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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE judgment, the most important single criterion to be used was character.109 He was fond of telling students that it was not the prize which they obtained in life which counts, but rather the race which they run. Time and again he argued that the main objective of Gettysburg College was to help produce Christian gentlemen. "When you scratch the skin of a Gettysburg man" he said, "you find underneath a gentleman."110 His method of accomplishing his end, he often said, was to lead students rather than to drive them. He much preferred to give those of his "boys" who needed it a good "talking to" rather than resort to established disciplinary procedures. "It has always been my contention that a good talking," he told a Gettysburg Times reporter in 1928, "far surpasses a lambasting in the handling of students." Many a young man experienced this aspect of the Hanson style by being summoned into the presidential office or by being stopped somewhere on the campus, only to be partially enfolded by a strong presidential arm and to be reassured about his basic worth as a person. "There is not one of us who has not known at some time the aid of his helping hand," wrote a Gettysburgian reporter in the issue of September 19,1930. "His warm smile, the heavy clasp of his hand, the understanding of his eyes are unforgettable." In at least one famous respect, the Hanson style was apparently much firmer. In 1931 he told the board of trustees that his careful review of student life had convinced him that most of its evils stemmed from three sources. "Two years ago I placed before the freshman class," he continued, "what I termed the 'three noes' of a Gettysburg College student;" he might have said, of a Gettysburg gentleman. Every entering student was now required to pledge himself while in College to avoid cheating, drinking, and immorality. The uniform penalty for disobedience, he told the trustees, was expulsion. On this subject the College had adopted an "uncompromising attitude." The student pledge, he was happy to report, 109One of his four major objectives, he told the trustees in June 1925, was to blend "culture and character on our campus....Every possible means is being used for the development of the character of the boys." In an address before the national convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution in April 1936, he asked whether we are "living in an age when ships of steel are commanded by men of wood." Departing somewhat at least from Adam Smith, he insisted that "the wealth of a nation is not measured by fertile fields, the roar of machinery, or the crowded highways, but by the character of its citizens." Gettysburg Times, April 24, 1936. noSee, for example, the Gettysburgian for September 26, 1923. 48