absurdities and worse, done in their name; only if the numbers of those playing the game and those exercising only their lungs and throats from the bleachers, were reversed, better all-round athletic education would result.  Is it not, however, a trenchant criticism on the situation in our higher education, that so often the one common interest should be in something that is, at least, aside from the main business of the institution?

Moreover, no institution can rightly serve democracy, unless it is itself democratic.  Thus the growth of an aristocratic spirit in our colleges and universities is an ominous sign.  For instance, it is still true that any boy or girl, with a sound body and a good mind and no family to support, can get a college education.  Money is not indispensable:  it is possible to work one’s way through.  Will this always be true?  One wonders.  It is significant that it is easiest to work your way through college, and keep your self-respect and the respect of your fellows, in the small, meagerly endowed college on the frontier.  It is most difficult, with a few exceptions one gladly recognizes, in the great, rich universities of the East.  What does that mean?

Straws show the tide:  it was announced some time ago by the president of one of our richest and oldest universities that henceforth scholarships in that institution would be given solely on the basis of intellectual scholarship, as tested by examination; and applause went up from the alumni all across the country; yet what does it mean?  It means that the boy who has to work on a threshing machine, sell books to an unsuspecting public, or do some other semi-honorable work all summer to get back into college in the Fall, cannot pass those examinations equally with a rich man’s son of equal mind, who can take a tutor to the seashore or the mountains and coach up all summer.  Thus foundations, established by well-meaning people to help poor boys self-respectingly through college, become intellectual prizes for those who do not need them.  That is all wrong.

Take the special student problem.  When a college or university is founded, it needs students:  they are the life-blood of the institution.  Really all that is needed to make a college is a teacher and some students:  buildings are not indispensable, but students the school must have.  Thus it is apt to keep its bars down and its entrance requirements flexible.  Special students, often mature men and women, who are not prepared to pass the freshman examinations, are admitted on the recommendation of heads of d epartments, to special courses they are well fitted to take.  Students are admitted freely, and then sifted out afterward, if they prove unworthy of their opportunity:  not a bad method, by the way.