When a good looking, well dressed, well mannered young man

loses a business position because he has failed to hold it down, his friends are inclined to be philosophical. At that point they recognize the necessity for meeting the requirement. When the same good looking, well dressed, well mannered young man is dropped from college for poor scholarship, his friends are, not infrequently, filled with righteous indignation. The function of the college, they say, is to develop men, not to kill them off. This is logical, certainly. But it is equally logical to inquire how fitness is to be produced if those who insist upon being unfit are allowed to clutter the educative processes. The statistical record of the annual shifting of new employees in business houses would make interesting comparison with the record of freshmen dropped from college. It is doubtful if the basis of discharge is as scientifically determined in the average mercantile or industrial corporation as it is in Dartmouth. Dean Laycock has written an interesting article on the subject. It is commended to the careful perusal of all alumni.

The football season just closed will probably be viewed with considerable satisfaction by Dartmouth alumni and undergraduates alike. The work of the team has been far more consistent than that of a year ago, a process of steady development, rather than of erratic ups and downs. Curiously enough, this very fact involved defeat at the hands of Princeton. That event came early in the season. Each Saturday thereafter the team showed increased unity and power. The result of the contest with Pennsylvania'was a conclusive triumph, in which the illogical and accidental features characteristic of the game a year ago were gratifyingly absent. This season, further, has ended, not with a deplorable fiasco, but with a well won victory over an opponent of recognized playing strength.

In conjunction with the games themselves, there have been fewer unfortunate by-products. The almost truculent bumptiousness of much of the athletic news and views sent out from Hanover last year aroused unfavorable comment in many quarters. There has, perhaps, in the present instance been some unnecessary post-season bragging and some gratuitous waving of challenges in the face of all comers. But apparently our undergraduate journalists and militant alumni are learning the unwisdom of too confident prophecy before, and too uncontrolled jubilation after, a game. Indulgence in these things is indication of a provincialism that, fortunately, ]is of the individual and not of the group. But when the individual makes a spectacle of himself, the group invariably suffers. This constitutes an argument either for censorship or for a much deeper national education in intercollegiate good manners. A wise combination of the two would probably be advantageous.

Report of the meeting of the Alumni Council, which was held in Philadelphia, is printed elsewhere in this issue. Two things about the meeting are particularly significant. The first of these is the warm cordiality toward the Council which the trustees, represented by Mr. Frank S. Streeter, expressed; and their readiness to cooperate with and receive suggestions from the younger body. There is no sign of jealousy or uneasiness at any point of Mr. Streeter's remarks. He and the other members of the board welcome the further democratization of the government of Dartmouth through the influence ]of a fully representative alumni body such as the Council.

The second significant thing is the modest seriousness with which the Council has undertaken its responsibilities. The function of nominating candidates for alumni trustee was virtually turned over to the Council by vote of the alumni last June. The reference on the subject was discussed at the recent meeting, As will be observed on perusal of the resolutions published, the Council expresses merely the willingness to serve. It will present the question of nominations for further consideration at the meeting of the alumni next June. In the meantime, it has directed the Secretary to accompany the next ballot for alumni trustee with information as to the proposed change and the time and place where it will receive conclusive action.

It is interesting to speculate as to whether the European war will have any pronounced effect upon college education in America. There is considerable agreement that Europe itself is to undergo vast social, political, and economic changes, which must needs have influence in this country. That may well enough be granted; at present the things thus prophecied are vague enough. For ourselves, however, it seems fair to believe that the war will, pretty definitely, bring about one of two conditions: the world must assume a heavier burden of militarism than ever before, or it will be free from it, at least for many generations to come.

in the first instance, the United States will be unable longer to avoid manifest destiny. This country must arm, and must, probably, do so through the medium of some form of conscription that will affect men of college age. There is, of course, nothing impossible or particularly objectionable in this. It would involve the substitution of a severe, carefully studied, and constantly applied discipline for the optimistic, happy-go-lucky, and irregular educational methods of the present. There would be comparatively little intercollegiate athletics, but more men would be out of doors than is now the case, and summer vacations would be spent in training camps instead of at social resorts. What would be the result in the ultimate character and accomplishment of American manhood provides material for infinite conjecture.

It is not impossible that the prospect of uninterrupted peace would be fraught with greater peril to our well being. War is recognized as somehow the great world-corrective,—as the wages of national sin. Civilizations have come and gone. Each one has exhibited a progressive decay. For each succeeding civilization war's relentless plough and harrow have prepared the ground; war's tempests have scattered the pregnant, seeds of a broken past to bring forth real fruits of the future.

It seems unlikely that war can pass out of the world until an equally efficacious corrective is discovered as substitute for it. Just what conscious discipline society can and will consistently impose upon itself to arrest its own processes of dissolution, who can say ? Perhaps the discipline of education. That has been the prescription since the days of Socrates. The formula has varied somewhat through the centuries; but the label has remained. Thus far, apparently, education has failed. School and college systems have followed public whims instead of counteracting them. Where discipline has been most needed, they have been least prepared to apply it. Education has been too much an ornament, not enough a vitalizing force; and educators but too often haggard garland weaver's rather than leaders of men.

Yet all this does not destroy the case for education. It merely impugns the present formula. This, on examination, appears to be compounded chiefly of humanism, teutonism, and opportunism. The minds which it has not damaged it has been credited with developing; those which it has choked have been classed as inferior. This was well enough, perhaps, in an era when waste,—particularly waste of human effort—was complacently ignored. But we are now passing out of that era. American colleges may or may not respond to the demands which the situation imposes. The leadership should be theirs. While Europe is reconstructing its institutions, America must reconstruct its thought; otherwise, no doubt, our institutions will, in their due course, crumble under the Weight of war.

Among the business men of Hanover there have always been some who have won a place of permanent affection among the students. Such a man was H. H. H. Langill, whose death occurred in September. Mr. Langill had photographed generations of Dartmouth men and their doings. Athletic events, commencements, bonfires, celebrations, he recorded them all with his camera, until he became, indeed, the pictorial historian of the College. Kind, patient, tolerant of undergraduate pranks, he was known and liked by everyone. His taking constitutes a loss to the community of which he was a part. A group far larger, the whole body of Dartmouth men, will share in its regret.