ASK ME ANOTHER

The late afternoon sun of yesterday sank no deeper wherever late afternoon suns have a habit of sinking than did the spirits of those few straggling Seniors who left Memorial Hall without ever noticing the picture of one venerable gentleman, height Boylston. The first of the annual "Ask Me Another" examinations had passed into history.

Not one of the many showed any visible "sweetness and light". The slow moving procession looked exceedingly sour, very morbid. And yet over the head of each was a divine halo: his last major operation had been completed. Like the etherized victim of a surgeon's knife, each member of the English legion would soon send into the world of affairs the messagee, "resting successfully."

Few, however, of the greater or lesser critics of things educational are going to judge this latest method of hedging the college degree by such whimsical, tenuous phenomena. They will want to know definitely whether or not this ordeal of fire really tested any ability, really helped an individual toward what might be called "sweetness" what can be called "light".

To those proponents of the higher criticism some sort of answer can be given, verging, indeed, upon that oddity of entities, truth. These weary, worried participants in the Memorial Hall Grand Guignol have at least the satisfaction of knowing that they have learned how intelligently and adequately to read, how to orient facts, how to present those facts. And, since there are facts and facts, a truism appreciated by the departments, they have discovered that no evil can befall him who chooses among them in preparing and answering his divisional examinations. Hence, this catharsis from the pity and fear inspired by divisionals has its companion, not completely ancillary good in the particular training involved. The Harvard "Ask Me Another" is essentially a valuable experience, a creditable experiment in that wide, Ill charted field of "higher education".