Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1920 [PAGE 135]

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1918]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

131

Department of Ophthalmology Edward Vail Lapham Brown, Professor of Ophthalmology and Head of the Department A. Beulah Cushman, Assistant in Ophthalmology Margaret Amerton Heath, Refractionist Department of Dermatology Francis Eugene Senear, Instructor in Dermatology Department of Hygiene and Medical Jurisprudence Elmer DeWitt Brothers, Lecturer in Medical Jurisprudence Matthew Mills, Alternate Lecturer in Medical Jurisprudence P R E S I D E N T JAMES'S RESIGNATION (25) I beg to submit the following letter addressed to the Board of Trustees: September 3, 1918

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I beg to submit, herewith, my resignation as President of the University of Illinois, to take effect immediately. I thank you most heartily for the opportunities you have given me to serve the people of my native state and country in this important position. The University of Illinois is destined to be one of the greatest universities of the world, and we who have been privileged to share in its creation and development may well consider ourselves fortunate. All that we have thus far done, it is true, is only a faint shadow of what our successors will accomplish, but for my part, I am proud and happy that I have been permitted some small share in the laying of these foundations during the fourteen years. I have tried to serve you and the state to the best of my ability. I have only to regret my own mistakes and shortcomings. You have ever upheld my hands and strengthened my will for all good things, and for this I feel tov/ard this Board a sense of profound gratitude. Without the constant aid and support of my colleagues in the faculty, I could have done nothing at all, and I am sure the rest of them will join with me in recognizing, especially, the self-sacrificing and generous spirit, the untiring industry, the skill and intelligence, of the Vice-President of the University, Dr. David Kinley, who has at all times, cheerfully assumed more than his fair share of the administrative duties of the institution. Without his encouragement and assistance I should, ere this, have broken down under the burdens of this office. In the world conflict in which our beloved country finds itself involved, I have felt from the beginning that I ought to be doing my part in a more direct way to help win for us and for our Allies a speedy and decisive victory. It has been for me a cause of life-long regret that owing to my youth I could not share actively in the great conflict for the preservation of the Union, that Union which my ancestors helped to build and to protect. I could not go down to my (grave in peace if I had not tried to the best of my ability to get into this greater war for world democracy and humanity. I have not hitherto felt, however, that it was possible to adjust matters so that I should feel free to go. That time has now come.