THE ECLECTIC MELANGE

The University annually publishes a catalogue known as the "Announcement of the Courses of Instruction." By its trim green covers, by the promise of order given in the lines, "An Index of Departments . . . on the Back Page of the Cover," the uninitiated is led to expect Prussian organization, Dutch neatness on its pages. But the booklet, like many others things of New England, is deceptive in its simplicity; it may be likened to a New Hampshire barn, prim, spick and span to the eye, but filled with a maze, a jungle, of mingled odds and ends, in which the stranger can find what he wants only by explorative rummaging.

The "Announcement" is marked by the unlikely places in which it puts likely courses. Greek 8 and Latin 8 are sandwiched between courses in Philosophy and Psychology. Military Sciences, properly last of all, follows Sociology. Economics, Education, and Anthropology are in ironic, disorderly sequence. The courses are in splendid mathematical confusion: for example, English 37, 3a, 1, roll off like a football signal.

The problem of rearrangement would undoubtedly be too great for any Harvard man, tutored in the traditions and history of the College. The University should commission Frank Buck, the explorer, to penetrate the great Meldweson, famous card catalogue of the Berlin police, and from thence bring back a bespectacled Prussian, who would be equal to the task of putting the "Announcement" in an orderly, alphabetical and numerical arrangement, with cross-references to related courses.