THE SACRED CHICKENS

If one was to select the three questions most discussed in connection with Harvard in the present year of our Lord they would almost assuredly be (1) the prominence of athletics; (2) the size of the college; and (3) the same old indifference. They have made the fortunes of at least two paper manufacturers; they may create in the near future, as many radio kings. And yet one man, according to the Christian Science Monitor, has the temerity to group all three issues in one speech.

The fact that the speaker was Dr. Drury, head of St. Paul's School, one of the several great living headmasters of whom New England is justly proud, only makes his remarks the more impressive. Shortly to summarize his criticism, it is that athletics hold too prominent a position in University life; that Harvard is too big and should be divided into small colleges; and that in a University as large as Harvard a student loses his individuality.

That his criticism is largely destructive and his solutions scarcely original is nothing to cavil at. Both criticisms and solutions are similar to those offered by Harvard graduates the country over. The first subject has been discussed ad infinitum ever since President Lowell sent up his famous "sounding balloon" in his report of two years ago. The second has been even more a point of dispute since the issue of limitation was raised last spring. The lesson to be learned by the College from this continued interest on the part of the Alumni is that the situations must be met; the criticisms freely granted, the solutions presented applied, or new ones found. Further suggestions may, however, be kept for a few days till the President's next report. This time he may send up a dirigible.

Yet it is hard to leave the report of Dr. Drury's speech without objecting strenuously to one idea.--The idea that individualism is fostered in a small college and lost in a large one. For on all grounds of logic and experience the very opposite is true. In a small state college in this country, in one of the colleges in an English university, the individual is largely lost in the life of the institution. In a small college the student exists largely for his alma mater, he must sacrifice for it. But a large college exists for the student, to use as he wishes. Without holding a brief for either it is surely logical to say that heterogeneity, rather than homogeneity makes for individualism--or indifference.

Whatever can be said for Dr. Drury's scheme of small colleges, and there is not a little, the argument that they would make for individualism does certainly not apply.

But even with this refutation in the making comes the realization that the statement was but again typical of the anxious expectancy of the Alumni, searching the skies of Cambridge for a good omen, more especially for a dirigible.