Sidney Edward Mezes

When the career of such men as Sidney Edward Mezes is ended, neighbors and fellow-citizens often learn with astonishment how notable had been the personality whose presence in the community they had scarcely realized. In his presidency of two great educational institutions, Dr. Mezes met what is perhaps the supreme test; the taking up of a task relinquished by men of mark. His predecessor in the University of Texas had been David H. Houston, afterward Secretary of the United States Treasury and president of the Mutual Life; his predecessor in the College of the City of New York was our fellow-Centurion, Dr. Finley. Possibly the highest tribute to the success of the new incumbent in those places was the admiring recognition of his subsequent achievement by the eminent teachers and administrators whom he had succeeded.

William James, while paying a high tribute to the teaching of Mezes in philosophy, could not refrain from adding that he was conspicuously “a gentleman and man of the world.” His friend and successor in the Texas University described, not without a touch of humor, how in “a somewhat rural community” this college president—in ancestry “partly Spanish” and “somewhat addicted to multi-colored ties and vests,” so shy as “never to become quite a ‘free mixer’”—captured not only the respect but the affection of his fellow-townsmen. His colleagues at New York have stressed his quickness of decision, his “mixture of tactfulness and firmness,” yet his “scrupulous fair-mindedness.” These qualities played a part on a larger stage at the ending of the war. It is perhaps not generally known to his fellow-Centurions that Dr. Mezes was organizer and chief of the bureau of experts chosen by the government to assist the American delegation, at the Peace Conference of 1919, in reaching decisions on prospective changes in the political map of Europe. The results of the conference in that regard have provided matter for abundant controversy. In the course of post-war history it has often seemed that bad mistakes were made—with the “Polish corridor,” for instance, or with Austria’s industrial isolation. But the Versailles Treaty was a bundle of inevitable compromises. It may be that later history will give more cordial recognition to the political blunders which were prevented by the American delegation than to those in which it acquiesced.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1932 Century Association Yearbook