State

miles from the center of Tokyo. On the site are two large, factory- type buildings which are to be ren¬ ovated and remodeled to serve as a classroom building and an athletic center. Plans for a university church and a library have been drawn. In many ways the proposed in¬ ternational Christian university will be a unique and distinctive institution, so far as Japan is con¬ cerned. It will be primarily a grad¬ uate institution, although for pur¬ poses of demonstration and as a laboratory for teacher training, a small college of liberal arts will be organized. It will be professional in that its graduate schools will seek to prepare youth for specific tasks in their country’s rehabilita¬ tion. The first units planned are graduate schools of education, so¬ cial work and citizenship and pub¬ lic affairs, whose graduates will help fill the need for teachers, wel¬ fare workers and government officials trained in the democratic and Christian tradition. The urgency of the need for such leadership in postwar Japan cannot be understood without a comprehension of the complexity of Japan's social and economic sit¬ uation. In a country which is about the size of the State of Montana, is crowded a population of about 80,000,000. The density of popula¬ tion. the lack of sufficient arable land on which to raise its food, the wholesale destruction of industries and the upheaval in social and re¬ ligious life have created problems of such proportions that only the best-trained educators, social work¬ ers and administrators can cope with them. The new university hopes to meet in a measure the need for such enlightened leadership. To Raise $10,000,000 To create and endow the uni¬ versity, an American board, the Japan International Christian Uni¬ versity Foundation, has undertaken the raising of $10,000,000 in two years. As chairman of this under¬ taking. former Ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew has asked a dozen citizens throughout this country and Canada to cull to¬ gether Christian laymen and clergy of their regions and plan a canvass for funds. As chairman for the Southeastern Atlantic States. Grew has designated Fleet Admiral Wil¬ liam F. Halsey, of Charlottesville. Thus in three and a half years the idea of Richmond's Dr Mac- Lean has grown into a flourishing reality. During 1950 and 1951 the effort to raise the needed funds will be carried on in the United States and Canada, with the period be¬ tween Easter and Pentecost 1950, as the intensive weeks. Coinci- dently with this program, officers of the university will recruit and indoctrinate its faculty, which will be made up of Japanese. Ameri¬ can and European scholars. While Dr. MacLean’s plan to re¬ build the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been metamorphosed, the spirit of his idea lives. The creation of a university that through its influence will help heal the social wounds of Japan will, in Dr. MacLean's words, still be "a Christian gesture which would impress the pagan world and would also dramatize in a strik¬ ing way the Spirit of Christ, who taught his followers to forgive and to love their enemies." THE HERMIT OF THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP MANY strange stories have been told about that vast, trackless wilderness up in northeastern North Carolina, parts of which have never been fully ex¬ plored. but few are quite as weird as the story of the hermit of the Great Dismal Swamp. For years he lived all alone in a tree-top. back in the depths of this desolate wasteland of briars and black bears, and when he died in 1912 he carried the secret of his solitary way of life with him. No one but the Italian Consul at Norfolk, Va., 37 years ago knew his name or why he chose to live in exile far from friends and native countrymen. And when he died on November 30. 1912. his passing marked the end of one of the most unusual and interesting characters this section has ever known. Why he left Italy many years before and came to the United States only to disappear in the great Dismal Swamp no one will ever know. With only a couple of faithful coon dogs as companions this strange recluse sought out one of the wildest, least-known parts of the swamp to make his home. At THE STATE. DtCCMBCP 17. 1949 night he slept in a couch-like bed strung high up between two tower¬ ing cypress trees protected from the sun and rain by an old piece of tin roofing. By day he did odd jobs in the countryside for miles around, walking sometimes as far as Portsmouth. Va.. for a day's work. He could speak but little English but whenever curious vis¬ itors paid a visit to his strange place of abode he was always cordial and cheerful. Few people, however, dared venture that far back into the almost impenetrable swamp where he lived. Hunters, trappers and lumbermen passed that way occasionally and as the years went by the hermit of the great Dismal Swamp became al¬ most a legendary character. Per¬ fectly harmless though he was. some said he possessed supernatur¬ al powers; could cast strange spells on hunting dogs and the wild game which the swamp abounded 40 or 50 years ago. One Sunday afternoon early in December, 1912, a lumberman from Portsmouth. Va., who had just acquired a large tract of land back in the swamp near where the hermit had his home, found his lifeless body in a clump of reeds no great distance from the George Washington Highway on the Dis¬ mal Swamp canal bank. He was at¬ tracted to the spot by two large and excited coon dogs who almost talked him in to following them, he said. All the hermit possessed other than his swinging bower in the tree-tops was three pocket knives and $1.53 cents in small change. The Italian Government, through its Consul at Norfolk. Va.. pro¬ vided for his funeral, and the her¬ mit of the great Dismal Swamp went to his grave with the secret of his strange and solitary life left unsolved. Some said that he had been a man of wealth and noble birth in Italy who had been forced to flee for his life to escape from political enemies. Those who saw him from time to time during the years he lived in exile in the Dismal Swamp said he was tall, handsome and ob¬ viously a cultured and well-edu¬ cated gentleman when he first took up his strange residence back in the swamp. He spoke little English bur had a polished politeness that caused many to wonder why he had chosen to lose himself in this Dismal swampland. No one ever found out. Earl Dean. 7