NEWER THAN NEW

The Anglophile roads in the Monitor with something of a shock that time honored English public-schools are vying with each other in adopting vocational curricula to meet "the specific need of modern democracy for leaders with broad sympathies and a strong sense of actuality." Accordingly, a bulletin-board at Eton, which American private-school men so love to deify, was recently "covered with arrangements for a Boy Scout Camp and for subsequent attendance at a jamboree, because a Scout is a brother to every other Scout, no matter of what social class." Harrow has done its bit by offering the "Crompton Elocution Prize for Clear Speaking into a Microphone."

With this lack of humor and understanding, Eton and Harrow are endeavoring to lend a democratic flavor to what have always been gentlemen's schools. But far more to the point than these superficial concessions to practicality is Highgate's provision of new workshops, where boys can build usable machinery with their own hands and lie on their backs in overalls beneath Austins in the making. This is the sort of healthy handicraft that really balances intellectuality, as the Hill School hobby-shop in America has effectively shown. Equally commendable is the honest purpose of Kimmel Hall, a new school, which is admittedly "devoted to training leaders in commerce and, industry," and which places its arts course second to technical training.

Today's utilitarian temper, like a wood, rank or otherwise, is wedging its way between the mossy old stones of scholastic tradition. And the Harvard Houses, in their frantic game of leap-frog with Oxford and Cambridge, may yet wake up to find themselves more English than modern England itself.