At this writing the fiscal year of Dartmouth College is drawing to a close.

Just what the final dimensions of the year's war deficit will prove to be can not now be accurately determined. The chances are that the original estimate of $60,000 is not far from the mark. It is likewise impossible to judge how near the alumni will come to wiping the slate clean. Those interested are making a prodigious effort to accomplish a complete result. Others seem still indifferent to the fate of the College.

That this fate is at all likely to be that of complete extinction of course no one believes. Short of a Prussian invasion of the Connecticut Valley, the plant and the endowments—such as they are are not likely to be Swept from the map. But it might easily come to pass that financial stress should in time bring about such complete alterations in jurisdiction and policy as to render Dartmouth very nearly unrecognizable.

The admitting of women and the development of Dartmouth as a co-educational institution has been suggested as a device of exigency. Thus far the proposal has been treated as a joke, yet its adoption is not entirely beyond belief.

Another suggestion has been that of governmental control and operation of all the colleges. Nothing of that kind is likely to occur at once,—or even soon. But the opening for it lies in the organization under the War Department of a Committee on Education, which is working through innumerable established institutions in the experiment of giving special training to detachments of the national army.