TIME AND TIDE

Comparisons between Princeton's newly enforced library hours and those of other colleges are bound to be odious-more odious even than is the usual wont of comparison. And Harvard may be expected to furnish a basis for a good part of these statistical presumptions. From eight in the morning until midnight are the doors of the Princeton library open for admittance; from morn to midnight may one finger leaves and copy notes; from midnight to morn may the goodies mop and scrub.

No local retaliation is possible. Widener Library at 10 o'clock of almost any evening except during the mid-semester hysteria is a scene of quite repose. When the lights momentarily go down as signal for closing they conceal possibly a score of souls in utter darkness. In the cubicles of the stacks there are others, but the General and Lower Reading rooms exhibit the hurly burly of a deserted village. Only the Farnsworth Room may be said to be adequately occupied.

Since there is no demand for longer hours at Widener and since the scholastic records of Harvard compare not unfavorably with those of Princeton, the text must be found in other sources than the punching of time clocks. It would hardly be safe ground to presume that Harvard undergraduates read more quickly than those of Princeton likewise would it be foolish to announce arbitrarily that powers of assimilation are variable in given groups of young men. He who requires explanations with his argument must needs seek elsewhere. Unless he seizes upon the enormous reading facilities-including both space for readers and books to read-of Widener he will be faced with an insoluble problem-and lacking a why for his wherefore.