WHEN WE GRADUATE

After many long sentences about "new ideas," anxious parents, radical children, and Chicago University, President Hutchins of that institution came down near the earth. "Students know," he said, "that on graduation they will face a world where competition is keener and the easier opportunities fewer than at any time in the last forty years." The general tone of the address, however, made in celebration of Chicago University's Forty-third Anniversary, was optimistic. True easier opportunities were fewer, but difficult opportunities made up for them, and the student realization of their situation, in the meanwhile, made them "knuckle down to the business of education" and infused them with a "new seriousness and a new industry."

As a matter of fact, the difficult, challenging opportunities which means a lifetime of effort, opportunities for creative business, opportunities for the start of a full, useful, and successful life. Easy opportunities abound. Three hundred and twenty-eight graduates of M. I. T., Northeastern, Tufts, and Harvard, have been employed by the State of Massachusetts for the last twenty months. They are occupied in making a "control survey" of the state, establishing latitudes, longitudes, and elevations in 175 cities and towns. No matter how worth-while the project from the point of view of Pure Science, that kind of employment is wasteful of the abilities of educated men, provides no opportunities for progress and a secure future, and adds not a jot to the wealth of the community.

Students have more of a stake in recovery than any other class, group or section in this country. Their whole future lives depend on the stupidities of present politicians and business men. For them it is not a question of new ideas or old, of radical or Tory teachers, but of whether, after being trained for great things, the world will frustrate them into useless revolutionaries, or show them the way to useful cooperation in the increasing enrichment of the country.