Text of the Tucker Fund Committee's vote on an alumni

fellowship and undergraduate scholarship should have appeared in the April number of THE ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Its omission was due to unavoidable complications. It is,, however, printed in full in this number, and the careful attention of the alumni is called to its provisions. No single alumni movement of recent years has had a more important bearing upon the welfare of Dartmouth than has the Tucker Fund as it bids fair to develop. Just now it makes its appeal for support on the basis of two clear-cut-and well defined issues. There will be in the future other issues calling for alumni support. The Tucker Fund should be large enough and elastic enough to take care of them all; for, unless this fund is misnamed, it should provide, above all else, the means, first to the maintenance of Dartmouth's best traditions; second, to foster Dartmouth's vigorous and healthy growth. For the present, however, attention may well be centered upon two questions, which are now put too clearly to be avoided. They are: Do you believe in encouraging Dartmouth men to prepare for Dartmouth teaching? Do you believe in encouraging poor men to gain an education at Dartmouth ? . A third question is perhaps implied: What are you to do byway of helping?

One might have supposed that the possibilities of Boston for novelties in entertainment had long ago been exhausted. It remained for the Dartmouth Club of Boston, by its recent Intercollegiate Smoker, to prove the error of such supposition.

The spectacle of some six hundred college men, representing fifty-one institutions all along the line from hoary Padua to pert Mt. Union, care-free, adorned with paper hats of their college colors, enjoying the hospitality of Dartmouth almost under the shadow of the sacred cod, was one to cling in the memory. From the first (and only) wahhoo-wah for the guests, to the all-collegiate Stein Song at midnight, the affair was well conceived and equally well executed. The Dartmouth alumni have again shown their ability to be first in the field; and the beneficial effects of such a gathering upon the College are likely to be felt long after the numbers of the program have been forgotten.

It is no violation of confidence to state that the vote for members of the alumni council promises to be satisfactorily heavy, in spite of the fact that a good many eligible voters are ignorant of the proposed function of the newly created body, and seem determined to remain so. For those who seek information, THE MAGAZINE publishes a brief resume in this number. The Constitution appears in full in the issue for April, 1912. The polls, which are now open for election of the council, will close June 10. As soon as possible thereafter, members will be informed of their election, so as to provide for a preliminary meeting at Commencement.

This first year's experience in electing a council has suggested some changes in procedure which will, no doubt, go into effect with another season's voting. Scattered associations have found difficulty in securing the requisite number of signatures for nomination petitions except at the cost of irritating delay and inconvenience. The advisability of giving, on the ballot, biographical data in conjunction with the names of candidates is now quite apparent. These two considerations will, in future, necessitate alteration in the form of both nomination blanks and ballots. Further, in the unavoidably blind selection of a considerable group of representatives, it will be little short of miraculous if mistakes are not made and some ground for fair criticism afforded. But a judicious mingling of enthusiastic youth and sober age is not to be achieved at one stirring, particularly when there is doubt as to which quality will be most in demand as time goes on. The council and the alumni whom it is to represent will have wisdom added unto them as the years progress.

THE MAGAZINE adds this month to its staff Mr. Francis Lane Childs of the class of 1906. Mr. Childs has been connected with the Department of English at Dartmouth since 1909. Of late he has rendered valuable service to THE MAGAZINE, which is happy to ensure continuance of his assistance by making him a permanent member of the editorial board.

The decision of the trustees to discontinue granting the medical degree at Dartmouth required courage. It would have been easier to let matters drift until the entire burden of criticism for any action taken might have been shifted to the shoulders of outside parties. While perhaps more immediately comfortable for the trustees, such a course would have been ignominious for the institution Yet the decision was not hastily arrived at: it represents more than a y of investigation and discussion, and implies wisdom as well as courage.

Present-day authorities, it appears, demand of the medical graduate a schooling in direct contact with a varietv and quantity of disease such as is encounterable only amid the human wreckage that comes and goes on the turbid currents of city life. The teeming misery of the slum, the helpless acquiescence of abject poverty are today considered essential elements in the young doctor's education. Dartmouth cannot supply these things. Perhaps the fact is regrettable; perhaps it is not. In either case it must be admitted and the consequences accepted.

In no business or vocation, further, is the change from an ancient order to a new more pronounced than in the profession of medicine. Once a matter of curing or palliating the ailments of the individual, today it safeguards the health of a nation. Once requiring many practitioners to combat widely disseminated results, today it is satisfied with a few who can hunt out and destroy concentrated causes. The oldfashioned doctor, acting in the main independently, helped wage a guerilla warfare against disease; the modern medical man is to be part of a trained and disciplined army whose responsibility to the state is increasingly recognized.

Hence is passing the family physician, he who helped men into the world; advised, encouraged, reproved, and repaired them along its thoroughfare; and made comfortable as possible their exit into eternity. His function being, perhaps, as often spiritual as physical, modern science fails to admit his utility. He goes; and with him goes the school that trained him. The loss to mankind is a distinct one. It would be yet more serious if the small school, with its close personal relationships between teacher and pupil, its intensive theoretic and practical training preparatory to wholesale clinical applications were quite eliminated. For training of this kind the Dartmouth Medical School has long been distinguished; during more than a century of experience, staff, equipment, courses, methods of instruction have been progressively adjusted to this specific end. Under the new order of affairs, two years of its curriculum added to the same period of undergraduate study in the College should give excellent preparation for a final two-year term of expansive clinical experience under university auspices, for which the means of transfer can readily be arranged.

In this reconstruction of its medical department, Dartmouth embarks upon an . educational policy of considerable significance. Viewed superficially this policy is one of retrenchment; viewed fundamentally, it is one of expansion. Something, indeed, has been lopped off; but that which remains is, more than ever before, an integral part of the College, and brings to it increase rather than diminution of influence.