Chapter 2Two weeks after Smith received his Bachelor of Arts degree, Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist; and before the autumn war was common throughout Europe. It was a topic of ongoing interest among the older students; They wondered what role America would ultimately play, and they were pleasantly uncertain about their own future.
But before John Smith lay the future bright and sure and unchanging. He didn't see it as a flow of events and changes and possibilities, but as an area ahead that awaited exploration. He viewed it as the great university library, to which new wings could be built, new books added, and old ones removed, while its true nature remained essentially unchanged. He saw the future in the institution to which he was commit
