THE DECLINE OF THE HE-MAN

Disgusted with the lack of the "old-fashioned bull bass" in the Cornell glee club, an undergraduate in that university has offered the first heartfelt diagnosis of what is wrong with American education. "What this university needs," he says, "what all American universities need just now, is less intellect and more boys who shave blue and chew tobacco, and who, when they sing in the back room, can produce those rumbling profundo notes from the waist line."

It sounds as if this particular Cornell man had been sitting at the feet of that noted pessimist, Mr. Gil Dobie; and, if Mr. Doble has indirectly something to do with his disciple's disgust, the suggestion is all the more worthy attention from the wise heads who are sitting up of nights with American education and feeling its feeble pulse. Cornell's well-wishers are not the only amateur college presidents who mourn the decline of the tough specimen at college. Sports writers and alumni everywhere are likewise saddened to witness insidious attempts to make the American university into an institution of learning in place of a good tight paddock where impetuous young men may be kept for four years to run about much as they please without serious danger of getting lost or damaging themselves beyond repair.

There is no doubt about it: the acquirement of learning is entirely Allen to the popular conception of a college education. Tenors who do not chew may go elsewhere and do as they please so long as they refrain from undermining the he-man's college. Let the academic shades be sacred to the "bull bass" and the quiet enjoyment of Climax plug.