Constructive apronstrings

Rare as they
may be, they
can throttle
the silly to
a standstill.

    At Groton he bucked
    the spartan regime
    of its headmaster.
    Endicott Peabody
    told his mother to
    take him away since
    he would never make
    a Groton boy out of
    him. His mother re-
    plied she had not
    sent Dean there to
    be made into a Grot-
    on boy but to be ed-
    ucated, and she sug-
    gested Peabody should
    start doing so.

Noel Annan
Provost of King's College
Vice-Chancellor of University College

Dean of the Cold War
  A review of
  James Chace, Acheson:
  The Secretary of State
  who Created the American
  World
The New York Review of Books
November 19, 1998©