103 B o o k R e v i e w s / C o m p t e s R e n d u s This is a lively history, easy reading throughout, and occasionally colourful. The approach is primarily descriptive, but does offer interpretation and some evaluative comments. The coverage of the last few years seems the least satisfying, appearing rather thin. Perhaps this is an inevitable reaction to an account of recent events in which the reader was intimately involved. More attention to the role of staff in the 25 years since AUCC has had a Secretariat would have been welcome. The organization has been profoundly influenced by the style and abilities of its executive officers. Yet the difficulty of so doing is easy to recognize: the history includes events so recent that most of the players are still around. Careful reading is somewhat frustrated by the frequent absence of precise dates when certain things occured. I found myself frequently backtracking to surmise what the year was. Only a couple of minor inaccuracies are apparent: the reference to Ryerson becoming a university (p. 150), and the implication that all provinces base grants strictly on enrolment (p. 205). It is a stimulating account, and I commend it highly to all those interested in relations among universities, and between them and government. G. Grant Clarke Council of Ontario Universities Frederick Gibson, Queen's University, Vol. II1917-1961, To Serve And Yet Be Free. McGill-Queen's University Press 1983, pp. xvii + 518. $49.50. The first volume of the new history of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, was published in 1978. It was written by Hilda Neatby and covered the years 1841 - 1917. As the Preface to Volume I relates, it was thought to be a distinct advantage that Dr. Neatby had no previous connection with the university and would be able 'to bring to the writing of its history an independent judgment and a fresh view'. Unfortunately Hilda Neatby died in 1975, leaving a first volume essentially complete, and draft materials for a projected second volume. Professors Frederick Gibson and Roger Graham of the department of History undertook to see the Neatby volume through the press, and by reason of professional skill and experience, Gibson was then the obvious choice to be the author of the second volume. This book traces the story of the university from the middle of the first World War to the end of the principalship of W.A. Mackintosh, that is, to 1961. As Gibson himself tells us in his Preface, the obvious difference between Neatby and himself is that he was born practically on campus, grew up in its ambiance, took his bachelor's and master's degrees in the department of History and, after further graduate study at Harvard and a few years' employment in the Public Archives of Canada, returned to Queen's in 1952. He has thus completed over thirty years in the service of the university. Nevertheless he has 104 Book R e v i e w s / C o m p t e s R e n d u s attempted with a remarkable degree of success to emulate Neatby's detached judgment, and the second volume is, like the first, by no means without its moments of candour. The division of the two volumes in the middle of World War I, presumably the consequence of Neatby's much-regretted illness and death, is unfortunate in that in neither volume is the epoch-making character of that event given the prominence it deserves. It is presented more as a time of administrative and financial crisis for Queen's University than 'the time of the breaking of nations'. On the other hand, the post-war reconstruction plans of the university's intellectual leaders, Deans J.C. Connell of Medicine, A.L. Clarke of Applied Science and O.D. Skelton of Arts, are deservedly given full and careful consideration. Despite the poverty and near-destitution of the twenties and thirties, these men were already preparing for the university's renewal in the 1950's. At the same time, Adam Shortt, former professor of Political Science and former head of the Civil Service Commission, was continuing at the Public Archives of Canada to strengthen the Queen's tradition of supplying the Federal Government with its top-level servants and advisers. Skelton himself left Queen's to become the under-secretary of state for external affairs in 1925, but he continued, as Gibson makes very clear, to be closely concerned for the university, and greatly influenced its policies. Queen's was not overly fortunate in its choice of principals until the appointment of W.A. Mackintosh, 1951-1961; R.C. Wallace, 1936-1951, though Gibson does his best to make him interesting, remains sadly unimpressive. However, that may be largely due to the fact that World War II and especially the immediate post-war years were times of immense difficulty for the university. Mackintosh himself recalled the post-war period as 'five years of frantic improvising to meet the emergency needs of the ex-service students', and J.A. Corry 'remembered teaching for thirty months running with scarcely more than a week's break between terms'. Men of the calibre of Mackintosh and Corry (who also became an outstanding principal, 1961-1968) made it possible for Queen's to survive into the more constructive years of the fifties and to prepare for the expansive, turbulent sixties. The extraordinary story is that of William Everett McNeill. He was an associate professor of English who in 1919 was promised a full professorship and the leadership of the department. But the Trustees overrode the academic recommendations and removed him from his teaching position and made him University Registrar. As McNeill recorded this incident: 'The T r u s t e e s . . .thought I was good enough to be a c l e r k . . . For ten years I could hardly enter the Arts Building without tears'. But then he became University Treasurer and Vice-Principal and completely dominated the financial policy of the institution until the 1950's. By his narrow-minded insistence on saving money and building up reserves at a time when the university should have been spending freely, even at the risk of running into debt, he delayed developments at Queen's for at least two decades. 'As it was in Canada,' writes Gibson, 'so it was at Queen's. There was not enough money to do the things that a university ought to have been doing. The distinc- 105 Book R e v i e w s / C o m p t e s R e n d u s tive feature of Queen's was that, under the influence of McNeill, and in pursuit of financial security, university policy and administration made bad times worse' (p. 271). Ironically, it was McNeill who provided that his tombstone should bear Tennyson's words: 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not t o yield', and thus supplied the title of the first volume of the Queen's history. Alive or dead, for good and ill, W.E. McNeill was very much part of the university's tradition. One of the best chapters in the book is the account of Queen's during the Cold War, and the way in which the university reacted to attacks upon two very different colleagues accused of communist sympathies. In one case, the charge was of treasonable disclosure of military secrets. Because the university obviously meant to treat both men with equity and to safeguard their personal liberties with equal justice, but inadvertently ended up treating one man fairly and the other man repressively and stultifyingly, the chapter raises profound questions about the conflict of academic freedom and institutional loyalties. One could have wished that Professor Gibson might have probed those issues rather more deeply. This second volume of the history covers the years 1917-1961 .Why the author stopped short of the stimulating Corry years, when all universities expanded the frontiers of their minds, and why he did not tell the story of the years of student unrest, when all universities were in turmoil, we are not informed. There are many stories of student rowdiness and hooliganism; one is almost tempted to wonder whether the student revolt of the sixties was not so noticeable at Queen's as at other more sober institutions. It may be that Professor Gibson intends to write a third volume. Professor Gibson's book is, as one would have expected of him, meticulous in its scholarship, broad-minded in its interests, easy and unobtrusive in its language. The illustrations are well chosen, and the McGill-Queen's Press is to be congratulated on the appearance and style of the volume. Queen's has every reason to be proud of its new history. Stanley B. Frost McGill University Burton R. Clark, The Higher Education System; Academic Organization in Cross-National Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, 315 Pages The purpose of this book is to "set forth the basic elements of the higher education system, as seen from an organizational perspective; and to show how those features vary across nations, with fateful effects". The elements used to accomplish this purpose are work, belief, and authority while the nations (in order of index references) are principally the United States, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Japan, Italy and Sweden. The selection of the nations is based upon the places "where the best research has been