SIC TRANSIT

The discussion about the dropping of Latin at Yale as an entrance requirement is revived by a current report of the Board of Admission. If states that the classical basis was first modified in 1904, when alternatives to a knowledge of Greek were first allowed. Though conceding that Latin has in the past performed "yeoman service" in the capacity of disciplinarian and wooder-out of the mentally unfit, the report contends that the removal of the Latin requirements at this time is not "letting down the bars" to slipshod scholarship. Rather, it is said, the resulting increase in the number of eligible applicants will make competition keener and standards of scholarship higher.

Be that as it may, the most significant aspect of the omission of Latin concerns the cultural consequences. The gain in precision and style in writing English resulting from even an elementary classical training is too well recognized to need comment. Another result equally important but less tangible is the passing of the ideal of Bacon's "full man," who values cultural studies for their subjective richness more than practical subjects and their immediate advantages. More and more, colleges are feeling themselves accountable to their alumni for the adequacy of their gradates as wage-earners, not as well-rounded human beings. The products of such an attitude are apt to be fragmentary personalities with a strongly utilitarian turn of mind. Though it may be inevitable in the face of modern living that liberal-arts colleges should merge gradually into technical schools, many college men who have found a world in Latin will protest the passing of a brave tradition.