This number of THE ALUMNI MAGAZINE

is the last to be published during the academic year. Instead of the usual Commencement number, which, in the past, has appeared about July 1, there will be issued, on or about August 1, a midsummer number. This will contain a much fuller account of the Commencement activities than has hitherto been possible. It will, further, seek to present to the alumni of Dartmouth a review of the progress of the College during the past year, together with some statement as to its future needs and prospects. If the plans of the editors can be carried out, this midsummer number will, this year and in years to come, provide the most available short cut to an understanding of the status of Dartmouth at any given time. No copies beyond the usual supply will be printed or distributed except as advance orders are received. Those of the alumni who are not regular subscribers, but who wish to obtain the midsummer issue of THE MAGAZINE, should send their orders not later than July 1.

The unexpected winning of the dual track meet at Harvard is as important an event in its way as the great football victory which christened the Stadium in 1903. No more than did the football game does it place Dartmouth on a par with Harvard in matters athletic. That is something neither to be expected nor necessarily desired. It will serve mainly to put one more seal of efficiency upon Dartmouth undertakings, and to set a little higher the standard which Dartmouth men will seek to attain. Henceforth they will not be fully satisfied with a moderately successful showing : they will feel that their abilities must be exerted to the winning of a reasonable proportion of victories. The result of the meet, though a surprise, was not by any means accidental. It came about in the natural course of a development carefully planned and wisely administered. The immediate credit belongs to the valiant contestants whose determined spirit carried the day. But many a team before, with just as much valor and determination, has been smothered in defeat. In the present instance, back of these qualities, lay the skill born of able and consistent training. That this is recognized is clear enough in the general and highly deserved praise which has been bestowed upon Coach Hillman. But a moment's consideration again shows Coach Hillman as part of a general policy, that reaches through, touches, and gradually energizes every branch of Dartmouth athletics; it is the policy of the Dartmouth Athletic Council. Most of us remember the Council's part only when things go wrong. Under existing circumstances, it were the graceful thing to bow acknowledgments to the team, and to the man who trained the team, and, not by any means least, to the men who found the man who trained the team.

The spirit of prophecy hovers near the journalist. He feels eternally the temptation to write up in advance the events that must occur on printing day. So regarding Prom Week: the Dartmouth Press will be clanging over the pages of THE MAGAZINE just as the imported orchestra are tuning their fiddles for the first terpsichorean christening of the new gymnasium. The present writing must be a week in advance of that. A month hence the excitements of Prom will be forgotten in those of Commencement ; hearts will be healed and some of the bills paid ; what use of saying anything about it then? Prom Week must be covered now or never. Elsewhere the program of delights is printed; but prophecy refuses to fill between the lines. Too much depends upon the weather. The romantic moon has already furled her sails; for three weeks fields and gardens have been shriveling under a blazing heaven. In the nature of things it is nearly' time for the empyrean vault to turn on the hose. The farmer's joy would be the collegian's . sorrow. In the face' of such conflict of interest who would venture to speculate on the probabilities ?

Old Mother Dartmouth is already setting her house in order for the annual home coming of her sons. Soon they will be here, rumbling up over the hill as of yore, peering through the elms for the first glimpse of the monitory belfry, scrambling down from the vehicular relics of long gone freshman days, shouting half forgotten . nicknames, seeking in the bewhiskered visages of now, the boyish lineaments of then. Fifty years ago the Class of '6l went out from under the cloistered elms to meet the world. That class gave, rtjore than a third of its number to fight for the Union on the battle fields of the Civil War; it gave Dartmouth College her greatest president; it has given lawyers, educators, merchants to aid in the building of the nation. This month some of those men return; it will be a notable gathering. And with them will come the solid citizens of '86; the fifteen year olds of '96; the gaily costumed aggregation of 1901 to furnish the spectacle, and the representatives of 1906, 1908, and 1910, to furnish the noise. And as they swarm across her broad campus and wander through her spacious dwellings, . old Mother Dartmouth will smooth from her brow the wrinkles of well nigh a century and a half, and will smile down upon her boys; for to her the oldest and gravest and greatest of them is but a stripling after all.

In the pleasures of Commencement, the alumni should remember that they have, this year, an unusually serious and important duty to perform at the alumni meeting of Tuesday. Before that meeting will come for conclusive, if not for final action, the proposition of establishing an Alumni Council. This matter is one of too. great moment to be allowed to fail through lack of interest, or to be enacted without full understanding of its meaning. In order to insure a proper understanding of the situation that exists it may be well at this time to outline some of the reasons which have actuated the initiators of the movement for the establishment of a Council.

As is well known, the government of Dartmouth College is by charter vested in a board of trustees consisting of twelve members. Of these twelve. seven must,—again in accordance with the charter,—be citizens of New Hampshire. Two members, the President of the College, and the Governor of the State, hold membership by virtue of their office. Of the remaining ten members, five are elected for life by the board itself; the other five are elected by general ballot of the alumni. Alumni representation on the board of trustees is thus somewhat restricted to those sections of the country that have the largest number of resident graduates of the College, and that can at any time control the largest number of votes for. an elective candidate. Other sections, where perhaps the alumni in smaller numbers are doing a proportionately larger work for the College are necessarily unrepresented. Of the present board, all but three are from New England; of these three, two are from New York, and one is from Chicago, This is as it should be for a board whose chief concern must be for the financial and physical welfare of the institution, and for the maintenance of its educational efficiency. There are, however, other matters than those of finance and educational efficiency in which the alumni are interested and in which their voice, as a whole, should be heard. Every thoughtful Dartmouth man realizes that one of the chief characteristics of the College is its individuality, that is, its institutional character, its life,—that indefinable something that moulds the undergraduate in spite of himself, and sets upon him a seal that is known and recognized among men. Long absent alumni have many questions to ask of the man who knows; specifically,pper haps, no two are alike, but their basic meaning is always the same: "Is Dartmouth College the institution that I knew and loved as a boy?" The propriety of superficial changes is admitted, the query implies concern for deeper things. The men who know are the trustees, and the handful of alumni on the faculty who, by the necessities of the case, are seldom seen outside New Hampshire;, the men who ask are the men of the Middle West, the'men of the Great Divide, the men of the Pacific Slope who carry with them the spirit of their college days, and to whose strong personality and untiring effort is largely due Dartmouth's splendid undergraduate representation from beyond the confines of New England.

These men scattered as they are in small groups throughout the country are immensely valuable, to the College; they are working for its good. Some means should be found of keeping them in intimate touch with all that it is doing, some means of giving them an active voice in the conduct of its affairs. That means will be provided by an Alumni Council, its membership based rather upon geographical than upon numerical distribution; its function to keep the men of the past informed as to the needs and ideals of the present, and to keep the men of the present informed of the vital qualities and essential characteristics that have helped to give Dartmouth its peculiar distinction in the world of colleges.