It would be too much to expect Dartmouth's new system

of selective admissions to pass entirely unchallenged, especially since it is coupled with the plea of President Hopkins for a higher standard of scholarship among the actual matriculants. As a result both of the first trials of the new system at Hanover and of the president's remarks at the opening of the college year, tongues and pens have been busy. The subject is a broad one and seems to us: to merit treatment in detail here, not only as to the working of the selective system, but also as to the various comments and criticisms which the President's notable opening address called forth.

First of all, perhaps, it is meet to consider the statement of Dr. Hopkins that "too many men are going to college" and that the privileges of higher education ought to be confined to an "aristocracy of brains." Something like half the quoted comments on this frank statement proceed very evidently on a complete misapprehension of the intended meaning, and are to be explained only on the theory that, having read so far the commentator has permitted his prejudices to overcome him and to preclude his reading the context. At all events there has followed a prodigious clatter of hasty tongues and a furious scratching of equally hasty pens. And yet, has there ever been in all the history of education a more sincerely democratic utterance? Too many men are going to college who ought not to be there and too few men are going to college who ought to go. The colleges ought to be open wide to all who have the inclination and the intelligence, the purpose and the preparation to make the fullest use of them. The president was no doubt greatly daring when he voiced his much-discussed epigrams; but one suspects it was done with deliberate design to challenge interest and provoke discussion—in which aims it has succeeded to a marvel.

Much of the argument called forth in opposition to the supposed thesis of the president's remarks to the entering class may be dismissed at once for lack of pertinence. It is directed to meet a contention which no one has made and which no one would dream of making - to wit, that the colleges ought to be a sort of private Elysium for a chosen few. No such absurdity can be spelled out of the theory elaborated by Dr. Hopkins, with its very explicit and careful explanation of this "aristocracy." Nevertheless a considerable proportion of the journalistic and pedagogical commentators appear to have erected this notion as a sort of man of straw, which they have then marshalled their enginery of wit and wisdom to bowl over. When one considers it in a calmer mood, one suddenly discovers .that the president of Dartmouth is no heresiarch after all, and has done no more than plead for a restriction of the college opportunities to such men as really want them and intend to avail themselves of them. To do otherwise works uncomfortable exclusions. It lets in men who waste their time and who go forth with little to stamp them as having spent four years in the academic shade. Meantime others, because the opportunities are sadly limited in number, are kept out.

To a large extent the mistaken interpretations placed on this stimulating ad- dress seem to us to reveal the easily-be-setting sin of the day, more especially in the United States—to wit, that of loose thinking and of headlong comment on the basis of a careless reading of headlines. No one has yet apportioned very accurately the blame which belongs to the headline writers of the country, as leading to the superficial consideration of enterprises of great pith and moment.

Then follows a clamor based on the notion that Dartmouth's new selective system of admissions implies a glaring inconsistency with what is set forth as the ardent desire of the college. "If they are sincere, why not adopt the examination system and select the first 550 men on that basis?" "If a college can do its best work with a limited number of students, and if more apply than can be assimilated and given a fair chance, why not correct the difficulty by raising the entrance requirements instead of selecting too many on a lower standard?" Both these comments have been made. To which it may be answered that, of all the conceivable methods for choosing the 550 men who ought to get in, the examination system is the most fallacious and the least satisfactory.

To make an entrance examination the be-all and the end-all of the business has seemed to those in authority at Hanover to offer little real hope. For one thing the performance of a man in a single examination is no safe guide to that man's abilities. Feverish cramming, a momentary glibness, good luck in finding questions suited to the stock of information he happens to possess at the moment in the pigeonholes of his mind—all these things may suffice to give a passing mark to one of distinctly inferior talents. For another thing, nothing is more hopelessly lacking in exactitude than the ideas of those charged with the task of marking the papers with relative ranks. Recent experiments in this regard have revealed an amazing difference of opinion as to the rank. deserved. It is dangerous to judge of any person, whether as a scholar or as anything else, on the basis of a single isolated experiment. Hence the examination system of selections has been deliberately rejected, for reasons which seem both good and sufficient. One must remember that this ancient system has been weighed in the balances. It would be silly to claim that it had not been found wanting.

The selective system now being tried out at Dartmouth represents an effort to discover some more reliable criterion than the hastily written blue-books of an examination period, covering two or three days and entailing more or less of handicap in the form of emotional stress. The capacities of an applicant are judged, not on a single spectacular performance, but on the basis of some three years of steady work. This seems at once fairer to the applicant and safer for the college. In addition to the requirement of a consistently high stand for several terms in school, one also investigates other elements not so directly bearing on the student's ability to absorb what is in books, but revealing importantly what is in himself. These things taken together have seemed to the college authorities to afford a much more logical and satisfactory way of discovering what manner of men these applicants are.

Like every new thing, this plan must make head against the inertia of academic conservatism. It has been the regular thing to make an applicant's success depend on his showing in a single examination. Therefore this is the only way and always must be the only way, in the ultraconservative estimation.

It may be rash to volunteer predictions, but we entertain the conviction that in all the major colleges the examination method of selection, if retained at all, will within the next five years be greatly modified by supplemental tests not greatly different from those now in use at Hanover. Princeton, we understand, has already amended her admission system in such a way as to diminish the important part played by examinations in past years. There is no good reason to believe that Yale and Harvard are much better satisfied with the results of admission systems in which examinations alone figure as the test. To be quite candid, we believe the practice recently adopted by Dartmouth represents a pioneering effort certain to be widely emulated; in which case some of the owl-like comments just now to be found in the student and alumni publications of various colleges will make rather amusing reading.

There lies before us the comment of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin which takes the view that Dartmouth's idea is to reduce the number of students, as a positive matter. "The result," it remarks, "of a better method of selection would be not a reduction but an increase of the number of students in college." That misses altogether the idea. The number in college is bound to be limited by circumstance. The only important question involves the choice of the right men to make up the fixed number who can be received at any given time. The old systems have given little satisfaction. Too mjany of the wrong men got in, excluding too many of the right men. Our present experiment at Dartmouth is designed, not to effect a reduction in the numbers, but to insure somewhat more accurately the quality. Dartmouth wants all the students she can contrive to educate properly—but she wants them to be men a-thirst for education, rather than idlers who find it pleasant to pose as college students for a season and hold themselves out to the world thereafter as liberally educated men without very much grasp on liberal education.

Curiously enough the frequent assumption appears to be that this new method proves Dartmouth to be "an easy college to get into." This comment must strike the several hundred—say something over 1500 for a rough guess—who found it impossible to meet the Dartmouth standard this year, as distinctly ironical. There is a manifest absurdity in claiming that a college which requires a high stand for some three years is "easier to get into" than a college where a fortunate numbskull, by passing a single set of papers, may be matriculated without other difficulty. For the future, the student who hopes to pursue his education at Dartmouth must begin to prove his worth a long time ahead.

It should not be necessary to protest this misconception of the Dartmouth selective system—for the misconception is obvious enough to any one who will pause and consider it with candor. Dartmouth has in times past seemed an "easy college to get into," by comparison with some others. It is at present one of the hardest to get into—unless one really deserves to get in. It is also hard to stay in, unless one deserves to stay. Perhaps it would be unkind to twit some of the more caustic critics with the quite undoubted fact that certain other colleges, held up as stringent in their entrance requirements, tolerate a deplorably lax standard during the four years of residence !

From now on the aim of Dartmouth is to winnow the applicants by reference to standards which seem logical and just; to admit only such as honestly show promise by sustained previous effort; to exclude as far as may be such as seek college only for the fun of it, or for its allurements of social or athletic activity; to draw no artificial lines of race, creed, or condition—and then to keep on winnowing with the idea of unloading, at the first opportunity, any mistakes which have evaded the vigilance of the first investigation. Neither an easy college to get in to, nor an easy college in which to remain once you get by the gate! To combine the two elements is sufficiently rare.

It may be that the colleges of the country need to emphasize in their Litany a plea to be delivered from envy, malice and all uncharitableness. College feeling runs high and college spirit is strong— very excellent things in their way. But between proper pride in one's college and an insufferable conceit there is no great gulf fixed. The chasm is a mere crevasse, easily spanned and often overleaped. May we file here a plea for universal tolerance and a cordial appreciation of the excellent qualities of others?

Taking the country as a whole and reading its history as a matter of more than a century of continuance, there honestly seems to us to be no discernible difference among the achievements of college men, whether from small institutions or great, sufficient to puff up or bow down the one or the other. Some prefer the preachments of Paul, others the homilies of Apollos. Some pin their faith to the theory of the big college, others to the theory of the little one. There are vast claims made here and there as to positive superiority of prestige. Yet the precious kernels of truth are monopolized by none. The water and the wine derive no special virtue from the size of the vessels in which they are purveyed.

There is a certain snobbishness common to us all and manifested everywhere on occasion—the snobbishness which implies that if one be not of our own collegiate fold one might as well be dead, so far as any claim of excellence is concerned. But consider the roll in which the annals of this country are inscribed, and find in it, if you can, evidence that any one college has reason to boast itself unseemly! It is grateful and pleasant to consider that one is fortunate above other men in belonging to this or that collegiate communion—but this sentiment is better retained as a subjective gratification than manifested objectively. From envy, malice and all uncharitableness, good Lord deliver us!

A thoroughly pleasant feature of the recent weeks has been the renewal of Dartmouth's football relationship with Harvard, after an interruption of ten years. Whether or not this renewal shall ripen into permanency remains to be established; but one may voice the hope that the best interest of both these institutions may be found to justify a consummation so agreeable to Dartmouth students and alumni. To thousands of the latter, who found it so gratifying to be back in the Cambridge Stadium once more, the scene was reminiscent of many a hard-fought battle in the past—a long series, in which experiences ranged all the way from the inevitable and cataclysmic defeats of the time when Dartmouth was indeed a "little college," to the closely-contested struggles of later years in which the result might be one way or the other. A spirit of genuine good-sportsmanship appeared to actuate, as it always should, both teams in the contest of October 28, and there was no occasion to quarrel with the result as showing with fair accuracy the respective merits of the teams. Especially notable was the fact that the first period of play was rushed through without any pauses for time-out. The whole spectacle is always a pleasing one with its mammoth crowds, its antiphonal cheering, its generous rivalry of band music and singing as con- comitants for the real event of the day- a manly game, manfully played by the best talent that two great American colleges can muster from the ranks of their students.

It is much too early to comment on the expedient of asking 200 Dartmouth undergraduates to keep careful diaries for one week, with intent to discover the favorite ways of spending time apart from classroom activities. One perceives at a glance the necessity for a truly Pepysian frankness if the diarist is to give a faithful picture of his hours of ease—but presumably this will be forthcoming. No one, surely, has any quarrel with the student who, after performing with reasonable attention his collegiate work, seeks diversion in whatever reputable ways may be open—which ways are manifold. But it is not amiss to ascertain, if it can be done with accuracy, which means of relaxation are most in

favor among young men now resident at Hanover and what may be both the indoor and outdoor sports which prove most inviting to the majority. To the tottering alumnus, whom the "Young Visiters" would have described as "an elderly man of 42," it seems in retrospect that he was inclined while in college to misappropriate too much of his spare hours. "Too little reading and rather too much cards" would probably be the frank admission of one on the eve of his 30th reunion, as he looked back on long winter evenings in the roaring '90's. All of which is not to condemn the relaxations of the card-table, so much as to admit a somewhat exaggerated preference for what, in those days, was called merely "duplicate whist"—or at one stage of our careers, "Pedro,"—to mention no others! We heard much from our Greek professors in those days about "the Aristoteliali golden mean," but as a general thing we were not zealous in applying it to the regulation of our daily walk and conversation.

That things are greatly different now seems to us a large order for any man's credulity to fill. However, one reads that the diaries are to be asked for and one envies the lucky college officers who will have the perusal thereof. Every man his own recording angel! Much depends on the intelligent cooperation of the diarist and on his power to resist the obvious temptation toward enlivening his account with humorous grotesqueries. Our recollection goes back to a famous Hanover diary, now probably destroyed by fire, which was notable for its detailed mention of "ablutions"— in those days a Spartan winter rite.

All of which leads us by indirection to speak of a novel contribution to the history of Dartmouth college in the form of Professor Edwin Julius Bartlett's collected reminiscences, now available in book form, the savor of which may be judged by the successive articles which he has from time to time contributed to these columns. There are few men now living who can match Professor Bartlett's intimate and sustained acquaintance with the College; and none, in our judgment, better qualified to put on paper, in thoroughly readable form, the recollections of some 50 years. History, one is often told, should be interesting even if this entails some sacrifice of annalistic accuracy. Professor Bartlett's genial humor suffices to purvey the needful salt and pepper without impairing the accuracy which, as a devotee of an exact science, he would infallibly demand of himself.