 & 1902 The Holy Cross Purple. THE HOLY CROSS PURPLE is a Literary Magazine, published at Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass. Its aim is to cultivate a high literary spirit among the students by exercising them in both critical and creative composition. It serves also as a bond between the Alumni and their Alma Mater, chronicling their successes and telling briefly the important happenings of college life. Subscription: One dollar a year, payable in advance; single copies, 15 cents. THE HOLY CROSS PURPLE is issued every month, excepting August and September. Entered at the Post Office at Worcester, Mass., as second-class mail matter. BOARD OF Editors. Editor-in Chief: JOHN E. McTIGUE, 'oo. THE NEW YORK ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. THE WORCESTER COUNTY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION. On Tuesday, January 22d, was held in the Bay State House the third and most successful meeting of the Worcester County Alumni Association. One hundred graduates from the city of Worcester and the surrounding towns were present. From Boston, Springfield and other cities came other alumni, attracted by the reputation of the principal speakers, Mgr. Conaty, '69, J. B. Carroll, '78, and Dr. Francis J. Barnes, '85, of Boston College. The entire senior class attended in cap and gown, and helped to enliven the evening's entertainment by their class songs and cheers. Toward the end of the banquet, Rev. John F. Redican, '78, of Leicester, as president of the association, welcomed the guests and extended the hand of fellowship from the alumni to the undergraduates, after which he introduced John B. Ratigan, '79, as toastmaster. John B. Ratigan. In opening the exercises, Mr. Ratigan said: "We meet here to-night as graduates of Holy Cross College, a college that boasts a full collegiate grade, inferior to none in its standard of scholarship, yet aiming directly and avowedly to promote those moral and religious ends which Christianity sets forth as the highest. In its methods and teachings it is broad, reverent, devout and thorough. It is free from pietistic cant, but its atmosphere has the tone and tonic of an earnest, spiritual life. It regards the moral faculties as susceptible of culture and as needing it no less than the intellectual faculties, and does not fail to provide the means for such culture. "Viewed in any comprehensive way, education must relate to the whole man. It must include a well trained body, a thoroughly disciplined mind and a symmetrically developed moral nature. Education is the complete and harmonious culture of all the powers of the soul in their unity. It is never narrow or partial, some powers abnormally stimulated and others dwarfed by neglect, but proportionate and symmetrical according to some definite standard of development and some clearly perceived ideal. To secure such an education there must be employed only those means adapted to produce that mental and moral culture upon which character depends. Instrumentalities which do not secure this, whatever they may be, or however admirably they may be fitted for other ends, come short of the requirements. This is the distinctive end and object of all Catholic colleges. They have no other mission. They were born of this idea. So deep-seated was the idea that religion and education went hand in hand, that all the higher institutions of learning and even the common schools of New England were founded on a religious basis. Harvard university, as its motto ever declares, was founded 'Christo et ecclesiæ. History teaches no plainer lessons than this, that whoever would control the character of the people must control their education. "While reading an interesting work, a few evenings ago, I was surprised to learn that in Austria at one time the proportion of Catholics to Protestants was only one to twenty-nine, but in one generation Austria was converted to Catholicism, and how? Simply by allowing the Jesuits to obtain control of the universities. it was in Poland. In the same way the Jesuits recovered to the church the larger part of Eu So rope at a time when it seemed lost forever. They gained control of the higher departments of education, both public and private. At one period they had 600 colleges under their direction. They were not so much a preaching order as a teaching order, and by educating minds they governed communities and nations. "Such facts cannot be disregarded. If a broad and liberal Christianity, the true source of all permanent civilization, is to maintain her power in our land, we must never forget that of all possible agencies for elevating, purifying and moulding society, the Catholic college is one of the most potent. Nothing can take its place. The necessity of building up in our land such Catholic institutions, to save it, not from ignorance, but from immorality and irreligion, is imperative." Mgr. Conaty, '69. Mr. Ratigan then introduced Rt. Rev. Monsignor Thomas J. Conaty, '69, president of the Catholic university, who discussed the question of higher education from the standpoint of a priest. When Mgr. Conaty's name was mentioned the class of 1900 arose and gave him the college cheer. CATHOLIC COLLEGE IDEALS. After expressing his pleasure at meeting so many Holy Cross "boys," Mgr. Conaty proceeded to discuss college interests. He said: "The college is called upon to do more to-day than it did for us. The world is demanding more from college men than it demanded from us. Conditions are different, and the student must |