During George Bush's years at Andover, Feuss, his headmaster, wrote an authorized biography of
Calvin Coolidge, the late U.S. President. This work was celebrated in jest as a champion specimenof unwholesome flattery. In other books, also about the blue bloods, Fuess was simply given the
family papers and designated the chief liar for the `` Bostonian Race. ''
Both the Cushing and Coolidge families had made their fortunes in opium trafficking. Bush's
headmaster named his son John Cuskingpin who had made the Cushings rich. @s1@s5 hing Fuess, perhaps after the fabled nineteenth-century dope
Headmaster Fuess used to say to his staff, I came to power with Hitler and Mussolini. ''@s1@s6 This was not merely a pleasantry, referring to his appointment the year Hitler took over Germany. In his 1939 memoirs, Headmaster Fuess expressed the philosophy which must guide the education of the well-born young gentlemen under his care: Our declining birth rate ... may perhaps indicate a step towards national deterioration. Among the so-called upper and leisure classes, noticeably among the university group, the present birth rate is strikingly low. Among the Slavonic and Latin immigrants, on the other hand, it is relatively high.We seem thus to be letting the best blood thin out and disappear; while at the same time our humanitarian efforts for the preservation of the less fit, those who for some reason are crippled and incapacitated, are being greatly stimulated. The effect on the race will not become apparent for some generations and certainly cannot now be accurately predicted; but the phenomenon must be mentioned if you are to have a true picture of what is going on in the United States.@s1@s7 Would George Bush adopt this anti-Christian outlook as his own? One can never know for sure how a young person will respond to the doctrines of his elders, no matter how cleverly presented. There is a much higher degree of certainty that he will conform to criminal expectations, however, if the student is broughtto get ahead. At Andover, this was where the Secret Societies came in. to practice cruelty against other youngsters, and to degrade himself in order The Secret Societies Nothing like Andover's secret societies existed at any other American school. What were they all about? Bush's friend Fitzhugh Greene wrote in 1989: Robert L. Tim '' Ireland, Bush's longtime supporter [and Brown Brothers Harriman partner], who
later served on the Andover board of trustees with him, said he believed [Bush] had been in AUV.
What's that? I asked.Can't tell you, '' laughed Ireland. It's secret! '' Both at Andover and Yale,such groups only bring in a small percentage of the total enrollment in any class. That's a bit cruel (^)
to those who don't make AU[V] or `Bones,' '' conceded Ireland.@s1@s8
A retired teacher, who was an adviser to one of the groups, cautiously disclosed in his bicentennialhistory of Andover, some aspects of the secret societies. The reader should keep in mind that this
account was published by the school, to celebrate itself:
A charming account of the early days of K.O.A, the oldest of the Societies, was prepared by Jack
[i.e. Claude Moore] Fuess, a member of the organization, on the occasion of their Fiftieth
Anniversary. The Society was founded in ... 1874.... [A] major concern of the membership was the initiation ceremony. In K.O.A. the ceremony
involved visiting one of the local cemeteries at midnight, various kinds of tortures, running the
gauntlet--though the novice was apparently punched rather than paddled, being baptized in a water
tank, being hoisted in the air by a pulley, and finally being placed in a coffin, where he was cross-
examined by the members.... K.O.A. was able to hold the loyalty of its members over the years to