The first contact between JJ and the Board is in the context of the Fellowship examinations, and around this time the 'Fellowship by examination' procedure was coming under scrutiny. The examinations covered pure and applied maths, experimental physics, mental and moral science, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Apparently candidates had to try to cover the whole ground, and those who were able to pick up some marks in areas outside their specialist fields had the advantage. The exam favoured broad-spectrum scholars.

JJ sat for the examination in 1911, 1912 and 1913, and succeeded in 1913. It was apparently the done thing to keep trying. In 1911 there were 8 candidates, dates of birth ranging from 1869 to 1890, JJ being the youngest. in 1912 and 1913 there were 6 candidates. Other candidates around this time were AA Luce, Newport White and JM ('Max') Henry.

The feeling of the Board at the time is summarised in a letter from the then Provost Anthony Traill (being ill in bed), urging that the Board '...give notice now that no examination for Fellowship will be held next year 1914... it is absolutely necessary to put a stop to the congestion of non-tutor Fellows...'.

There had been concern on this matter among the Junior Fellows, who in March 1913 had held a series of meetings at which concern was expressed at the excessive number of new Fellows coming in via the examination process. They wanted to get Senior Fellows to retire, and to reform the election process toward dependence on published work. There was also concern that the flow inwards via the examination process would be unrelated to the nature of the specialist teaching requirements: broadly speaking, too much classics and not enough science.

On May 19 1913 JJ was elected a Junior Fellow, on the basis of attaining 626 marks out of a possible 800. He entered a community in which he could not help becoming aware of a mismatch between his qualifications in classics and the needs of the modernisation process.

On May 24 there was a proposal from the Junior Fellows (JFs) to reduce the pensions of the Senior Fellows, which was supported by Traill, but defeated. The JFs were on a small basic retainer supplemented by additional fees for such jobs as they could pick up, like tutoring. The Board then voted to restrict the supply of JFs by not holding exams in 1914 and 1916. Then on May 31 1913 a meeting of JFs agreed to '...give powers to the Board occasionally to elect a Fellow without previous examination, provided that every such election be subject to the consent of the JFs..'.

The Board was run by the Senior Fellows, supplemented by 2 representatives of the JF and 2 of the non-Fellow Professors. There was ongoing tension between this gerontocracy and the JFs. College politics in this framework was slow and frustrating. JJ in his first decade paid little attention to it, though traces of his influence are to be found in occasional progressive causes.

On May 31 1913 JJ was appointed to be a non-tutor examiner, and then on June 21 he was appointed to lecture the Indian Civil Service candidates on Ancient History. In the 1913-14 Calendar JJ appears at the end of the list of members of the Classics School Committee.

On October 18 1913 the question arose of having a co-operative food store in the College. JJ undoubtedly had a hand in this; I expand on this episode in the Co-operative Movement narrative, where it emerges that Traill played a very positive supportive role.

JJ had by this time published his 'Civil War in Ulster'; it is perhaps surprising that no echo of this reaches the Board.

Occasionally I have noted an item of interest which is of no direct relevance to JJ, except in setting the stage as regards the political background in the College. In this spirit, is is perhaps noteworthy that on Jan 17 1914 the Board held out against the Church of Ireland Hierarchy for the right to use the College Chapel as they saw fit, and to stand over their use of the Chapel for Presbyterian worship, in a liberal ecumenical spirit.

On March 21 1914 there was a concern over the ratio of Mathematics to Classics people among the Fellows. JJ being a Classics Fellow, with a feel for the politics of the real world, was undoubtedly aware of this, and it must have been included among his motivations to change direction. On June 6 1914 JJ '...applied for leave of absence from College for the next academic year, having been elected to a Travelling Fellowship which involves a journey round the world during the space of about a year..'.

This was granted, and they agreed not to reduce his salary in his absence. This was the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship, which I treat in a separate narrative, covering four decades of contact.

On August 12 1914 the Board held a special meeting to provide for volunteers to join the British armed forces. They also agreed to allow the National Volunteers to practice signalling in the College Park (not on Sundays!).

On November 14 the Board suppressed the Gaelic Society; there was an angry exchange of letters, subsequently published in the Press. There was to have been a Thomas Davis Centenary meeting on Nov 17, addressed among others by one PH Pearse, whose public stand against military recruiting was disapproved of by the Vice-Provost JP Mahaffey ('I will not allow traitorous views..').

The last of the Fellows elected by examination were JM Henry 1914 and F la Touche Godfrey in 1915. In June 1915 Professor Joly introduced new Fellowship rules, which after much amendment were carried on June 26. On the same day Joly was authorised to organise to use the Engineering Workshops during the vacations for the production of munitions. There is continuing concern over JF emoluments and tutorial fees, including actual hardship cases in November and December.

Shortly before the Rising, on March 7 1916, JJ is mentioned as having put in an application that the Bursar should deal with the DU Co-op for groceries, and this was referred to the Bursar's discretion. The Co-op is clearly high on his current agenda, and there is evidence elsewhere that he regarded it as a pilot project in economic organisation. He wrote up the experience in an article in 'Better Business', the quarterly journal of the Co-operative Reference Library, Plunkett House, entitled 'The Trinity Co-op, 1913-1921 and after, with a forward by AE.

Post-Rising on May 8 they passed a vote of thanks to the Officers Training Corps (OTC) for their role in the defence of the College, and on May 13 they appreciated the good conduct of the troops quartered in the College. Then, back to normal business, on June 10 JJ was added to the Court of Examiners for Moderatorship in History and Political Science (fee 4 gns). On the strength of the Albert Kahn Fellowship experience he was beginning to establish himself in line to be associated with the new School of Political Economy and Commerce.

On July 1 1916 Sir Edward Carson, the Larne gun-runner who, in what Asquith called a 'treasonable conspiracy', initiated the process which made the 1916 Rising possible, and who was MP at Westminster for Dublin University, presented a silver cup to the OTC for their services in 1916. The ironies embedded in this are manifold.

Meanwhile in the Junior Fellows meetings the issue of the reform of the tutorial system again emerged, along with a proposal to support the eligibility of professors to the Council of the Senate. The antiquated Constitution gave full powers to the Senior Fellows, and there were increasingly Professors who had been recruited on a specialist basis without going through the Fellowship procedure.

The next JJ mention is on April 21 1917, when he was appointed assistant to Dr WA Goligher, who from 1909 had been Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology. His Indian Civil Service role was discontinued. Professor Goligher was a representative on the Board of the Junior Fellows. Then on July 4 1917 the Board appointed a committee to examine a proposal from JJ that the 'skips' (ie College servants who kept the students' rooms clean etc) should be paid directly, regularly and adequately by the College, rather than irregularly and inadequately by the students themselves, as had been the case. The committee was high-powered and the reform was implemented. JJ, with this and the co-op, was getting a bit of a reputation for social concern, perhaps even 'enfant terrible'.

On November 24 1917 JJ was at last appointed a tutor, in advance of AA Luce who was at the front, and this caused some concern regarding seniority rules. He retained his post with Goligher when it came up for renewal in April 1918. There were votes against renewal, from Vice-Provost TT Gray, Senior Dean Tarleton and Auditor Cathcart, evidence of a conservative caucus rendered uneasy by the social concerns of this upstart Home Ruler. Gray's status as a reactionary is confirmed by his tooth and nail opposition to the election to Fellowship of Joly, hitherto on the Board as the representative of the professors. Gray invoked statute and precedent, and wanted a roll-call vote of JFs. In the end however Joly was elected Fellow on Feb 8 1919.

To get a feel for the significance of Joly in this context, it is worth noting that he had been instrumental in the RDS in initiating the Boyle Medal as an award for scientific esteem in Ireland.

No echoes of the work of the Junior Fellows on tutorial reform however appear at Board level, despite unanimous support at the lower level. The Board at this time seems to have been obsessed with the Joly question.

I have an undated letter from Mahaffey to JJ, and I am going to insert it here, in the hopes that it may perhaps clarify itself in the light of further work in the political thread, perhaps in the context of the 1917 Irish Convention, to which JJ had an input, being then associated with AE, James Douglas and others in an attempt to deal politically with the aftermath of the 1916 Rising.

It reads: 'I sent you back your paper of suggestions, which I think excellent, but it is longer than it should be, and not put as attractively as it might be. But it is hardly to be improved by small corrections. But I should have expected in the opening sentence something like this: 'to provide for the competent verdict of experts on all public questions...and to bring it home to every citizen that the non-political aspects of most questions (now neglected) are more important than the political..'.

While Mahaffey, now Provost, was ill, Gray as vice-provost tried to defer discussion of post-war salary increases until his recovery. He was over-ruled by a Visitors Report, which was accepted on June 7 1919.

On June 12 1919 D Bernard was appointed Provost, on foot of a letter from the Chief Secretary to the Vice Chancellor conveying the King's approval of the VC's appointment. I note this because it foreshadows the problems of the relationship between the College and the State under the new regime post 1921.

On July 5 JJ was re-appointed as Goligher's assistant. The JFs were very much at the mercy of the Board with these annual appointments. On December 20 Jean Montgomery was appointed Lady Superintendent of the Kitchen; this was part of a process in which JJ had a hand, in that the organising of a proper canteen serving a midday meal to students had arisen from the co-op initiative. JJ by now was Chairman of the DU Co-operative Society. On January 10 1920 the Committee on Skips reported (see above) and the report was accepted. On Feb 20 1920 Jean Montgomery was permitted to become a member of the co-op; my guess is that JJ wanted her on the Committee. Also on that day JJ was appointed to examine for Scholarship.

Junior Fellows, with JJ's active support, during this period were still concerned about the Fellowship election procedure, campaigning to allow a procedure for recruiting lecturers to Fellowship on the basis of published work.

During this period JJ was grappling with the problem of how to shed the burden of the classics, and get into economics, where his Albert Kahn experience and his concern for the co-operative movement was clearly pointing. The trouble is that there was no such thing as economics academically recognised. There was, according to the Calendar, Legal and Political Science, Agriculture, History and Political Science, Economic History. There was an emerging demand for a School of Commerce. Bastable was in the lead, and was supportive of the co-operative initiative in this context, serving as Chairman for a time.

There was however a Diploma in Economics and Commercial Knowledge, which was run by Bastable and seems to have contained degree-level material: Marshall, Jevons, the Webbs, Bagehot; statistics, banking, railways, insurance, agriculture.

In this context the Bastable initiative was a good target for JJ's ambitions, but he was constrained by his background, and seems to have been regarded academically as somewhat of a 'jack of all trades' thanks to his 'Fellowship by examination' status; for example in 1919-20 he was examining in psychology.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999