In the death of President Maclaurin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

higher education in America encounters an irretrievable loss. To be a really great college president is to encompass in one personality all the major gifts with which a man may be endowed. But the qualifications usually lead their possessor into paths other than those which approach the academic cloister.

President Maclaurin was a happy exception to the rule. Seldom conspicuous, never sensational, he was, nevertheless, generally looked upon as a dominating power in the affairs of the Institute. To think of it was to think of him. Thus he built himself into its larger fortunes and its more majestic aspect. When the long respite came his monument was complete.

The hard lot of the college professor has been advertised for the past few years so thoroughly that there is ground for some wonderment that any normal being can be found willing to embark upon a career that statistics conclusively prove to offer a long life and a dreary one. Indeed, it seems a fact that the breed of educators—collegiate and of less exalted rating—is diminishing at a speed that threatens early reversion of America to a state of untutored barbarism.

In an age of high industrial demand, the adage, "Them as can does; them as can't teaches," no longer holds true in imagination. The commercial net is huge, its meshes progressively smaller. It collects at one cast whales and herrings alike, and finds utilization for both. Why then should anyone of reasonably sound physical and mental constitution bare his bosom to the slings and arrows of outrageous pedagogy? The American people has tolerated much, rather than pay real money for real teachers; but it would probably object to conscious search for candidates in asylums for the feeble minded.

As for college affairs: the endowment "drive" has recently been invented. In so far as can be observed its chief effect has been still more widely to publish the detrimental aspects of collegiate association and to drive possible victims of faculty appointment still deeper into the. underbrush. The avowed purpose of most drives being to keep the unfortunate "prof" from slipping fatally below the irreducible level of his prewar existence, it is not strange that, when the machinery of a drive begins to creak, the noise should drown any faint whisperings of hope that may for a moment have pleasantly attracted the ear of the quarry.

And besides scaring the not-yet trapped, much drive propaganda has served to embitter rather than to alleviate the lot of those already so long in captivity that they dare not venture beyond the bars of their cage even when the door is open and dancing sunshine invites. One of the marked compensations of academic life has heretofore been its respectedness. To be a college professor has been to be accepted as both gentleman and scholar whose presence might decorate and enrich any social or intellectual group. That fact alone made the position an enviable one.

Drive propaganda has done much to dissipate this dream of dignity. To be introduced as a professor to-day is to be labeled, by inference, a pauper. The world has learned that a "prof teaches on his stomach", which is the reason why said stomach should be filled; it has been jocosely assured that "minding the train" is far more remunerative than "training the mind"; it has been admitted—nay, pushed—into the innermost sanctuary of the professorial home to find there baldly exposed all those mildly ingenious devices wherewith decent pride is wont to veil impecuniosity; it has had thrust under its nose household expense accounts carried out to the last plugged farthing and supported by charity inducing pleas such as make the bloodcurdling literature of Armenian relief societies sound like a vernal lyric.

Nevertheless the drives have gone on and are still going; and various good folk in the Dartmouth constituency are wondering why the old up-country College fails, in the light of so much example, to buckle in its megaphone and join the great crusade with the rest, before the money is all gone.

One answer may, perchance, be gleaned from the introductory reflections of this editorial. Dartmouth has a splendid faculty. If it hopes to retain the services of these men and secure others like them it must give them adequate compensation. But, in seeking to increase the money part of this compensation, nothing is to be gained by destroying that part which consists in self-respect. The needs of the College have been given a due publicity, among them the need for maintaining a vigorous teaching force. But the needs of the faculty have not been dwelt upon; neither has publicity been given to such increases in salary as its members have received in the course of the past year.

Failure to capitalize the pitiful facts, by wide advertising, that the wife of instructor X has not had a new hat in fifteen years, and that the ear-muffs of Professor Y were made at home from the pelt of the late family tom-cat may argue a lack of commercial enterprise. If so, Dartmouth will gladly accept the stigma of undue conservatism.

Another reason for not starting an endowment drive is that, in both theory and practice, there is probably more money—in the long run—in working for annual income directly from alumni and friends of the College than in working for the capital which would yield an equivalent sum. Among the alumni of Dartmouth,—among the the alumni of any college—there are extremely few who are in a position to share amassed capital with their Alma Mater. At the same time there are extremely few who are not in a position year by year to share income with it.

The man who can give fifty dollars a year of his earnings to help swell the current cash of the College might find it difficult to turn over a thousand dollars of capital. What is true of him holds even more conclusively in case. of him whose limit of gift is five or ten dollars. And in addition to this it is a fair wager that the alumnus who, year by year, has shared something of his income with the College, will, at such time as fortune favors him, share his capital.

At that time, further, if his means are large, he will have his own ideas as to the nature and purposes of his gift. He will hardly be interested to cast it into a blind pool.

Whether or not these considerations hold for other colleges, they certainly hold for Dartmouth; and because of the sum total of them there will be no Dartmouth endowment drive. But that does not mean that the alumni are exempted from meeting their responsibilities in full. Instead of a million dollars of endowment, this year they are called upon for the income on a million at six per cent. The year following they will be expected to provide the income on one and one half million; and one year later again, on two million dollars. Beyond the latter mark it is not intended to ask them to go for some time.

The schedule is that adopted in behalf of the alumni by the Alumni Council. The purpose of it is to strengthen the College in all its operations by adding immediately and materially to its available funds applicable to general purposes. The idea is one now perfectly familiar to Dartmouth men. The medium through which it works will continue to be the Alumni Fund on the Tucker Foundation. But the goal is now and henceforth to be clearly specified and, in reaching it, everyone must be depended upon for participation.

When the wind blows from the Arctic, and the town is deep in snow, when the short cold days grow dark quick, folks come north to see the show known to Dartmouth enthusiasts as Winter Carnival. This interesting event has of late been carefully divided into two parts: first, winter; second, carnival. The first part is left out of doors where it belongs. The second part is carried on for the most part indoors.

There has never been any trouble in finding place for the first part. It occupies most of the territory hereabouts and calls for no special entertainment. The second part each year demands more house room. It seems doubtful that there will long be sufficient floor space in all Hanover to meet the needs of our enthusiastic devotees of the second part. It is rumored that a paper is already in circulation insisting upon the immediate increase in the size of the gymnasium by duplicating the present main floor. It will be pointed out in this document that the prestige of Dartmouth's Outing Club can not long survive curtailment in the supply of dance halls in Hanover, and that it is hence incumbent on the proper authorities to meet the crying need lest the dear old College sink into untimely oblivion.

Countering this rumor there has sprung up another to the effect that various fossilized intellects among the faculty have conceived the petrified idea that instead of separating Winter Carnival into the two parts whose division has now become a sacred tradition, — and may the old traditions never fail, — the experiment be tried of uniting them in such wise that they be put into mutual operation; each bearing its share of the burden and each participating in the fun, — together.

The only comment aroused by this suggestion is, however, in the direction of remarks on how mediaeval and even ancient notions may occasionally persist in the modern world.