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A companionship and guardianship not unlike this, used to exist in the Greek-letter society to which I once belonged. He of course abides by the rules and regulations of the order. It is a time of freedom in one sense, but it is a freedom closely guarded, and there is rigid discipline here as in practically all other departments of life in Germany.
I mean, were you ever initiated into full brotherhood by a Greek-letter society with the aid of a baseball bat, a sausage-making machine, a stick of dynamite and a corn-sheller? What's that? You say you belong to the Up-to-Date Wood-choppers and have taken the josh degree in the Noble Order of Prong-Horned Wapiti? Forget it. Those aren't initiations. They are rest cures.
This was the great struggle between the Faculty and the students over the establishment of Greek-letter societies, a contest which became so bitter that not only the town but the State Legislature was involved. A large number of students were expelled, and eventually the whole relationship between students and Faculty was placed upon a different basis.
In the German universities the place of athletics and Greek-letter fraternities, as a leisure-class scholarly occupation, has in some measure been supplied by a skilled and graded inebriety and a perfunctory duelling.
Meanwhile another society, Alpha Delta Phi, had submitted a constitution to the Faculty for approval; but owing to the press of other matters it was not considered and the chapter was organized with no action by the authorities. The greater number of the students in the University thus became members of the three Greek-letter fraternities.
We're so immeasurably ahead of everything with a Greek-letter name that every Freshman of taste and discrimination turns down everything else and waits until we crook our little finger at him.
In any given semester the number of students in one of these corps varies from as few as ten, to as many as twenty-five, depending, much as do our Greek-letter societies and college clubs, upon the number of available men coming up to the university. Certain corps are composed almost exclusively of noblemen, but none is distinctly a rich man's club.
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