"QUEM AD FINEM, O CATALINA. . ."

Writing in the current Saturday Review, Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter self-confessed educational authority strokes a black N. G. on American colleges. With a trenchant promise that American colleges are mere scientific factories and with a world almanac reference to the effect that a million student attend them, he sweeps on with a flippant grandeur to evolve a series of serious charges. Offering as his proof a penchant for mossy Oxonian intellectuality and an unpalatable homily on football over-emphasis, he states dogmatically that "the American undergraduate has neither time nor energy for intellectual relations," that "the companionship of the opposite sex, synthetic gin, and cinema satisfy his simple needs." Leading up to is final revelation, he alleges that the American college product is "frankly unintelligent," and then, with touching faith in his premise, repeats it in epigrammatic form, thus imparting unity to his logic.

Although much of what the author charges is unfortunately true, it has all been stated much more briefly and co-gently than in the present article. For Mr. Boyd-Carpenter, like many another of his countrymen, has seen fit to dispense with substantial proof or to recognize any merit whatsoever in his victim. Enough for him to garner particular weaknesses apparent in a number of American colleges, to amalgamate them as if characteristic of the whole, and to label the composite, "American College" Attacked with a critical eye for definite proof and clear understanding of conditions, the article collapses about its author's ears.

The spectacle of a disinterested English intellect resorting to hack-writing of this sort is as frequent as it is strangely inconsistent with that "mental energy and intellectual relaxation," which Mr. Boyd-Carpenter flaunts as the chief glory of the English university. British writers and lecturers have long managed to turn a pretty penny at the expense of American passion for criticism. And Mr. Boyd-Carpenter's attempt tinctured with ignorance is equally puerile.